{"id":17533,"date":"2021-02-21T14:05:28","date_gmt":"2021-02-21T21:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/the-glen-blog.com\/?p=17533"},"modified":"2021-02-21T14:05:31","modified_gmt":"2021-02-21T21:05:31","slug":"one-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-glen-blog.com\/?p=17533","title":{"rendered":"One day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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One crisp winter 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. \u201cWhat\u2019s this?\u201d she asked.\u201cPulverized willow bark,\u201d replied her fairy godmother.\u201cWhat happened to the carpet?\u201d she asked.\u201cThe carpet was nylon, which is made from butadiene and hydrogen cyanide, both made from petroleum,\u201d 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.\u201cYour old toothbrush?\u201d noted her godmother, \u201cAlso nylon.\u201d\u201cWhere\u2019s the water?\u201d asked Greta.\u201cDown the road in the canal,\u201d replied her godmother, \u2018Just make sure you avoid water with cholera in it\u201d\u201cWhy\u2019s there no running water?\u201d Greta asked, becoming a little peevish.\u201cWell,\u201d said her godmother, who happened to teach engineering at MIT, \u201cWhere do we begin?\u201d 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 . . .\u201cWhat\u2019s for breakfast?\u201d interjected Greta, whose head was hurting.”Fresh, range-fed chicken eggs,\u201d replied her godmother. \u201cRaw.\u201d\u201cHow so, raw?\u201d inquired Greta.\u201cWell, . . .\u201d 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\u2019t 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.\u201cBut I want poached eggs like my Aunt Tilda makes,\u201d lamented Greta.\u201cTilda died this morning,\u201d the godmother explained. \u201cBacterial pneumonia.\u201d\u201cWhat?!\u201d interjected Greta. \u201cNo one dies of bacterial pneumonia! We have penicillin.\u201d\u201cNot anymore,\u201d explained godmother \u201cThe 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\u2019s not any easy way of disposing of the bodies since backhoes need hydraulic oil and crematoriums can\u2019t 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.\u201dThis represents only a fraction of Greta\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One crisp winter 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. \u201cWhat\u2019s … Continue reading One day<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-glen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17533"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-glen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-glen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-glen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-glen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17533"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/the-glen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17535,"href":"https:\/\/the-glen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17533\/revisions\/17535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-glen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-glen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-glen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}