Copper and the poor

There is an interesting phenomenon going on in the world that very few people are talking about. People are stealing copper left and right. They usually sell them to a scrap dealer. Appearently due to the increased demand for copper from China, the price of copper has almost doubled, leading more and more people finding it worth it to take the risk of trying to steal copper from anywhere they can including potentially deadly electrical substations. In places like the Dominican Republic, they are shipping out more copper than they buy every year. Over a year ago, there was a huge warehouse fire in New York that was caused by two homeless men trying to burn the plastic covering off of a copper wire. This is a problem that will only increase as the prices rise.