While U.S. automakers struggle to survive after the Senate rejected a bailout for Detroit, one company from China may be showing a way forward for the industry. On Dec. 15, BYD Auto got a jump on General Motors (GM), Toyota (TM), and Nissan (NSANY) by introducing in its home town of Shenzhen the first mass-produced plug-in hybrid, the F3 DM. BYD’s new car, with a $22,000 price tag, can run for up to 60 miles on a battery charged from an ordinary electricity outlet.
Early this year there was plenty of skepticism in auto circles about BYD’s ability to put together a car that would ever become truly roadworthy. The company unveiled its plug-in hybrid at the Detroit Auto Show in January, and few outsiders figured the Chinese upstart, which had only been in the auto business since 2003, had the know-how to produce a commercially viable plug-in.
One person who seems to believe in the car’s viability is Warren Buffett. In September, Des Moines-based MidAmerican Energy, which is controlled by Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA), paid $231 million for a 9.9% stake in BYD Auto’s parent company BYD with a view to helping BYD distribute its cars in the U.S. by 2011.
U.S.-China Collaboration
Others believe in China’s potential in developing cars that are more environmentally friendly. The F3 DM’s China launch comes just a few days after Washington and Beijing announced plans to work together on green car technology: China’s Science & Technology Ministry signed an agreement with the U.S. Energy Dept. to collaborate on battery technology to power cars on Dec. 11.
Although it’s not much to look at—the F3 DM is based on the same platform as the gas-powered F3 sedan by BYD that resembles the Toyota Camry—driving one is remarkable. On a recent test drive at BYD’s sprawling Shenzhen campus, the car’s acceleration was impressive, going from zero to 60 in a respectable 10.5 seconds. What makes the experience so novel is the absence of engine noise, which heightens one’s awareness of the sounds of rushing air and tires on the road. The car’s top speed is about 100 mph, and it is capable of running for 60 miles before the batteries need recharging, which occurs automatically when the gas engine kicks in.
But the car faces an uphill climb to gain acceptance in a highly competitive Chinese auto market with dozens of manufacturers. After years of red-hot growth, China’s vehicle sales are in a slump, falling 17% in November vs. a year ago. And Toyota’s Prius has had a lackluster reception in China, having sold just 748 cars in the first 10 months of this year.
BYD’s plug-in faces other challenges. Its battery pack takes about seven hours to recharge fully using a traditional power source, but most car owners live in apartment buildings with parking lots that don’t provide electricity. “Infrastructure is a problem. It’s not like North America, where everybody has independent housing where you have a plug-in in your garage,” says Yale Zhang, director of Great China at automobile forecaster CSM Worldwide in Shanghai.
“In cities like Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing, people live in big buildings where there is nowhere to plug in.” Henry Li, general manager of BYD Auto, acknowledges this problem and only projects sales of a few hundred in the next 12 months. “We need to try and demonstrate the cars and show their benefits,” he says.
Ample Battery Experience
What BYD lacks in experience as an automaker it makes up for in battery expertise, says Li. It is the world’s largest producer of cell-phone batteries, boasting a 30% market share, and it also makes batteries for everything from power tools to laptops. “We have rich production and R&D experience, so we were able to solve all the technological barriers and turn this into commercial use,” he says.
The auto division’s 3,000-strong research and development team developed a ferrous battery technology that he says is superior to the nickel metal hydrate battery used in the Toyota Prius. “For them the gas engine is the main driving mode; for us it’s a small engine and a big battery,” says Li. Actually, the F3 DM is based on 100 3.3-volt batteries strapped together and stored under the rear seat. Packs are good for about 2,000 recharges or 100,000 miles. The engine is only 1 liter and is capable of recharging the battery when the car is switched to gasoline mode.
Li figures the potential cost savings on fuel are a big selling point, not to mention the vehicles’ smaller carbon footprint. He reckons it takes about $1.40 worth of electricity to power the car for 100 kilometers, compared with $7 for a conventional F3 gasoline model. BYD expects its first cars to be delivered to the city government of Shenzhen and China Construction Bank, which signed an order for them at the launch. Paul Lin, marketing manager of BYD’s auto export division, said other banks and state-owned enterprises might follow suit as they see running a fleet of green cars as a key element of corporate social responsibility in China, where foul air in the cities is a huge problem. He says the Prius is still primarily a gasoline-powered car and is thus not viewed by Chinese corporate buyers as particularly green.
