The dramatic global recession over the past six months, with slowdowns in business activity, falling oil prices, and rising unemployment has been compared to an “economic forest fire.” Although terribly devastating to people, plants, and wildlife, forest fires are part of natures cycle for tree growth because they eradicate undergrowth, dead wood, diseases, and pestilence. Some trees such as the lodgepole pine require heat from a fire to propel seeds from their cones. In fact, forestry experts now conduct controlled burns in government parks to bring the benefits of fires without widespread devastation. Similarly, the economy (and certainly the oil industry) has boom cycles followed by recessions. Obviously, even though we know recessions and forest fires are inevitable, we don't want to be vulnerable or in the middle of the flames. Both the recession and forest fires are crises, and we do know that crises have finite lifetimes and generally bring about change. As stated by Stanford economist Paul Romer, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”