‘Be cheaper to fill up with cocaine’.
That’s what a bloke says to me while I pump petrol. I laugh. It’s funny because it’s true. It’s also my joke being repeated back to me which makes it funnier. Or maybe it’s not my joke. Maybe it’s something people say, and I just said it, so I think I made it up.
There’s reports of fuel theft. Like Mad Max. George Miller’s 1979 film set in a future of the mid-1980s feels prophetic. In fact, the guy at the bowser, he was a lot like Max. He was wearing a leather vest. But it’s Mullumbimby and every second bloke has one.
In a country town I pass through, I hear a story of an old bloke called Killer who reckons he’s got a recipe to make petrol. It is Mad Max. Are we just weeks away from road pirates? Petrol Covid is coming. Toilet paper Armageddon. Or is it?
The official messaging is unclear, work from home if you feel like it. But go about your business. What? This flight I am booking for work right now – will it happen or am I being coerced to continue business as usual to feed the capitalist monster until the whole thing grinds to a halt?
Trump and Bebe’s war in Iran hasn’t removed a regime. It has however removed a good portion of the world’s fuel with Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Clearly, they didn’t think this one through. Um, the 20-year war in Afghanistan? Iraq? A year-10 modern history student could have predicted this.
Can someone please stop these crazy old grandpas? Our grandpas have retired, are living at home with a care package or are in a nursing home. These grandpas are blowing up the world. Can someone please do an aged care assessment? They might be level 5. Not that you could get carers now anyway – petrol is impacting the aged care system with many older peoples’ carers unable to afford the fuel to get to their clients.
There’s rumours that the government is going to start rationing buyers to $40 a tank. Well that was on one news source. The cost of groceries will increase. Maybe cocaine is a better choice. At least you will feel like you travelled. And you don’t eat. These are starting to feel like end days, but maybe it’s just the end of fossil fuel. But don’t worry, the oil and gas companies are doing okay. The supply shock has driven up prices by about 50%.
All these years I’ve been campaigning to alert people to the impacts of fossil fuels, talked about how implicated the industry is in every layer of government, how they are authoring catastrophic climate change and using political influence to choose governments that let them. Their propaganda is prolific. It’s made people fear sensible solutions like electric cars and renewable energy. The same people who scream for sovereignty are coerced to fear actual sovereignty. There’s nothing like unhooking from the grid. Ask anyone with an electric car right now. Like my husband.
So, why not use this moment to take back the power? Your power. Get an EV. Think about solar. Push the government, not for cheap fuel, but for affordable batteries. Bigger subsidies to get an electric vehicle. Go local. Create sustainable food systems. All those areas in our region zoned for farming but laying fallow as large boutique properties – use them for food production. Small sustainable growers. Maybe solve the housing crisis by allowing one small house per 5 acres for the tiny farmer. Let’s stop doing things captured by a global economy that asks us to scale up, by scaling down. Go local. End fossil fuel dependence. Build real community resilience by having food and resources on the ground – not doing laps of the globe to get to us. We have every resource we need in this country – just not the political will. We’re tethered to globalisation, which is powered by oil and gas.
In every ‘crisis’ there is an opportunity for change. A reminder that the stability we are sold is just the sales pitch of an unstable, unsustainable capitalist system, that is currently at the mercy of two crazy old grandpas.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