Still, it will take a lot of driving to justify the F3 DM’s price tag, more than twice the gasoline version of the F3, which is available for between $7,500 and $9,900. Another challenge is how to set up quick-charge ports in Chinese cities, which will be essential for the success of BYD’s fully electric vehicle, the E6, which it plans to roll out later next year. The company is exploring cooperation with local utilities to set up quick-charge ports that would allow batteries to restore 50% of capacity in 10 minutes. However, these would require a stronger current than is now available: Household outlets provide about 20 amps of current, while a quick charger would need about 100 amps of juice.
BYD has momentum on its side. The F3 was China’s best-selling sedan in October, shipping more than 15,000 cars. In the first 10 months of the year, BYD’s total sales grew 36%, compared with industrywide sales of just 10.25%. BYD’s Hong Kong-traded shares are down 12% this year, compared with a nearly 50% fall in the Hang Seng China Enterprise Index of mainland stocks, thanks to the Buffet stake and strong auto sales. The company, which had sales of $3.1 billion in 2007 and earnings of $235 million, will have sales of $3.93 billion and profits of $196 million this year, estimates brokerage CLSA.
The unravelling of Wall Street has exposed the extent to which speculators pushed up the price of oil, wheat and money itself. One year ago oil raced through one hundred US dollars a barrel, on it’s way to a short term peak of around one hundred and fifty. This price of petrol at the pump hit 1.70 a litre. It is temporarily back down at $US45 reflecting a working price of somewhere between $US50 and $US75. Five years ago it was $25. Just as the speculators falsely pushed the price up, so has the economic collapse falsely pushed it down. At its peak, between half and two thirds of the price was going into the speculators pockets.
Rice, wheat and other grains went through a similar spike this year as a food shortage here and a failed crop there, sent the market into a similar spin. By mid-2008 food agencies could not afford to feed the world’s billion starving people, and the speculators moved in. As a net food exporter, the boom worked to Australia’s advantage, as long as you did not borrow money against a bumper crop. Food is different from energy for another reason, even when times are tough, people do not stop eating.
The impacts of climate change in 2008 were more subtle. Big tides did not scare landowners nearly as much as councils refusing to allow coastal development, insurers refusing to insure coastal land and courts ruling that development approvals on low lying land were illegal. Global disappearance of the arctic ice, the national shame of the losing the Barrier Reef did not worry voters as much as bankers complaining that any attempt to save the world would upset an already unstable economy.
We also found out that the NSW government is criminally insane, has no intention of providing a train, and will sell buses, schools and hospitals down the drain. Despite a few symbolic gestures to start their term, the kev-heads Canberra are little better, paying billions to fossil fuel miners and millions to low income earners by raiding the piggy bank of future generations.
Amidst this heavy pondering and the hard hitting, though, the thing that stands out for me is your company. Your letters, emails and phone calls are an inspiration. It recharges my batteries to know that my writing sparks your thinking. It takes two to tango, it takes a village to raise a child and it takes an audience to make a performance. Your input has made this column a joy.
Thank you for making this a year to remember. Merry Christmas.
I need to sleep now, but here’s a couple of thoughts to get people in more media-friendly time zones going:
These targets suck. They just do. An ‘unconditional’ cut of 5 percent off 2000 levels is actually the most pissweak measly bogus ridiculous promise I’ve ever seen. None of the necessary incentives for a cleaner economy are present in these targets, nor is any recognition of the fact that Australia is set to be the hardest hit of all developed nations when it comes to climate change. From a climate, moral, responsibility perspective, this is a failed policy.
The forestry section of the government’s policy is still ridiculous. There remains a serious risk that carbon-dense, biodiverse, ancient native forests will be logged while less resilient (and less impressive, let’s be honest) plantations remain in the ground as a result of a perverse market created by the government. From a climate, water, environment, spiritual perspective, this is a failed policy.
The funds raised through the scheme will be badly directed. Of course low-income households should be compensated for the harshest costs of action, but actively subsidising businesses because they pollute? Not spending any of it on energy efficiency retrofitting, renewable energy investment, adaptation in developing nations? From pretty much every perspective, this is a failed policy.
I’m furious. I’m surprised how bad this is. It’s come at a good time – over the last few days I’ve been pretty tired from the fortnight at the Climate Conference here in Poznan. I knew I was going to spend 2009 getting ready for the key Copenhagen Conference, pressuring the government to take stronger action and to actually set science-based policy, etc, etc, but I felt like I’d lost a little energy and drive.
