Angst about global warming has mutated into spiraling commercial concern about the implications of global cooling.
This Memorial Day weekend the hospitality industry got it between the eyes with the sudden frost in the northeast. Instead of trying to figure out when there will be low traffic across the George Washington Bridge and Garden State Parkway to the Jersey Shore, we figured to just forget the whole thing. I hunkered down and have been working through the weekend. Global cooling, more than Sandy, might deep six prospects for resorts in the tri-state area. I have to assume that the parking lots in Westerly, Rhode Island are not full.
In FORBES, Peter Ferrara provides the history of Ice Ages. If we are in for a mini Ice Age, then everything in business changes. The cost of heating and what it sucks off from discretionary consumer spending should scare the jesus out of industries ranging from retail to second homes (does any middle class professsional want to have to pay for heat at two locations?) There's more. The homeless will have a bitter struggle. There will be little respite from the need to get out of the cold. And, all of us will have to re-think how to recreate. Increasingly we'll not factor in a week by the ocean.
Here in central Connecticut we all have our heat on. No one in this senior citizen complex is sitting out on the benches in the courtyard. The spring in our step which came with the sun is gone. The rent includes all utilities such as heat. Can we anticipate that the rent will then go up?