I was absolutely stunned to find this morning that the editors at this prestigious motoring magazine had awarded their top prize to a car that doesn’t offer a low-emissions option.
What madness. In 2022, and when take-up of electric vehicles in Australia is still vanishingly low, the idea of rewarding a manufacturing company on account of a diesel-powered automobile almost knocked my socks off. Not literally – to get my socks off my feet in any way other than the routine method would require high explosives – but at least rhetorically.
Words matter, and the decisions we make every day affect the climate, whether we choose to go on holidays overseas (using tons of fuel that has to be burnt to get our conveyance through the air) or at home on a sleeper train, or whether we elect to walk down the road to do our shopping locally at the strip mall or else at a more distant shopping centre that we must use the car to get to.
‘Drive’ editors making the wrong choice just shows how tone-deaf people can be, despite all the signs that action is needed now. I’m all for freedom of expression, and I believe art should be about more than politics. You cannot say what needs to be said in a novel in any other way, just as you cannot limit the range of an artist by memes or slogans. But putting a petrol-guzzling SUV at the top of your picks out of all the models on offer this year is just irresponsible.
Comments