No more. I’m ready for a fight! It’s not like it’s much of a commitment on my part, 12 months from a life, but if I can help in any way to push the slightest bit to create a more sensible (and safe world), then I’m in.
The government actually can’t be bothered mounting the argument that clever climate action now can save our future and ensure the survival of the most vulnerable peoples around the world.
I’m going to be bothered. I know some awesome people from around the world and from back in Oz that are going to be bothered.
By world poverty, we do not mean that some people’s retirement funds are frozen and so they cannot meet their house repayments, we mean that two billion people face every day with no income, no possessions and no visible means of support. They have less than you would, here in Australia, if you had $1 per day to purchase your food, accommodation and clothing. Like them, you would be able to afford a cup full of dirty water and just enough nutrients to remain alive.
They have no future. Every year about one percent of them die, hideously, and their children are condemned to follow their footsteps.
This is the reality of the new world order.
By 2015 there will be twenty cities collectively containing 500 million people. More than half of those people will be this poor. These urban poor are the world’s new slaves. Unlike the Africans transported to the Americas these new slaves are not fed and housed, their children are not nurtured and employed. These people are discarded if they injure themselves at work and swept out with the garbage. There are more slaves now than at any other time and those slaves are worse off than they have ever been before.
This is the reality of the new world order.
The world’s richest people, five percent of the total population, control fifty percent of the world’s wealth. The world’s poorest people, fifty percent of the total population, control five percent of the world’s wealth. Wealth has been becoming more concentrated since the end of the second world war.
The point of underlining this huge disparity in wealth, which is reflected directly in resource consumption, is because it goes to the very heart of the population debate.
Why crunch the numbers?
“The world’s population now exceeds 6.7 billion and consumption of fuel, water, crops, fish, and forests exceeds supply.
“Every week an extra 1.5 million people add to greenhouse gas emissions and escaping poverty is impossible without these emissions increasing.”
British Medical Journal – August 2, 2008
A number of times this year, in publications from the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian to the UK Guardian, journalists have describe the population debate as unpalatable.
The importance of the debate is defined by the assertion that no matter how much we curb consumption, population growth will eventually mean that we outstrip the capacity of the earth to support us.
The unpalatable nature of the debate is the definition of the culprit. If it focuses on reducing consumption, the question essentially comes down to, “Who is going to give up what?” If it focuses on reducing population, the proposition is even more difficult, “Which two billion people are going to die.”
Even if the debate focuses on reducing population growth, as opposed to the actual number of people, emotions run high. Population control policies such as those used in China and India are considered invasive and oppressive. Even contraception and abortion are issues that regularly tear communities apart.
The ghost of Malthus – sidebar
At the heart of the debate is the proposition put forward by Thomas Robert ‘Pop’ Malthus in 1798.
Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.
On current world projections, you would have to say he got it pretty well right.
It seems natural, then, that almost every discussion of population comes back to the finite nature of resources and the elastic, if not exponential, nature of population growth. The interesting thing is that Malthus was not making a disinterested observation. He actively opposed the emerging poor laws on the basis that there was no point trying to save people from themselves, when they are doomed to face famine by their very nature.
To quote Pop himself, “No fancied equality, no agrarian regulations in their utmost extent, could remove the pressure of it even for a single century … the argument is conclusive against the perfectibility of the mass of mankind.”
Essentially, he believed that governments should not interfere with the law of the jungle. Malthus’ world view is one of the foundations of what we now call the market economy.
The standard answer from the political wing of the environmental movement is that the world population is flattening out. The United Nations estimates that it will stabilise at around 9 billion people and, somewhat conveniently, estimates that the earth can support 10 billion people or more.
As people become more affluent and better educated, they delay having children until later in life, or decide not to have children at all. The birth rate of most European nations is below the death rate. Their native populations are shrinking and they rely on immigration to supply the labour force necessary to support the aging population.
“Educate and empower women,” David Suzuki has said a number of times, “and you will reduce population growth and increase affluence at the same time.”
This is not to say that we can sit back and wait for it all to sort itself out. That stabilisation requires a lot of pro-active education, a change in attitudes to sexuality and the balance of power between genders. It also assumes that the developed world will eventually stop increasing its consumption and more importantly stealing the resources of the poor to maintain their limitless aspirations.
Follow the money
Just two facts illustrate the geographical inequity that exists today and the blatantly distorted rhetoric used to maintain that inequity.
