The triple bottom line

The what? The recent tendency to express mor ethan just the financials in corporate annual reports. Just popped into my head. Good thing. When you drive your car you tend to forget that the community built the road. Not the car company. The fuel you use is heavily taxed (in Australia and most other nations, anyway) and we make a mental note that it's bad, however at least some of it will build better roads). But the road is potholed and inadequate. Always has been. It's someone's fault - or some thing's. Let's blame the government. Not the car companies, oh no! It's "the government". Not ourselves, either.

My father had a car, and his father before him. Now when my grandfather had a car it was the only car in the street. It was the 20s and 30s, and it was rare. It was a luxury. In about 75 years we have gone from barely any cars to umpteen of the damn things. Meanwhile the roads (new highways and freeways excepted) are still based on the original roadworks - designed for few cars. And cars have gone from not many to bewilderingly common. And they have gone from an average of (say) 600kgs to maybe an average of 1.2 tonnes. Now we expect "the government" to rebuild the roads to meet our desire for smooth and comfortable travel...

But what about the car companies? They are involved, too. Where is the social responsibility in creating massive cars in huge numbers? They will say that the buyers demand fat cars, but how do we know that? Do we realise the impact of these overweight , overwhelmingly present metal monsters? Of course not. It's happened too fast, and we just have accepted that conspicuous consumption of cars is good. It's easier than walking or riding a bike and much more convenient than catching public transport. It's flawed, fatally, and has happened in the blink of an eye. We have subsidised this folly and literally handed our money - if not our lives - over to the car manufacturers. So where, I ask you, is the logic and the corporate responsibility in all of this?

No-where near me. I have 3 of the damn things.

Where are we heading?

OK, so I go on and on about this. Cars are great fun but gee they stuff everything up. Suburbs carved in two by 4 or 6-lane roads that stop pedestrians from crossing - unless they too don protective wheeled armour and drive over there... housing estates built in paddocks miles from transport (everyone has a car so what's it matter?). Massive super shops built away from old fashioned strip or village-style shopping centres, surrounded by carparks and almost inaccessible by public transport. Makes some sense if we want to be lazy, want to get fat and unfit and expect petrol to be cheap forever. Or are we hoping that an alternative fuel will appear and save us all, at the right price, of course.

So we agreed to this, right? We voted for this future - massive obesity, illness, poor air quality and dysfunctional satellite living - by buying cars. Then we went further and begged for faster, bigger roads that took away more of the people-friendly villages. Then we got road rage and constant aggro because - isolated so supremely in our steel and plastic conveyances - we no longer see our fellow drivers as people. We whinge about speed limits and blame the government for speeding fines - because it wasn't our fault. It's just revenue raising (as if governments raise money just for fun. Umm, don't they then spend it on us, for us?).

The revenue raising policing of road rules - especially speeding has nothing to do with trying to slow us all down so we can relax a bit, allow other people to merge or change lanes safely or - more obviously - to turn across our paths with some measure of certainty. No, of course not! But do we whinge when we are waiting to turn right (or left in other countries) and some "idiot" comes around that blind corner at 20 klicks above the legal limit. How the hell can we be so unaware of thsoe around us? Of course we do it too, but hey!

Phew. And I haven't even mentioned gutless drivers who swerve and swear at cyclists. As if someone riding a bike actually poses a threat to a car driver. Worst case - they'll slow you down for a few seconds. Big deal. Get out on a bike in the fresh air and get a life.