Driving To Hell

It’s funny, isn’t it, the way that fate plays a hand in the affairs of mice and men. Who would have thought that Henry Ford and his motor car would have contributed to the demise of the world?

Yes, once the first T-models rolled off the assembly line, humans forgot about real horses which had carried them and their goods faithfully for centuries. Capriciously, and overnight, they began an enduring love affair with the car. Indeed, the whole development of society changed to suit the new, noisy, polluting beasts.

Highways were built, towns were structured around a fabric of smooth roads, people ogled the new vehicles which, as time went by, began to acquire bigger and bigger motors which used more and more oil and went faster and faster. Trucks soon appeared (see above) then tractors, ships and trains changed from steam to diesel, aeroplanes soon appeared. The whole progress of society and the lifestyle of its inhabitants was hugely affected by the new power source provided by the petrol engine and oil became an increasingly important commodity. Of course the plastics industry also began to use oil to make all manner of new products and oil soon became black gold (though its initial price was fairly cheap because its supply was thought to be infinite).

With the car and its mechanized spin-offs came marked changes in capitalism. The world shrank. Goods could be exported anywhere and quickly. The whole world became a market where goods and services could be sold. The whole world became an opportunity for plunder, a place where the economic resources of poor nations could be raided and shipped back to factories. Imperialism grew. It still does.

As the infinitely greedy capitalists discovered, these poor countries could also provide cheap labour and, seeing a quick quid, they moved their factories offshore so they could produce goods for a matter of a few dollars and sell them in First World countries for hundreds. Using clever marketing and sales gimmicks, more goods were sold, profits rose, shares rose, the rich became ever richer and cunning tax lawyers ensured that little tax was paid. The future looked good, executives earned millions. The wealth bonanza would continue forever, the entrepreneurs thought!

Then two things happened almost simultaneously: good quality oil was discovered to be a finite resource and its price began to spiral upwards. Then global warming, caused in large part by the use of fossil fuels like oil to fuel industry, was discovered to be having a serious effect on the world’s weather.

Shock! Horror! The rainbow-coloured capitalist bubble was in danger of bursting. They’d put all their eggs in one basket! They’d built their whole industrialized world around oil and other fossil fuels and had developed a culture of infinite greed and that world was destroying the planet!

The result? Our world is in turmoil. We are seeing ice melting, sea levels rising, and freak weather events like tornadoes, droughts and floods with worse to come. Petrol prices are soaring and pushing up the price of food and consumer goods. Some food supplies are already being used to make alternative fuels, thereby diminishing the world’s food supply which is causing riots and starvation in some places. Financial markets are in turmoil. Governments are dithering and do not know what to do. There is talk of carbon trading, carbon taxes, the hurried development of ‘green’ cars, finding alternative fuels and power sources. Wars fought over oil will increase as the meltdown continues.

And, of course, the vested interests who control oil and the manufacture of all types of vehicles and the million of products which are associated with oil (who are of the same ilk as those who flog cigarettes to children and used asbestos in building products and made thalidomide), are they in a hurry to change things, to give up the money tree that they’ve been pillaging for years? Of course not! They talk, they procrastinate, but their products continue to be sold and the greenhouse gases which their production creates continue to build in the atmosphere.

The whole of our industrial civilization is unsustainable. Ignorantly, we have been fouling our own nest for four-score years and ten. We are addicted to oil and the products that it creates or powers. We love our cars. They have for many become not just a source of transport but, because of clever, immoral marketing, a status symbol, them and the McMansions and the myriad electronic gimmicks which fill our energy inefficient homes.

With our eyes glazed by greed, in our shiny, polluting vehicles, we are driving our way to hell! Thanks Henry. Thanks for nothing!

My kingdom for a horse.