Firstly consider the flow of money. The flow of aid dollars peaked in 2006 at $US100 billion dollars. This is the total sum of money given to the developing world and includes, despite international agreements that it should not, money to fund armies and interest holidays on loans. Much of this money never gets to the nations themselves, it is simply transferred from one financial institution to another to fund projects that the target nation may or may not want and may or may not benefit from. Those projects might be new airports or new roads or tonnes of genetically modified seed.
In the same year, $US130billion was paid by developing countries as interest on loans made by foreign banks to their governments, often at the direction of the International Monetary Fund.
In one year we took more than $30billion from these people, while at the same time we pretended to help them by delivering projects that further enriched us. With friends like us, these poor countries need no enemies.
The second fact worth noting is the failure world diplomacy aimed at reaching international agreements. As well as the disappearance of the World Poverty conference, the trade talks known as the Doha round collapsed this year, and the climate change conference to be held in Copenhagen next year faces insurmountable difficulties.
A quick summary of the discussions around carbon dioxide emissions highlights the problem.
At Bali in December 2007, the United States negotiators held out until the last minute, claiming that unless China, India and Brazil agreed to cap their emissions there was no point in the agreement. A quick look at the left hand graph summarises the US argument. “Since these nations are becoming more affluent and have such large populations, their increase in emissions is going to outweigh any savings that we make.”
The right hand graph though shows exactly the same figures on a per capita basis, rather than a regional one. The situation looks somewhat different from that point of view. Remember, these two graphs are the proposed agreement in which developed nations reduce their emissions by 20% in 12 years and developing nations are allowed to slightly increase their standard of living. It is this proposal that the United States claims will unfairly disadvantage their economy.
Surprise, surprise
, the rich countries twist the rhetoric to prevent the poor from climbing out of poverty.
Rethinking the argument
Since the debate about population, poverty and the environment is trapped in a Malthusian whirlpool, it seems worthwhile to consider the facts from a completely different point of view.
Historically, we consider the cradle of civilisation to be the Tigris Euphrates valleys, the location of modern Iraq. Agriculture appeared here 10,000 years ago and the surplus food supply provided by agriculture allowed the first cities to develop around 7,000 years before present. From there, specialisation allowed civilisation to flourish and empires expanded as the standing army sought out extra resources from the fringe of the empire to feed the growing cities.
Remembering Gaia
The imperial pattern of resource usage contrasts markedly with the Gaian view of the planet.
The view that the planet might be an organism and that the carbon cycle, water cycle and the ocean currents are simply circulatory systems of that organism was initiated by James Lovelock. I have summarised his view of the world in these pages before, and you can find that summary at www.thegenerator.com.au by popping ‘Lovelock’ into the search tool at that site.
Significantly for this discussion, a wide range of scientists have adopted the view of the earth as an organism to help explain the functioning of various systems. The major project founded by David Suzuki to explore how Nitrogen 16 from the oceans ended up as biomass in the great temperate rainforest on the west coast of America is a good example.
Those scientists discovered that the Salmon returning from the ocean to spawn bring tonnes of nitrogen rich protein into the forest annually. They sacrifice themselves, and the nitrogen rich protein they have stored over five years, to provide nutrients for their offspring. Bears drag their carcasses into the woods. Flies hatching in their remains are caught by migratory birds who deposit the nitrogen they contain across the forest.
Each individual salmon is a cell in a nitrogen supply system that feeds the forest from the sea. The myriad of creatures taking advantage of this exotic seafood feast are like enzymes in our body, breaking down food into nutrients for the cells that need them.
Once we begin to consider the forests of the world as her lungs, the great rivers and ocean currents as her blood stream, then the role of the world’s twenty megacities, holding more than half a billion people takes on a new and more sinister character.
If we found something in our body that consumed far more resources than the surrounding tissue, starving it in the process, we would be concerned. If we discovered that this growth produced vast amounts of toxic waste, we would seek medical intervention. If we realised that this hungry, toxic entity was growing rapidly we would grant a medical practitioner the right to excise that growth.
Our current medical responses to cancer are not benign. Radiation, chemotherapy, surgical removal: They all involve the elimination of the mutant growth and the possible loss of surrounding tissues and organs as collateral damage.
This is the hard-nosed response to the population problem. Famine, plague and pestilence will restore the balance. A little fine tuning of the world’s trading network will target and control the speed of the excision. There are some who see this already happening, today.
If we accept this, then we accept that Malthus was right. We are rabbits, we have outstripped our food supply and are simply reaping the consequences.
