The John James Newsletter 83 – a game for the Long Weekend

When the Gods want to punish us they answer our prayers

Anon

Here is a partial list of products made from oil (some 160 of the more common 6000).

For your information: One 42-gallon barrel of oil creates 30 gallons of fuel (for cars, planes, deliveries, fishing etc). The rest (almost a third) is used to make things on the list. Each one of us uses about 4 litres of oil in these products every day (some 35+ Bn litres pa in Australia alone)

The game is to tick those you can NOT do without. Don’t tick if you know how to REPLACE them with some other material such as wood or metal (Hint: what did we do before 1940?).

How many ticks voted to continue using “essential” oil products? I could not do better than 17, or 6%, which is a lot more than what I would aim for!

Then I understood why some part of me wont want THIS society with MY standard of living to ever really want to diminish the use of fossil fuels. The game showed me the enormous personal and industrial changes that would have to be made in every aspect of our lives and the way we manufacture in order to no longer rely on oil.

CAN YOU BECOME TRULY SUSTAINABLE?

Ammonia

Anoraks