Slampacker? Cruel choice?’ he snapped, surveying the assembled company with that famous Aussie squint. This was his money-making look and with it Sly could have sheared the wool off a sheep’s scrotum if he’d thought there was enough on it for an egg cosy. ‘Forgive me, mates,’ he said, fist in hand, the good old boy, teaching the highbrows horse sense, ‘but I see no choice here, I see no dilemma. Clearly we have a question of morality to face, gentlemen, and I hope we’re men enough to take it on.’
It would be a brave bookmaker who would have taken odds on that one but Sly wasn’t leaving room for hecklers. ‘Look we’re all bloody sorry about the trees, of course we are, but people want the wood for Christ’s sake! What can we do? You don’t force them to buy your damn burgers!! The laws of a free market economy are sacred and we are guardians of those laws. Strewth, mates, you can’t bugger about with market forces, that’s social engineering, gentlemen, Brave New 1984 and all that. Your average bloke doesn’t want some little Hitler from the ministry telling him what he can and can’t buy! What he can and can’t make! For sure it’s a shame about the sneezing seals, and the birds with mouldy armpits, and the ozone layer, a bloody shame, and Christ if anyone’s passing the hat round I’m in for 10K towards cancer research, no worries, but you can’t stop progress and progress is marketing.
The faces around the table remained inscrutable, Sly had no idea how they were taking his little lecture but he didn’t care. He wasn’t closing his aerosol factory until it stopped making a profit. ‘Listen, Mr Slampacker,’ he continued, ‘if you didn’t use those boxes some other bugger would and then where would you be? I’ll tell you, mate, hanging out in the sun to dry with the wombats using your hat for a toilet. Meantime the ozone layer’s still fucked and the other bastard’s building a private dermatological ward to get the malignant melanomas chopped out of his arse. Gentlemen, we can’t weaken, it would be a crime to interfere with the sacred laws of free enterprise simply to protect the environment. Do that and what do you get for an encore? I’ll tell you, some green cop telling you you can’t take a piss in your back garden because it upsets the ants.’
Sly would have continued but to his astonishment he found himself interrupted by warm applause. He had thought that he was speaking against the mood of the meeting. Now he discovered that he had captured it perfectly.
‘Young man, you speak for all of us here and also those who attend in spirit,’ said Slampacker. ‘We are all of us engaged in one activity or another that is destroying the environment, we don’t like it, we wish we weren’t, but in the long run, what can we do?’
There was a brief silence during which around the world the acid rain fell, the nitrates seeped through the soil into the rivers, the greenhouse effect melted the ice caps and the kids breathed the lead from the leaded petrol. Sly realized that he was amongst friends. They weren’t wimping on the problem they were merely recognizing it. What next? he wondered.
35: CONNECTIONS
A nd well Sly might have wondered for the problem was so clear, so terrible. The earth was dying. To be more specific, the earth was being killed. Done to death by its fond owners. Killed by the pursuit of money. For the men gathered around the table it was so utterly frustrating to have inherited the earth and then have the damn thing die on you. And, of course, its death would mean their death, everybody’s death. Like it or not, the human race, powerful though it is, remains only a part of the astonishingly complex chain of beings that makes up life on earth. It is not an island and cannot survive without the other life forces; the life forces that create the oxygen and food, that clean the water and protect us from the sun, the forces that bind the soil together and
It would be a brave bookmaker who would have taken odds on that one but Sly wasn’t leaving room for hecklers. ‘Look we’re all bloody sorry about the trees, of course we are, but people want the wood for Christ’s sake! What can we do? You don’t force them to buy your damn burgers!! The laws of a free market economy are sacred and we are guardians of those laws. Strewth, mates, you can’t bugger about with market forces, that’s social engineering, gentlemen, Brave New 1984 and all that. Your average bloke doesn’t want some little Hitler from the ministry telling him what he can and can’t buy! What he can and can’t make! For sure it’s a shame about the sneezing seals, and the birds with mouldy armpits, and the ozone layer, a bloody shame, and Christ if anyone’s passing the hat round I’m in for 10K towards cancer research, no worries, but you can’t stop progress and progress is marketing.
The faces around the table remained inscrutable, Sly had no idea how they were taking his little lecture but he didn’t care. He wasn’t closing his aerosol factory until it stopped making a profit. ‘Listen, Mr Slampacker,’ he continued, ‘if you didn’t use those boxes some other bugger would and then where would you be? I’ll tell you, mate, hanging out in the sun to dry with the wombats using your hat for a toilet. Meantime the ozone layer’s still fucked and the other bastard’s building a private dermatological ward to get the malignant melanomas chopped out of his arse. Gentlemen, we can’t weaken, it would be a crime to interfere with the sacred laws of free enterprise simply to protect the environment. Do that and what do you get for an encore? I’ll tell you, some green cop telling you you can’t take a piss in your back garden because it upsets the ants.’
Sly would have continued but to his astonishment he found himself interrupted by warm applause. He had thought that he was speaking against the mood of the meeting. Now he discovered that he had captured it perfectly.
‘Young man, you speak for all of us here and also those who attend in spirit,’ said Slampacker. ‘We are all of us engaged in one activity or another that is destroying the environment, we don’t like it, we wish we weren’t, but in the long run, what can we do?’
There was a brief silence during which around the world the acid rain fell, the nitrates seeped through the soil into the rivers, the greenhouse effect melted the ice caps and the kids breathed the lead from the leaded petrol. Sly realized that he was amongst friends. They weren’t wimping on the problem they were merely recognizing it. What next? he wondered.
35: CONNECTIONS
A nd well Sly might have wondered for the problem was so clear, so terrible. The earth was dying. To be more specific, the earth was being killed. Done to death by its fond owners. Killed by the pursuit of money. For the men gathered around the table it was so utterly frustrating to have inherited the earth and then have the damn thing die on you. And, of course, its death would mean their death, everybody’s death. Like it or not, the human race, powerful though it is, remains only a part of the astonishingly complex chain of beings that makes up life on earth. It is not an island and cannot survive without the other life forces; the life forces that create the oxygen and food, that clean the water and protect us from the sun, the forces that bind the soil together and
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