Improving world’s best practice
On the face of it, the situation does not look promising. The world’s best diplomats cannot agree on a fair division of the spoils and modern medicine’s best response is selective poisoning. Fortunately, the best new medical approaches to cancer, offer a somewhat more inspiring solution.
The best research being done in the medical universities around the world is attempting to answer the questions;
lCan we selectively starve cancer cells?
lWhat causes the cells to mutate?
lWhat makes cancer cells grow so fast?
There are lots of different answers emerging and, so far, none of those answers offers a clear cure for cancer but, collectively, they spell out a different approach. Instead of blasting the patient or chopping out their affected parts, these approaches attempt to address the fundamental malfunctioning of individual cells.
If we take that approach to the patient before us, the planet itself, then the key drivcrs that underpinned the emergence of civilisation in the Tigris Euphrates are under the microscope.
lThe production of a surplus in one region at the expense of another region
lThe separation of production, consumption and waste disposal in a linear fashion
lThe use of specialisation to create an exploited class on which wealth depends
These approximations of the fundamental nature of civilisation, as it has unfolded thus far, inevitably result in the exploitation of resources and a Malthusian cycle of exponential growth followed by famine and collapse.
In the same way that many people have identified interest on loans as the fundamental driver capitalism’s boom bust cycle, so these characteristics would appear to underpin unsustainable settlement and resource use.
The problem is that so much of our social infrastructure and culture is built on these fundamental tenets.
The only example of society taking on board such fundamental changes is the vegetarianising of Hindu society around 1500 before present. By preserving the muscle power of agrarian society and coincidentally ensuring the supply of milk, holy cows gave India a stability and, arguably, a level of tolerance, that saved it plunging into starvation again.
That was a religious decree, however, and we have arrived at a point in our political thinking where religion is taboo. Despite this, the most functional intentional communities on the planet today have some sort of belief system holding them together. Similarly, the lack of morality at the heart of the world’s financial markets is revolting to most ordinary people. The selfishness that drives economic rationalist society seems to be at the heart of our social and environmental problems.
Increasingly, a commonly recognised moral framework to which all individuals are subject appears to be the only way forward. The alternative would appear to be a modern Dark Age.
The links between population growth, poverty and consumption were clearly expressed by the British Medical Journal in August, just before the world economic crisis changed the context of the debate.
“The world’s population now exceeds 6.7 billion and consumption of fuel, water, crops, fish, and forests exceeds supply.
“Every week an extra 1.5 million people add to greenhouse gas emissions and escaping poverty is impossible without these emissions increasing.”
British Medical Journal – August 2, 2008
This week’s statements from Poznan that climate change may have to play second fiddle to attempts to shore up the world’s financial markets have an uncanny echo for the 84% of the world’s population that were told the discussion of the Millenium Development Goals, designed to address world poverty, would have to wait until the economic crisis on Wall Street settled down.
By world poverty, we do not mean that some people’s retirement funds are frozen and so they cannot meet their house repayments, we mean that two billion people face every day with no income, no possessions and no visible means of support. They have less than you would, here in one of the world’s richest countries, if you had $1 per day to purchase your food, accommodation and clothing. Like them, you would be able to afford a cup full of dirty water and just enough nutrients to remain alive.
They have no future. Every year about one percent of them die, hideously, and their children are condemned to follow their footsteps.
This is the reality of the new world order.
By 2015 there will be twenty cities collectively containing 500 million people. More than half of those people will be this poor. These urban poor are the world’s new slaves. Unlike the Africans transported to the Americas three centuries ago, these new slaves are not fed and housed, their children are not nurtured and employed. These people are discarded if they injure themselves at work and swept out with the garbage. There are more slaves now than at any other time in human history and those slaves are worse off than they have ever been before.
This is the reality of the new world order.
The world’s richest people, five percent of the total population, control fifty percent of the world’s wealth. The world’s poorest people, fifty percent of the total population, control five percent of the world’s wealth. Wealth has been becoming more concentrated since the end of the second world war.
The point of underlining this huge disparity in wealth, which is reflected directly in resource consumption, is because it goes to the very heart of the population debate.
The challenge for governments of every political flavour is that there are no palatable solutions.
The state of the debate
The standard answer from United Nations agencies, the political wing of the environmental movement and commentators such as George Monbiot is that the world population is flattening out. It will stabilise at around 9 billion people somewhat conveniently, about one billion or so below the estimates of the earth’s carrying capacity.
