Death of a Million – a poem

Posted on by Opher

Death of a Million

Death of a million species
Absurdly eclipsed by a Prince.
Ecological crisis across the world
Everywhere has our fingerprints.

Economic growth signals our end
As we put profit first.
Species after species
Fall to our insatiable thirst.

Who cares about the birth of a royal
As our population soars?
With numbers swamping nature
Breaking all the natural laws.

Billions of individuals
Will meet an untimely death.
As we destroy everything
That gives us all our breath.

Opher – 6.5.2019

Today the news that we were putting one million species at great risk of extinction was superseded by the news of Harry and Megan’s baby.
For fuck’s sake – where are our priorities?
Hundreds of scientists have contributed to a detailed survey right across the world outlining the impact mankind is having on the natural world. What they paint is a picture of massive accelerating decline that puts not only one million species at risk but our own future with them. Yet the birth of some bloody royal is seemingly more important!
If ever anything demonstrates how we have got our values wrong this must surely be it!

1 Million Species under threat of extinction!!

Posted on by Opher

Today the UN published it’s report on biodiversity. It is a report that is truly frightening.

‘Compiled by 145 expert authors from 50 countries over the past three years, with inputs from another 310 contributing authors, the Report assesses changes over the past five decades, providing a comprehensive picture of the relationship between economic development pathways and their impacts on nature. It also offers a range of possible scenarios for the coming decades.’

It paints a picture of decline of plant and animal diversity across the world as mankind impacts on all the major habitats. Seas, lakes and rivers are overfished and polluted. Land is cleared for agriculture and sprayed with chemicals. Mammals are hunted for meat, ivory or trophies. Logging, mining and intensive farming; pollution, urbanisation and industrialisation take their toll. Climate change and overgrazing, draining of wetlands and the destruction of breeding grounds are all taking their toll.

What was once plentiful is now rare. 75% of the land mass has been impacted by mankind. 85% of our wetlands have already gone. 57% of our rainforest has been cut down. The human population is soaring to 8 billion – all of whom need food, water, housing, infrastructure, goods and space.

We are in the process of cutting off the very things that keep us alive- the plants and animals that maintain the soil, pollinate the plants, recycle our water and produce the oxygen we breathe.

This is not sustainable. Our greed and constant lust for expansion is destroying nature and will destroy us.

How long can the deniers continue to doubt the massive evidence that is piling up?

Unless we start to take this seriously and take major steps to put it right we will destroy everything that makes life so beautiful. We are in the process of slitting our own throats in order to own a bunch of trinkets. The consumer society and sheer numbers of humans will kill us all.

Surely this is the most important issue of all?

https://games-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/1c572aca-fe3d-4b5f-94d9-1885bfee7e7a/note/7561fdf9-27ed-4fa0-845c-dbef31bb3b0c.pdf#page=1

Living in a fulcrum – a poem

Posted on by Opher

Living in a fulcrum.

It feels like the world is turning.

We’ve reached the tipping point

We are being pulled in different ways.

The universe is out of joint.

 

On one side the Trumpists and deniers

Telling us it isn’t so.

On the other there’s Extinction Rebellion

Pointing the way to go.

 

We’re being fed the propaganda

From the Brietbart prophet.

Whose only god is power

And whose sacrament is profit.

 

The politicians are floundering

All they care about is votes.

What happens to the orangutans

Is measured in bank notes.

 

Yet the young are rising up

And making their voices heard.

They want a brighter future

And will have the final word.

 

The world is turning on a fulcrum;

No telling where it will go.

For sanity or complacency?

Only the future knows.

 

Opher 6.5.2019

I’m listening to the young who have their fingers on the pulse. They are not believing the lies put out by those who are profiting from the destruction of nature.

They know the pesticides are causing mass destruction of all insects from bees to butterflies.

They know our beautiful iconic species – the rhinos, elephants, gorillas, chimps, giraffe, lions, whales and tigers – are being hunted to extinction.

They know our rainforests are being chopped down.

They know our ice-caps are melting.

They know our climate is changes.

They know we are selling the future for today.

They know who is profiting from this wholesale destruction.

They want it stopped.

We are at a tipping point, sitting on our fulcrum. Which way will it go?

 

I don’t hate humanity – I love nature.

Posted on by Opher

I don’t hate humanity.

I hate some of the attitudes and actions of humanity. It is important to understand the distinction.

Many humans are caring, responsible, compassions animals.

Unfortunately many other humans are savage, cruel, violent and uncaring.

I like the former and despise the ignorance and stupidity of the latter.

Throughout history it is the latter that have, and are, causing great damage with their greed, selfishness and cruelty. Their ignorance and disregard is appalling for both other humans as well as creatures. Many seem to relish causing pain.

Presently our numbers are causing great harm to the ecosystems of the planet. We are wiping out animals in huge numbers, destroying habitats and affecting the whole planet.

Unless we wake up soon and start doing something about it the effects will be terminals – not just for tens of thousands of species but for ourselves too.

Too many people are selfishly putting profit before either people or nature.

This is simply not sustainable.

The amount of pain and suffering we are leaving in our wake is appalling.

I think it is long overdue that the more compassionate and caring among us take action to prevent the selfish and cruel from doing irreversible damage.

As for me – I take a lot of care in how I live. But as individuals we are helpless to prevent this. It takes nations to act.

The scale of the problem is far too big for any individual to be effective.

