Slow is beautiful
Bitumen would be among my favourite hydrocarbons, for it is a leading constituent of oil sands, and petroleum seeps, which I am determined to cheer on. It is the seeps, especially, that remind us that God created our beautiful world — for as Isaiah said, “Look, He made it to be inhabited!” — and stocked it with everything we could ever need, including many things we haven’t discovered yet, that will prove necessary in the future. Verily, He, in friendship, left it to us to develop the principles of refining, and purification, and the various receipts and techniques by which things glorious in themselves may be made even better. (Praise the Lord!)
Bitumen gets called asphalt over here in America, including Canuckistan. It is the cousin of crude oil. But whereas the oil flows freely, bitumen is sticky and slow like molasses. It is used mostly as a binder, combined with crushed stone, gravel, sand, and probably microplastics, in different combinations, and spread over roads, race courses, tennis courts, parking lots, aeroplane runways, flattish roofs, &c. I have tried to find the proportion of the world that is wrapped in asphalt, but there does not seem to be a reliable figure. It must be less than 29 percent, as the oceans haven’t been paved over yet; but 20 percent? 25?
Plants do not grow under asphalt covering, but through it, as I have observed. Happily, an increase of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is now encouraging them.
But I think my proposed universal land speed limit (see previous Idlepost), which would leave our bureaucrats ticketing horses and cheetahs (a purpose for them, at last!) also makes most of these smooth driving surfaces unnecessary. Agreed, for environmental reasons, we should burn off more of our oil supply. But perhaps, with advances in rocket science, we could do most of it far away from our planet.