One crisp morning in
Sweden, a cute little girl named Greta woke up to a perfect world, one where
there were no petroleum products ruining the earth. She tossed aside her cotton
sheet and wool blanket and stepped out onto a dirt floor covered with willow bark
that had been pulverized with rocks. “What’s this?” she asked.
“Pulverized willow
bark,” replied her fairy godmother.
“What happened to the
carpet?” she asked.
“The carpet was nylon,
which is made from butadiene and hydrogen cyanide, both made from petroleum,”
came the response.
Greta smiled,
acknowledging that adjustments are necessary to save the planet, and moved to
the sink to brush her teeth where instead of a toothbrush, she found a willow,
mangled on one end to expose wood fibre bristles.
“Your old toothbrush?”
noted her godmother, “Also nylon.”
“Where’s the water?”
asked Greta.
“Down the road in the
canal,” replied her godmother, ‘Just make sure you avoid water with cholera in
it”
“Why’s there no
running water?” Greta asked, becoming a little peevish.
“Well,” said her
godmother, who happened to teach engineering at MIT, “Where do we begin?” There
followed a long monologue about how sink valves need elastomer seats and how
copper pipes contain copper, which has to be mined and how it’s impossible to
make all-electric earth-moving equipment with no gear lubrication or tires and
how ore has to be smelted to a make metal, and that’s tough to do with only
electricity as a source of heat, and even if you use only electricity, the
wires need insulation, which is petroleum-based, and though most of Sweden’s
energy is produced in an environmentally friendly way because of hydro and
nuclear, if you do a mass and energy balance around the whole system, you still
need lots of petroleum products like lubricants and nylon and rubber for tires
and asphalt for filling potholes and wax and iPhone plastic and elastic to hold
your underwear up while operating a copper smelting furnace and . . .
“What’s for
breakfast?” interjected Greta, whose head was hurting.
"Fresh, range-fed
chicken eggs,” replied her godmother. “Raw.”
“How so, raw?”
inquired Greta.
“Well, . . .” And once
again, Greta was told about the need for petroleum products like transformer
oil and scores of petroleum products essential for producing metals for frying
pans and in the end was educated about how you can’t have a petroleum-free
world and then cook eggs. Unless you rip your front fence up and start a fire and
carefully cook your egg in an orange peel like you do in Boy Scouts. Not that
you can find oranges in Sweden anymore
“But I want poached
eggs like my Aunt Tilda makes,” lamented Greta. “Tilda died this morning,” the godmother
explained. “Bacterial pneumonia.”
“What?!” interjected
Greta. “No one dies of bacterial pneumonia! We have penicillin.”
“Not anymore,”
explained godmother “The production of penicillin requires chemical extraction
using isobutyl acetate, which, if you know your organic chemistry, is
petroleum-based. Lots of people are dying, which is problematic because there’s
not any easy way of disposing of the bodies since backhoes need hydraulic oil
and crematoriums can’t really burn many bodies using as fuel Swedish fences and
furniture, which are rapidly disappearing - being used on the black market for
roasting eggs and staying warm.”
This represents only a
fraction of Greta’s day, a day without microphones to exclaim into and a day
without much food, and a day without carbon-fibre boats to sail in, but a day
that will save the planet.
Tune in tomorrow when
Greta needs a root canal and learns how Novocain is synthesized.
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