Isn't technology amazing, or maybe we've seen so much of it it's no longer so exciting, lately Shell Oil have created a
wonderful new petroleum product set to make the world a much better place. Yet no one seems very excited.
The last few weeks in Ireland Shell has been advertising a new type of petrol called Pura which actually cleans the air
as you drive. The advert says so.
Isn't that clever! Making petrol that cleans the very air we breathe instead of filling it with carbon dioxide and
carbon monoxide as is normally the case. I don't exactly know how it does it, but I suspect it does it by tricking the
dirt into giving up. Big companies like Shell don't have much time for useless uneducated dirt molecules so it should
come as no surprise that they have invented this petrol first.
You know, at first, I suspected it was to good to be true but then I read Shell's website.
"Since our earliest days, we have been guided by a passionate commitment to honesty, integrity and respect for people.
We believe in the promotion of trust, openness, teamwork and professionalism." - http://www.shell.com/
Now governments can encourage cars into the city safe in the knowledge that as they slowly crawl through the congested
streets they are giving the air around them a thorough cleaning.
Anyway the advert goes on to show Pura being such a great product that it would also clean the sea and allow humans to
breath underwater in the same way we do above ground.
It wouldn't be so bad would it? I mean, say, if not enough people buy the new petrol and the air keeps getting dirtier
until finally you can't be bothered anymore and you say, well then the time is right, lets evolve.
With a little help from genetic engineering we could be covered in blubber and fur like a seal, get big flippers on our
feet and a set of gills and live out the rest of the days in the ocean like the little mermaid.
In fact we could build a really big car motor fill it up with all the world's Pura and leave it running for a hundred
years while we are in the sea and come out to the freshest loveliest air ever.
- Irish Eyes is an occasional column written by Greg Meylan from Dublin - paloona@yahoo.com