Off the rails

The front-page story on grease thefts from restaurants started out like a spoof but wound up evoking a literary nightmare. Even for a country unabashedly addicted to oil, this is junkie behavior. At least no one today can mock the Peruvians for reaping the guano rewards. Their dirty work produces food rather than sustaining the illusion we can keep driving until the Apocalypse. And their resource happens to be renewable -- it's been piling up really high at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.