Consume, Conform, Be Silent, Die

This is something that has been troubling me ever since Global Warming came onto our radars. Everyone is falling over themselves to try and find environmental solutions that will enable us to continue living the princely lives that we lead without fucking up the environment, which is a noble goal, but the simplest and most effective way we can change our footprint is to simply use less.

If we want to reduce the CO2 emissions from coal fired power stations by 25% then we could either work out a way to retrofit a thirty year old power station and make it produce the same power with less emissions, or we could all just use 25% less power. To me it seems simple. Turn off your appliances at the wall, turn your fridge up a few degrees and make a conscious effort to only turn on the lights that you are currently using. I have no doubt that most Aussies could easily cut their power usage by a quarter if they just stopped and thought about where and when they are using it.

The same goes for most products. It’s not a new idea. It’s right there on any greenie poster you care to look at. Reduce, reuse and recycle. But there is a side effect of this action that is not getting the attention it deserves in my opinion, the downturn in business.

What is the profit margin of most companies? I have no idea, but what percentage of sales could the average company afford to lose before it became unprofitable and shut down? 20%, 30%? These are exactly the kinds of figures that we are looking at reducing our usage by. Our entire capitalist economy is centred around one thing, us the consumer. We buy and buy and buy and if we ever stopped buying, our economy would collapse.

What I’m saying is that we are simply not prepared for reducing our usage. If everyone installed solar hot water heaters and dropped their power usage by 30% then Energex would immediately and permanently lose 30% in sales. That’s massive. They would have to do well just to survive that.

It’s the same thing with transport. If the government provides good bike paths, safe walking paths and cheap and reliable public transport then car usage could conceivably drop by 40%. That’s 40% less fuel usage, 40% less need for fuel maintenance workers, 40% less tires being purchased, 40% less brake pads being manufactured, and 40% less car parking profits.

What I’m trying to say here is that this slack has to be picked up somewhere, and the pipe dream of it being picked up in newly created green industries is simply not going to happen. In the last year I have bought three green shopping bags totalling $6 and reduced the number of useless plastic shopping bags I collect by more than a hundred. I admit they cost fuck all so at the moment I may be even here but the green ones were a one off investment. They will probably last for three or four years while my net contribution to the plastic bag industry will drop to zero.

In economic terms that is a drastic reduction in consumer spending. Are we prepared for this? How will this affect our economy? And more importantly, will the government let this happen? It shits me that the easiest and most effective way for us to reduce our impact on the environment is also pure cancer for the economic system we live under, which means it simply will not be tolerated by the powers that be.

I just can’t see a government allowing this to happen, and the only way I can see them preventing it is to somehow find a way to trick the consumer into subsiding corporate losses due to the reduced use of consumerables by false increases in prices or extra pseudo-taxes. So the government will spend $100 million to help a plastics factory increase its efficiency by 20% while the company slaps a green sticker on its disposable cup holders and we can all continue the way we were.

So basically I’m calling conspiracy theory here. The guvmt will not push the reduce message because of the danger it poses to the economy and we will end up paying ridiculous monies and huge environmental costs in order to keep the machines running. It's a sad state of affairs because we are sitting here crying over the destruction of our planet when the answer is staring us right in the face. It's just that the answer goes against the consumer culture status quo and many, many people have a vested interest in keeping those machines running. If you think I am speaking the obvious here then so be it, but never let it be said that, when we realised the dangers, we did everything we could to save the planet.

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Pass the policeman 'pon the left hand side

I’m back from holidays now so it’s time for you all to get back into some hard hitting, insightful Australian commentary, or, failing that, this blog.

Today’s topic is Drug Driving. No, I’m not talking about driving to get drugs; I’m talking about driving under the influence of drugs. The reason that you may have heard of this recently is that here in Queensland the police have just been given the equipment to test drivers for marijuana, ecstasy and amphetamines as well as new legislation to charge them under. Similar legislation has been at work in Victoria, South Australia and possibly some other states for some time now.

Now most people would probably think that testing the person operating a fast moving, two tonne block of steel for mind-altering drugs would be a good thing, and I was initially inclined to agree, but as usual, the devil is in the detail.

The great flaw in this plan is a little phrase that tough-on-whatever politicians love to throw around, ‘Zero Tolerance’. In terms of Drug Driving this means that they are not testing drivers to see if they are under the influence of illegal drugs, they are testing to see if the driver has any illegal drugs in their system, even if it is not affecting them in any way. Here it is straight from the police horse’s mouth, from the drug driving fact sheet.

What level of drugs can be detected without penalty?

"There will be zero tolerance. Any trace of the nominated drugs in your system and you can be penalised. "

This would probably be more acceptable if it were not for the total lack of information about how long these illegal drugs stay in a person’s system. From the same pamphlet:

How long after consuming illegal drugs can they be detected?

"The detection period for the active ingredient in the relevant drug varies depending on factors such as the quantity and quality of the drug that has been ingested, the frequency of use of the drug and the period of time since taking the drug."

That is surely the most useless paragraph ever written. Are they talking hours, days, weeks? Could you imagine if the Drink Driving laws were this vague? It would be funny were it not describing a real offence you or I could be charged with.

Well actually, not you or I, just people who take illegal drugs, but the fact that this concerns drug users is beside the point. This is a poorly executed law that, while detecting and punishing some people for driving in a dangerous state, will also punishing people for doing something that is not dangerous to anyone. We should be asking ourselves whether this is an acceptable side effect.

If they had a test that detected if a person was high on a certain drug then I would have absolutely no objection to these laws. Make it just like alcohol. Determine a concentration of the drug that is likely to cause a level of intoxication in most people and use that as a threshold. Perfect. You’d catch the dangerous drivers and we could all sleep easier. But charging someone who smoked a joint the night before with the same offence as someone who moments ago injected crystal-meth into their eye-balls just seems, well, crazier than someone who has just injected crystal-meth into their eye-balls.

Now I don’t want to come across as pro-drugs here, I want to come across as anti-bad laws. If we want to punish people for taking drugs then charge them with exactly that. There are probably laws for just that already, but they are certainly not in the traffic act.

Ok, maybe I’m being a little too objectionist here, and maybe objectionist is not a word, but what is a word is duty and it’s our duty to question new laws, especially new laws that involve emotionally charged topics like illegal drugs and our shockingly high road toll. It seems that no one except the pro-pot groups are questioning these laws, and they are not exactly known for their persistence.

I could be wrong. Maybe these laws will save thousands of lives every year. Maybe the thresholds for detection are perfectly aligned with ‘highness’ and they will only catch actual drug drivers. I personally reckon they will catch quite a few dangerous drivers, but in the process also financially cripple a whole bunch of innocent people (with respect to DUI) who can’t afford the $1050 fine.

Will it be worth it? Maybe yes, maybe no, but we should at least be asking the question.