MOSTLY HARMLESS
by Robin Wheeler, Owner, Edible Landscapes

Has anyone mentioned to you that fossil fuels are going to run out one day? And that the population is exploding, so that they can use it up faster? Just checking, because it makes it seem quite kooky to be starting more pipelines and giant tanks. The real problem will be, how can we use less of it until it runs out? And what will we do then? And how should we plan for that? But that’s enough worrying for one day.

With that thought in mind, I decided to pick up some of that plastic to stick over the windows of my chilly old mobile home. Keeps heat in, you know. Makes it last longer. I was going to have proper windows put in, but it was too expensive.

So there I was in My Favorite Hardware Store, holding a box of plastic window whatsis in my hand. Not the stuff that requires a hair dryer to apply, of course, because then I’d have to buy a hair dryer, and that would be silly. At any rate, as I scanned the box in my hand a horrible thought struck me. A factory had made this plastic, and it had used energy to do it. And the materials to make the plastic had to be picked up at another factory that used energy, and trucked (using fossil fuels) to the first one. And the box material was made and trucked to the site, (and of course the materials had to be shipped to that factory) and the dyes for the box were also trucked to the site .... and the artist who did the picture on the box had to drive to the advertising company at least once, all of them spewing precious fuels into the air. I swooned at the thought.

But then I realized that every employee at every company also drove to work each day, using fossil fuels and causing exhaust fumes. How many people and vehicles now? 50? So that I could take home (in my car) one box of material to save energy. Go on, toy with that for a moment.

Well, by now I was lying in the isle of My Favorite Hardware Store with a cold cloth over my face. Because besides the horrible evidence I had just put together, I had just recalled that I had purchased this plastic the last couple of years at “so much” per box ... I could almost have had a recycled window installed by now. I staggered back to my vehicle to expend more fuel going home to think. Here is my favorite quote by Douglas Adams. I think I get it now.

“For a long period of time there was much speculation and controversy about where the so-called "missing matter" of the Universe had got to. All over the Galaxy the science departments of all the major universities were acquiring more and more elaborate equipment to probe and search the hearts of distant galaxies, and then the very centre and the very edges of the whole Universe, but when eventually it was tracked down it turned out in fact to be all the stuff which the equipment had been packed in.” Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

Robin Wheeler is the owner of Edible Landscaping and author of the Gardening Book Gardening for the Faint of Heart, and munches the odd bit of violet, miner’s lettuce and corn salad on the way to her compost bin.