We're not talking global warming here — that's not “immediate.” That can go on the back burner (no pun intended) for the sake of this discussion. We are talking about the impending staggering increase in instances of fraud perpetrated against the insurance industry.

Consider these facts:

• In the middle of August, gasoline consumption and prices were both at all-time highs.
• The Middle East is in continual conflict, a conflict that is dangerously close to interfering with oil import distribution channels.
• The political stability of our sources for imported oil gets shakier by the minute (those sources that have not — temporarily, at least — evaporated).
• Anonymous sources now are predicting that gasoline prices could exceed $5 per gallon, and possibly approach $6 by the end of the year.
• BP has just shut down one of our major sources of crude from Alaska for an indefinite period, reducing our domestic capacity by approximately 8 percent.
• The 2006 hurricane season, an average one at this writing, isn't over yet; even one or two bad storms in the Gulf Coast area could wreak further devastation to our refining capacity.
• We're experiencing an appalling lack of savvy on the part of our federal leadership to effectively curb or positively influence the dangerous situations facing us on the world stage. This can only exacerbate, if not intensify, tensions throughout the world.
• And finally, corruption at the highest corporate levels has set a terrible example — and a skewed (lack of) morality lesson — that is destined to poison the Everyman mentality.

This scenario is likely to encourage fraud activity the likes of which haven't been seen before. Desperate people do desperate things. And desperate people who already have lost everything, including any remnants of self respect, will go to desperate lengths to merely survive.