These losses happened on the other side of the Atlantic, and, as far as we know, are relatively contained. In any case, prescriptive action against climate change is likely to hasten the trend. To compensate, public transport will have to be made more extensive and user-friendly Eventually, new forms of transportation will be invented There is nothing like necessity to drive innovation. Voters would still rather destroy the planet than give up their cars altogether. Yet attitudes are changing, and in maturer, developed markets, it is already possible to envisage a time when overall car sales are in precipitous decline.In Europe, gentle decline is already an established fact, though it is as yet unclear whether this is more of a cyclical than structural phenomenon.

The next phase of development – cleaner, hybrid, and fuel-cell cars – is already upon us. Within ten years, the gas-guzzlers so beloved by American drivers and school-run mothers will be gone – priced and legislated out of existence. Already Ford has had to admit that the business model which has served it so well all these years no longer works.Of course, it will require the invention of a completely new technology to make the automobile wholly redundant. This is obviously not the end, or even the beginning of the end of the mass-produced car. More than a billion aspiring Chinese and Indian car owners suggest powerfully that auto manufacturing will remain a growth industry for some years yet.But California’s little bit of politicking does, perhaps, mark the end of the beginning.

One hundred years later, this transforming technology – or at least the original version of it – may already be facing oblivion I exaggerate, of course, but only to make the point. Again, the vagaries of investment fashion, where glamour stocks gain high valuations, ought to be ironed out.All indices have their drawbacks. The problem with the Indy 100 as it stands is that it is virtually impossible to track We are working on this design fault. With the fundamental indices, it is the fact that the weightings are based on inexact information which will deter. They are also very much a part of bear-market thinking, and it seems doubtful they would survive another dot boom.By their nature, indices based on fundamentals are unlikely to deliver returns of any more than the long run trend. When everyone else is making spectacular returns, the temptation to join in may prove impossible to resist. That, in any case, is what happened last time when those who held true to the traditions of “value” investing were punished for their caution by losing their jobs.The end of the motor car? Not quite yetThe state of California’s decision to sue car makers for their contribution to global warming is more political stunt than anything else, but it is also a sign of the times.Mass car production is coming up for its centenary year – Ford’s Model T, the first production line car, went on sale in 1908.