On a recent trip to Northland, I watched one of my sons walk up a beach while a young man in a Black Power hat performed warlike moves around him. My son, who’d been visiting his grandparents in the urupā, was unperturbed. If he’d been a tourist he might well have been terrified.
We had encountered a protest, one that seemed legitimate to me. A developer had been given permission to build a road through dunes that were wāhi tapu. It seemed likely the protesters would prevail. The place was culturally significant, and there was the wider issue, too, that dunes in the area are being eroded by cars.
Before SUVs, no one wanted to get stuck in sand. People walked. This was better in every respect. Allowing cars on the beach damages the environment and bird life and makes everyone less safe.
We’re so dependent on cars and we have such reverence for them. Perhaps it’s time we grew out of it. Instead of washing, garaging and admiring them, we could work on despising and relegating them. We could catch up with the world, create better cities; at least we could start parking on the roadside. The hazard of vehicles rocketing out of driveways is a problem in every suburban street. Off-street parking is a part of the obesogenic environment that we just don’t question. London children are safer walking and riding bikes than ours are here. When English relatives visit, they’re struck by the lack of traffic regulation, the extreme latitude given to cars.
As our new government was being formed, New Zealand First MP Shane Jones said the aim was to “create a government that resembles a Mustang, not a bike ridden by the Greens”. The Mustang was doing a lot of work in this vintage statement. It blended machismo with mustiness; it carried the tang of unreconstructed old fart. Jones finished the interview with a reference to his “singlets”, and went off singing Mustang Sally.
It’s all about the signalling. He’s quintessential. Articulate but rugged, nothing fancy or modern please, he thumbs his nose at the Greens. He has a “great sense of humour”. He laughs in the face of “climate change”. With refreshing lack of “wokeness”, he signals a love of powerful cars.
The butch little performance was enough to make an eco-warrior come over all narrow-eyed and withering, and languid with doom. It brought to mind a line in a Martin Amis novel in which one character, going off at another verbally, refers to “your fucking stupid twee old heap of a car”.
Our clean, green image is an economic treasure. We could try not to squander it. Management of the environment is an existential issue. While countries were meeting for COP28, 1447 scientists and academics signed an open letter asking the public to take collective action on climate change. The letter said, “We are terrified. We need you.”
Instead, in the new spirit of the old, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced an end to blanket speed restrictions, and ordered councils to halt initiatives to encourage walking, cycling and the use of public transport.
According to the COP28 agreement, countries will start transitioning away from fossil fuels. The science is settled, the danger is clear, but the collective will is uncertain. Our new government is flanked by politicians whose direction on science appears to be steered by lobbyists and their fringe voters. They’re not terrified. The Mustang drones on, full speed, belching fumes, mowing down bikes, driven by a guy in a singlet, smoking a cigarette, singing as he fangs towards hell.