The projection is based on the fact that as people become more affluent and better educated, they delay having children until later in life, or decide not to have children at all. As the Pope correctly observed, the birth rate of most European nations is below the death rate. As their native populations shrink they rely on immigration to supply the labour force necessary to support the aging population.
“Educate and empower women,” David Suzuki has said a number of times, “and you will reduce population growth and increase affluence at the same time.”
The challenge is that because we are nearing the upper limits of the available resources we cannot increase the affluence of the poorer four fifths of the world without reducing our own.
As Professor Thomas Malthaus correctly observed in 1798, human greed dictates that political solutions will be difficult to achieve. “No fancied equality, no agrarian regulations in their utmost extent, could remove the pressure of it even for a single century …the argument is conclusive against the perfectibility of the mass of mankind.”
He actively campaigned against the poor laws of the time, arguing that since the poor were destined to die miserably because of the fundamental laws of population there was little point wasting precious resources on them.
The real challenge of our time is to prove him wrong.
The Millenium Development Goals were signed by 189 countries in May 2000 and set specific targets to be achieved by 2015. Halfway to the timeframe, we are less than half way toward achieving any goal and moving backwards on many of them.
Even more disturbingly, our leaders have proven incapable of reaching any long term agreement on sharing resources more equitably for the long term good of humanity collectively. The collapse of the Doha round of trade talks earlier this year and the stale mate at Poznan last week indicate the depth of the challenges meeting any framework, even one as clear, simple and well-supported as the Millenium Development Goals.
Alternative solutions
When the dilemma’s raised by world’s best practice cannot be resolved by the best thinkers and diplomats of our time, some people have begun to wonder if we are asking the right questions. California Interfaith Power and Light is not a utility company spawned by the excesses of Enron, but a theological movement that attempts to find a morality that can save the world.
Their “Love God, heal the world” message is in keeping with many other organised churches that have recently made statements to the effect that it is immoral to consume resources that will condemn future generations to a poorer lifestyle than we enjoy.
More profoundly, groups like the Forum on Religion and the Ecology are exploring the nature of morality, the relationship between secular politics and moral imperative and the role of authority in guiding human behaviour.
The annual forum was held in New York last month and explored the views of many different religious traditions on these important matters.
The challenge is whether a cynical 21st century audience can be driven to adopt a moral framework that limits their immediate personal satisfaction for the sake of the long term good. If the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour, it looks like things will get pretty grim before we learn our lesson.
The residents of the upper Tweed rainforest do not collectively spend half a billion a year preserving their peace and quiet but know it will not be enhanced by burning thousands of litres of high-grade fossil fuel in worship of the machine. Unlike the Italian Futurists, they believe that immersing oneself in nature and its rhythms can enhance human existence.
Rally Australia director, Peter Marcovich, is a Futurists through and through. After the rally’s new home was announced on September 10th 2008, he met with Tweed residents led by Greens councillor Katie Milne. He quipped at the time, that a 100 percent approval rating is difficult to achieve. When Mullumbimby residents complained that Byron Council had not even been informed about 90 high-speed racing cars snaking through the Brunswick Valley, he said the organisers would simply withdraw from the Green-leaning shire if residents felt that way.
This week, an enthusiastic Kyogle Shire Council and enthusiasts in Tweed Shire Council hosted meetings of residents who live along the route. The letter from the councils to the residents emphasised the opportunities available to locals who wanted to train for one of the thousands of volunteer positions the rally will create. Many residents not reading between the lines and not familiar with scale of the international circus of camp followers trailing in the wake of Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, thought it was a picnic day for a car club.
It is, but now that they understand that 90 high speed racing cars will have exclusive use of the roads for a week, the reality is beginning to sink in. The news that all road repairs and improvements on the route will be subject to contractual arrangements with the FIA until 2017 has caused a few mouths to drop and suddenly, the hundreds of thousands of dollars to be pumped into the local economy over the next 12 years is beginning to look like small change.
Given that the environmental policy of the organisers is to avoid areas of high biodiversity and to minimise waste and potential pollution, Hanging Rock residents think that organisers should simply go elsewhere or plan a bicycle rally instead.
If you, Dear Reader, are tempted to dismiss this as an environmental wet-blanket spoiling somebody’s red-blooded fun, you might want to review the history of the fox hunt, or bear baiting as public entertainment. Regulators have to walk a fine line between providing what people think they want, and maintaining the thin veneer that is civilisation. Tearing up the bush to demonstrate the power of the machine will be remembered historically as a prime example of twentieth century excess. We need not invite it into our homes.
