Gray Skies

Well Easter and Anzac Day have long since been and gone, and now we're into the gray days of autumn, with just enough drizzle to dampen everything without really raining. We had a wonderful week of sunshine and warm weather up in Noosa recently, with lots of walking up and down Noosa Hill on the new path which runs from Laguna Lookout down to Hastings Street. Coffee at Aromas was obligatory of course - nothing quite like sipping a Betty Blue while watching the passing parade! Noosa seemed rather quiet, with a few businesses closed down and lots of vacant accommodation, which suggests that our economy is not travelling so well, particularly in some sectors. The resources boom may be fuelling the stockmarket but petrol is eating into disposable incomes. Which leads me onto cars. How long can we keep going with the ever-increasing number of cars clogging our roads, causing death and injury, diverting scarce resources away from other (arguably better) uses and polluting our air? At what point will our individual rights to drive be overruled by our collective needs for fresh air and a safer environment? At present Adam Smith's Invisible Hand of the market is probably curbing unnecessary travel through the mechanism of higher fuel costs. Bush's war against Iraq has destabilised oil supplies and cemented opposition in the middle east to America's foreign policy, so we will probably have to learn to live with higher petrol prices in the longer run. This will encourage the search for alternative energy sources and more efficient engines, but surely there will come a time in the not-too-distant future when the right to own and drive a car will have to be rationed in some way?