What I submitted to the Museum of Fossil Fuels
By rob hopkins 28th July 2016 Culture & Society
The wonderful Happy Museum just opened an online Museum of Fossil Fuels, which they introduce like this: “We invite you to ponder what object would best represent the shift from our fossil fuel dominated present to a more sustainable future and donate it to our new virtual museum. Objects can be large and historically significant or small and personally resonant. The virtual nature of the museum means size, scale, ownership and care of the object are not an issue so let your imagination go!”. So I did.
Here is my entry to the Museum. You can submit your own here…
“For my entry into the Museum, I am submitting my record collection. Painstakingly gathered together since I bought my first single (Tubeway Army’s ‘Are Friends Electric?’ since you’re asking), it takes up a considerable section of my living room wall. You could look at it as an eclectic collection of wonderful music (thank you), or you could look at it as a carbon sequestration scheme. All that oil, having been pumped from the ground, rather than being burned was pressed into flat round discs that will be treasured for ever.
Of course it would have been best to leave it underground, but second best is to capture it, store it, turn it into something that will be valued. A brighter person than me could tell you how many litres of oil are locked up among the cardboard covers, foldout posters and paper inner sleeves of my record collection. How much unburned carbon it represents. Record collection, or a form of Carbon Capture and Storage that actually works?
Most of the oil we burned in our lives was used for things we don’t remember, never mind actually treasure. Those non-descript journeys to go shopping or to work. We don’t associate particular memories with them. My records on the other hand, each evoke distinct memories of people, of place, of events, of times in my life. And beyond the oil age, with the destruction it has wreaked upon our climate and on large parts of this beautiful planet, we’ll at least have something good to show for it.
Donated to the #museumoffossilfuels by Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition movement and author of The Power of Just Doing Stuff.