The demise of Holden brings moment of sadness, spiced with apprehension about our response

Strangely, I felt quite emotional when the news broke yesterday about the 2017 demise of Holden.

Strange, because of vehicles my dad owned, I grew with an allegiance to Fords, but had never really identified with the Ford-Holden debate.

The past decade had seen me become quite sensitive about the inordinate amount of public money being spent on the car industry, either in its sustenance or in provision of roads and other public infrastructure afforded the motor vehicle.

Public transport made huge sense in that the cost to individuals was vastly cheaper and the societal costs, including such things as injury and death and damage, that which is obvious and that which is not so readily apparent, was equally massively reduced through the use of trains and buses.

Good sense told me that the world didn’t need a private car industry, rather an intricate, efficient and well quipped public transport system that would be rich in jobs and having made the transition from private transport use to a public system we would find most of our needs adequately answered.

The demise of the car industry, even this tiny segment, seemed for someone concerned about the impact of private cars on earth’s atmosphere, and their wasteful use of earth’s finite resources, like a moment for jubilation.

So why the sad face

Rather than sad it is apprehensive for from here we can evolve to become a society that puts the public need ahead of private wants in that we could see this as an opportunity to launch a new way of doing things.

The need for Holden epitomizes
our addiction to private
answering our private wants.

Apprehension arises from our deep addiction to private wants that will likely frustrate the much needed societal changes that are about resilience, sharing and putting the public need ahead of individualism, a much celebrated trait in modern society.

Interestingly, Holden has been a part of my life – the car first rolled into Australian life when my first birthday rolled by and the last Holden will roll off the assembly line when my 70s roll along.

That, really, means nothing, just the hope that another 70 years will not pass before we can understand the folly of our dalliance with globalization, and how dearly we are paying for that liaison.

Hopefully we will also apply ourselves to creating processes not beholden to the mercy of fossil-fuelled fantasies such as those to which the motor industry is obliged.

Holden played an integral and important part in Australia’s development, but it’s time is past and rather than hover over the corpse we need to shift our gaze to a future that will be quite different from what was.

Declining energy reserves, a damaged climate and a disordered economy suggest we should be focussing on affairs closer to home.

A human plague worsened by untrammelled growth

Pope Francis - he has spoken out
about untrammelled growth.

Humans are a plague on the earth and one of their constructs further worsens their presence.

There is nothing inherently wrong with being human rather it is our behaviour in that we have colonized most every available space, domineering earth’s resources, almost to the total exclusion of other species.

The dilemma of our untamed tumour-like growth – population numbers are rising exponentially; energy use is surging; debt, both private and public, has exploded; our consumption of food, and the chemicals needed to produce them, is alarming; species are become extinct at an unprecedented rate -  is evidence of our wilful denial of earth’s finitude.

Concerns about blindly pursing growth were raised by Pope Francis in his first papal exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel”.

He said, “While the earnings of the minority are growing exponentially, so, too, is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few.

“The imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation…. A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules…. “The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything that stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenceless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule”, the Pope said.

Freeing people from doing things to simply survive and so being able to make things they could profit from was a spin-off of the agricultural revolution.

That revolution brought a security guarantee and being released from the need to find food every day, people could then spend time producing a “luxury”, trade it profitably and then enhance their lives.

The idea of profit was born and further enriched by the discovery and understanding of fossil fuels and with that trade and consumption became an entrenched way of life.

There was however, as with everything, an unintended consequence.

In our rush to build and boost profits, we were blind, wilfully or otherwise, to those effects, with few ever talking about finite resources or the additional complication of greenhouse gases that were changing, quickly, the human-friendly climate.

The profits grew, the resources became even more finite, and the human-friendly atmosphere worsened and the troubles described by the Pope became more ingrained.

The surplus of energy that first arose from the agricultural revolution that was small by today’s standards, but sufficient to allow people to engage in non-subsistence activities.

That new and “free” energy distorted and disrupted our values, disconnecting us from the balance we had long lived within and extinguished our understanding of how to live a worthwhile, resilient and sustainable life using less exogenous energy.