So, Greta Thunberg has declared her intention to sail to New York for the UN climate summit on a hi-tech eco-friendly racing yacht. The boat is owned by German property developer, Gerhard Senft, is based in Brittany and sponsored by the Yacht Club de Monaco. It has been fitted with solar panels and underwater turbines to generate zero-carbon electricity on-board.
Greta’s transport will produce zero-emissions and is the ultimate carbon-neutral solution to long-distance journeys…or so she hopes. Greta has long been a foe of mine ever since she messed with my plans to wreak havoc by insisting that my school take part in a strike for climate change awareness. From that day forth I swore vengeance. For every positive eco-friendly change Greta introduces, I have dedicated my time to balancing it out with an equally negative action.
For instance, when Greta encouraged my school canteen to replace plastic drinking straws with cardboard ones, I filled my mouth with cold vegetable soup and fake-puked all over the floor so much the janitor was forced to put down disposable plastic sheeting which was the equivalent of at least 2,000 plastic straws.
When Greta announced on TV that the world was in crisis and demanded that climate change be declared an emergency, I went around my town handing out laminated flyers on how LED lightbulbs can make you go blind and that drying your clothes individually one-by-one in a tumble-dryer makes them not only last a lot longer, but makes them more fashionable.
This time, however, I feel I have excelled myself. Greta is being so very smug about her eco-friendly voyage, but once she sees me following her in my chosen form of transport that sanctimonious look will be wiped from her face. I intend to shadow Greta’s yacht with an old oil tanker I won using my mom’s credit card on eBay. It’s amazing the bargains you can obtain on eBay when you search for stuff purposefully using the incorrect spelling. By putting ‘0il tinker’ into the search bar, I won an auction for an ancient rusted petroleum tanker for a bid of just 50 krona. It was in a bad way, but after my uncle Jörgen set about it with some Freightliner roof panels and a soldering iron, it’s just about still seaworthy. Luckily for me, Uncle Jörgen used to work for Exxon Mobil and via the use of a few connections, we’ve managed to vastly increase the speed of the tanker’s engine but also made it 78 percent less efficient.
My plan is to follow Thunberg’s prissy little ship in my own vessel; Greta’s Downfall, dropping five oil drums into the sea every three hours, while Uncle Jörgen shoots at them with his hunting rifle. Using Google Maps I’ve calculated that it will take us 12 days to get to New York from Gothenburg, and so for every one tonne of fuel oil Greta saves, I shall be using at least 126 tonnes.
I cannot describe how excited I am to be contributing to the end of days. The world will burn, and I am the kindling.
Look upon this Greta and despair: Every move you make. Every breath you take. Every bond you break. Every step you take. I’ll be thwarting you.
