Today I made Vulcan Materials (VMC) my first pick in my Special Report: Is Your Portfolio Ready for Global Warming and I’m also adding the shares to my long-term 50 Stocks portfolio.

As the most recent hurricanes have confirm, the Southeastern United States is extremely vulnerable to the effects of early stage Global Warming. Florida cities find water in the streets whenever the tides back up and the drinking water system of much of the state is vulnerable to salt water infiltration. The low lying lands of the coast in South and North Carolina face encroachment from rising sea levels and dangerous floods whenever the more intensive storms that result from Global Warming connected changes in weather patterns linger over the hills of the Piedmont. Virginia Beach and the Norfolk naval base face not just rising sea levels but an acceleration in the pace of that rise. (This isn’t to say that other areas along the East Coast don’t face dire challenges. I live in New York City and I can give you a list.) Vulcan Materials is the United States’ largest producer of construction aggregates and its largest markets read like a Who’s Who of areas with Global Warming threats: Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. One of the peculiarities of the aggregate business is that aggregates are bulky and at $10 to $20 or more a ton, they weigh a lot for their value. Which means that it doesn’t pay to ship aggregates long distance–most aggregates tavel by truck and outside a range of 70 miles or so transportation costs start to exceed the cost of the aggregates themselves. So if your aggregates sources are near your aggregate markets, you’ve got a big competitive advantage. Vulcan has roughly 3.8 billion tons of aggregate reserves and more than 100 operating plans in the region stretching from Texas to Florida. (In total Vulcan has–16 billion tons of reserves–roughly 50 years of aggregate supply at peak production levels.) If Congress and the White House can agree on anything in 2018, it’s likely to be an infrastructure bill–which would add a near term boost to any longer term Global Warming demand. Morningstar puts a fair value estimate of $135 on the shares, which closed at $98.75 on December 13. The stock traded as high as $141.11 back in January and at $133 in June before hitting a bottom for 2018 so far at $84.20 on October 29, 2018. The shares are down 23.07 year to date as of December 13. As of December 14, I will be adding them to my long-term 50 Stocks Portfolio.

The 10 Global Warming picks in my Special Report are a work in progress that I expect to finish in the next few days. To read the full Special Report (and to get notices on when I add more Global Warming picks) you’ll have to subscribe to my paid JubakAm.com site. The regular subscription price is $199 for a year, but today (and again next week) readers of this site who have registered their email so they can receive end of day alerts have received an offer that gives them 20% off on their subscription for the first year.