THE PETROLHEAD WHO SAW THE LIGHT

Valencia racetrack, November 2004. The motorcycle beneath me is out of control as it accelerates with extraordinary ferocity onto the 180mph start/ finish straight. It’s Valentino Rossi’s Yamaha M1 – the very bike he rode to victory in yesterday’s MotoGP race. The performance is astonishing, and several universes ahead of my ability to use it. But the machine’s perfect power delivery and handling are civilised enough to let me try.

This is a pinnacle of engineering, and for me as an engine lover it doesn’t get much better. It’s the stuff of dreams, and dreams matter.

In fact, I used to dream I was inside an engine. Right there in the combustion chamber as valves danced above me and a hurricane symphony of fuel and air engulfed me, compressing to volatile perfection before the spark unleashed miraculous, fossil-nurtured energy. This was magic, music, and life. Road testing for Bike magazine, CAR’s motorcycling sister title, was this boy’s dream come true.

But here’s the thing. As well as music, the internalcombustion engine has violence at its heart: the violence of setting fire to petrol; the violence of tonneheavy metal projectiles flying through towns and countryside; the violence of communities choked by traffic; the violence of polluting children’s lungs and stunting their brains with particulates and toxins; the violence of oil extraction and endless road-building; violence against indigenous communities whose lands are sacrificed for access to fossil fuels; and violence against future generations thanks to an atmosphere pumped with excess CO2.

Society’s idea of acceptable violence is not fixed, and much of the engine’s violence is hidden. But it’s there if we care to look. And I suppose that’s what happened to me. I began to see what I was a part of. As I studied for a masters degree in climate change, it became clear to me that our self-proclaimed mastery of nature, exemplified so beautifully in the ordered chaos of the combustion engine, can only be separated from its wider consequences for so long.

I blame no one for driving cars and loving engines.

Au contraire, mon frère. My love for the combustion engine means my historic carbon footprint from flying, driving and riding far exceeds that of most. But for me the time has come for integration and personal responsibility, facing down the moral contradictions of burning fossil fuels for pleasure during an age of climate emergency and mass species extinction.

Saying farewell to the joy of the internal-combustion engine means dreaming another dream.