Greta’s Lament
World leaders are letting us down.
The Green Deal is not enough.
So many loopholes.
The world is run by a bunch of clowns.
In search of the dollar;
Swirling down a wormhole.
A safe future for all our children
Within this existential threat.
No luxury of time.
The world on the run at the end of a gun.
No thought for tomorrow.
To ignore it is a crime.
We don’t have the decades;
Just ten years to get this right.
Giving up is not an option
Our future lies in the trades
As we balance the wind against money.
The future should not be an auction.
Connect the dots – we decide what to do.
To buy more and more stuff
Or save the planet.
A beautiful green ball with oceans blue
Or a barren rock;
A stagnant ball of granite.
If it were easy it wouldn’t be a crisis!
Listen to the science!
Act. Before it’s too late.
You all know what the price is.
Words are not enough.
Inaction seals our fate.
12.5.2021
Watching Greta on TV, full of idealism and determination. A frail girl who is using everything she has to highlight what we all know to be the case. The world is warming. The animals are dying off.
We are the cause. Eight billion of us consuming. Eight billion of us destroying habitat. Eight billion of us wanting more. Eight billion of us not taking enough care.
I have to question our priorities.
In this poem I used Greta’s own words for the first verse and answered them with a second verse. I repeated that throughout.
Right on! But I fear we might just have left it too late. A glacier I visited in New Zealand ten years ago has retreated by 100 meters and a massive chunk of Antarctica – larger than the island of Majorca – has just broken away. Glacier and ice sheet melt is happening faster than previous predictions. On a purely selfish and personal level…some concern to me as I live right on the beach!
I remain optimistic. We have the technology. Do we possess the will??
The main thing for me is to limit our population – 8 billion is too many and is having too much of an impact.
Birth rates are dropping around the world so on that front I can remain optimistic.
It’s a start but it is nowhere near fast enough and there are still far too many families with a dozen kids. Madness.