Now for one of the good guys. 

A while back, I stumbled on an extraordinary story on the BBC's 'Food Program'.  It told of an engineer, a New Yorker called Mott Green, who moved to the Caribbean island of Grenada.  He fell in love with the island and the culture. He also found that although they grew cocoa beans there, for some reason they didn't make chocolate. 

In fact all the cocoa they grew was sold to the commodities market.  The growers made very little money, as all the value is in the final product - the chocolate on our confectionery shelves.  The program also mentioned another cocoa bean growing region - Africa's Ivory Coast. There, children are sold to the plantations, to work for years.  It's not a stretch to call it modern-day slavery. 

In Grenada, Mott wondered why they couldn't make the chocolate themselves, cut out the middle men and sell chocolate direct to the retailers.  He figured that if everyone was part of a collective, all that added value would benefit the locals. 

He put his engineering skills to work and built a solar-powered chocolate factory in Grenada, keeping it going with constant maintenance, and mastering the art of turning cocoa beans into chocolate.  In partnership with locals Doug and Edmond Browne, he set up the Grenada Chocolate Company, making fine chocolate to sell around the world. 

True to his environmental aspirations, the first batch of chocolate bars to be delivered made its journey from Grenada to the UK on a brigantine sailing ship - powered by the wind! 

But there's a tragic twist to this tale.  One night, while doing emergency maintenance, Mott was accidentally electrocuted.  Despite his tragic, untimely death, he has left an amazing legacy.  The Grenada Chocolate Company lives on, and more and more local growers are joining the collective as the customer base grows. 

Oh, and I can personally affirm - the chocolate is really good!

Listen here.

Find out more about the Grenada Chocolate Company

When you're young, you learn about falling in love.  The resultant elation and/or despair is usually the most powerful thing that has happened to you up to that point, so it's not surprising that if you write songs, that's what you write about.

As you get older, you live and love, and inevitably lose some you love.  You start to realise that the world around you is not a static thing; that ten years is fleeting and full of change.

Then there's the state of the world.  When I was born, there were half as many people on the planet, and there were already signs of strain.  I remember confident claims that the Earth's resources were infinite.  We now live in a world of 'peak oil'.  I remember campaigns to save a single iconic species from extinction, but now we're destroying entire habitats. 

So these days, I'm preoccupied with all the ways we're screwing things up, and all the forces that conspire to maintain this catastrophic momentum. 

Some choose to believe what makes them comfortable, rather than what's true.  Others exploit that tendency for their own ends.  Many know in their hearts that things are in a terrible state, but feel too overwhelmed to do anything about it.  They occupy themselves with manageable problems and day-to-day pleasures; never daring to look up. 

On the other hand, there are a few signs of hope; a few people who make a noticeable change for the good, and I write about them too. 

© 2011 Jeff Parker. caglecartoons.com