Your Life Without Petrochemicals

What would you expect your everyday life to be like without those petrochemicals? Well, you can do a simple 'thought experiment' to find out. Doctor Albert Eienstein made all his great discoveries using thought experiments. In thirty years of physics, he never had a laboratory, demonstrating a thought experiment can be a powerful revealing tool.

When sitting in your living room, when it’s quiet and there are no distractions, look around for everything that uses petrochemicals either directly or in its manufacturing. Then, in your mind, get up and tear those things out, then take them outside and throw them on the front lawn. For instances, anything having inks, dyes and stains such as fabrics, wallpaper, furniture, carpet and curtains. All those wonderful colors that surround you. Out they must go.

Now look for anything using glues and adhesives (including chalking) such as plywood, particle board, flake board and MDF. This includes wall paneling, sub flooring, furniture and cabinets, windows and weather stripping. Again, in your mind, pull them up and throw them outside.

Anything that uses solvents in its manufacturing or application, which isn’t very apparent when looking around your living room, but solvents (and even detergents) are integral to the manufacturing of a wide range of products used every day by you. A very invisible, but a very important part of petrochemicals, which has to go, even if you don’t see them.

Paint- everything that is painted . . . walls, floors, ceilings . . . the multitude of things and objects surrounding us in our rooms. If it’s painted, then it goes too. And don’t forget, many paints also use those solvents when being applied. So get up and get rid of them.

Of course, anything with lubricants in electric motors and slide tracks. Ceiling fans, hinges, sliding tracks used on drawers and reclining chairs. Any mechanical thing that moves is a candidate for using lubricants.

And finally, anything that uses any plastics, foremost the plastic insulation used to insulate the electric wires in your walls, plus the insulating plastic in electrical fixtures, such as plugs, switches, the power sockets, dimmer switches and light bulb sockets. All must go! And that means no electricity. Anything electronic . . . TVs, stereos, telephones, speakers, computers, VCRs and DVDs, tape and discs, radios and calculators . . . anything with electronic parts must go too. Formica used on counter tops, tables and furniture (which is glued on), plus synthetic fibers in cloth and carpets. Our world is so filled with plastics, that we never really notice them unless we really look . . . and then we’re surprise, or even shocked, by the number of things which use plastics. And they must also go to the outside heap.

When you’re finished, if you’re lucky, you will be standing in a dark empty shell that was once your living room. And if you have a composition roof (asphalt shingles), when it rains, it’s going to leak on you. If you’re not lucky, that is, if your house was built recently, then you’ll just have pile of lumber. Modern houses are constructed using nail guns, and those nails have a glue coating to help them hold better. That means you must pull the nails, and then with no support, you’re now left standing on a pile of useless junk.

But it’s even worse, for petrochemicals are used for many drugs to preserve your health and to produce the food you daily eat. Meat, grains and vegetables . . . all use petrochemicals in one way or another such as plastics, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and medications. Our farms couldn’t be as productive as they are now without oil. And, of course, oil and lubricants are also needed to get that food to you and your family without spoiling.

So you want to know what your life and surroundings would be like without the petrochemical industry? Well just look back at America prior to the 1880's. That’s right . . . back to the good old wild west cowboy days. Except, while it may look romantic and appealing on TV, I guarantee you’ll quickly grow weary (miserable) if forced back into that time.

In short- there’s no way you want a life without petrochemicals!

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