Extinction Rebellion – a poem

Posted on by Opher

Extinction Rebellion

 

The world is in a mess.

That’s not hard to see.

The plunder and the rape

Is killing bird and tree.

 

But there’s a rebellion against this extinction

Carried out with distinction.

Superglued to trains and building barricades

They’re fighting without blades.

 

They are fighting for the future

They are making a huge din.

They’re trying to wake us up

To what is happening.

 

For profit and gain

We are busy plundering.

Without a care for pain

Or a moment spent wondering.

 

But there’s a rebellion against this extinction

Carried out with distinction.

Superglued to trains and building barricades

They’re fighting without blades.

 

So long live the rebellion

I hope it wakes us up.

Greed is so destructive

We’ve got to give it up.

 

But there’s a wealthy bunch

Who just see the cash.

Unless they start to give a damn

We’re heading for a crash.

 

But there’s a rebellion against this extinction

Carried out with distinction.

Superglued to trains and building barricades

They’re fighting without blades.

 

Opher – 24.4.2019

 

 

What we have done to the world over these last few hundred years is criminal. Without regard to the destruction or the agony of the creatures caught up in it we have devastated the environment.

Things have got to change.

Animal population numbers are decimated. Many face extinction. The wilderness is being destroyed.

Nowhere is safe.

Thank heavens some people are prepared to fight for a better future.

Ode to Greta Thunberg – poem

Posted on by Opher

Ode to Greta Thunberg

 

It takes a schoolgirl like Greta Thunberg

To point the way.

In a world without an iceberg

We’ll have had our day.

With our cities under water

Life will not be the same.

It takes a young Swedish daughter

To change the game.

Eight billion refugees will be set loose

As the weather alters.

We’ll need to be waterproof

Or else listen to Swedish daughters.

 

Opher – 24.4.2019

 

 

Who would have thought that a young schoolgirl to get people to pay attention. With her schoolchildren sit-ins she has forced politicians to pay attention to what is going on. More power to her.

The young are the future. They will inherit the Earth from us. We need to leave it in good shape.

This last few hundred years has been a disaster for the planet.

We, as a species, have gone berserk. Our numbers have gone through the roof. Our technology has gone astronomical. We have massacred the wildlife, decimated the forests, polluted the oceans and filled the air with our effluent.

Three hundred years ago we seemed to think the world’s resources were infinite. We are clearly seeing they are not.

Unless we step back from the brink and bring sanity to bear we will wreck the world we depend on.

Greta Thunberg knows this. Why is it so many older people fail to grasp it?

What Have They Done To the Rain – The Searchers.

Posted on by Opher

I went to see Mike Pender, the lead singer with the Searchers, last night. A nice bit of nostalgia. He was good too!

Back when I were a lad, in 1963, Merseybeat swept the country riding on the tails of the Beatles. I was fourteen and swept up into it. The Searchers were my second favourite Merseybeat group. It was a phase that only really lasted a year before most of the Mersey acts were displaced by the harder, R&B Blues of the Beat groups like the Stones, Yardbirds, Animals, Kinks, Them, Prettythings and Downliners Sect.

But I still have a great deal of affection for the Searchers. They started off as a rockin’ R&B band but a little later developed that jangly guitar sound that was taken up by the Byrds and were doing some Folk covers. They took the Malvina Reynolds song What Have They Done to the Rain into the charts – one of the first meaningful protest songs.

What have they done to the rain? What are we doing to the planet?

It is a song about the effects of nuclear fallout from a nuclear war. Malvina was a great song writer – very feisty!

What have they done to the Rain?

Just a little rain falling all around
The grass lifts its head to the heavenly sound
Just a little rain, just a little rain
What have they done to the rain

Just a little boy standing in the rain
The gentle rain that falls for years
And the grass is gone, the boy disappears
And rain keeps falling like helpless tears
And what have they done to the rain

Just a little breeze out of the sky
The leaves nod their head as the breeze blows by
Just a little breeze with some smoke in its eye
What have they done to the rain

Just a little boy standing in the rain
The gentle rain that falls for years
And the grass is gone, the boy disappears
And rain keeps falling like helpless tears
And what have they done to the rain
What have they done to the rain

The Green Desert from an Emerald Ocean – a poem

Posted on by Opher

The Green Desert from an Emerald Ocean

 

A verdant patchwork of beauty,

A lush green desert.

Tree by tree,

Bush by bush,

Stream by stream,

Pond by pond.

 

When Harold marched all the way to Stamford Bridge

To settle a score with Hardrada,

Then back down to Hastings

To get one in the eye from Edward,

There was never a road in sight.

 

Watched by a trillion eyes,

Along woodland trails,

Beneath a latticework of branches,

Past clearings, hamlets and streams,

To the symphony of trills,

The cacophony of birds,

A billion different buzzes,

Rustles and startled cries,

He marched.

 

Caterpillars and crickets

Beetles and bugs,

Bear, boar and beaver,

Squirrels and stoats

Voles and shrews,

Hedgehog, fox and ferret,

Deer and dormouse,

Wolf and wolverine,

Lizard, snake and slowworm.

Jay and owl

Eagle and falcon

Osprey, harrier and egret.

 

Bit by bit,

A tree here a tree there,

A pond filled a hedge grubbed,

Piece by piece,

A stream here a stream there,

A trillion becomes a billion,

The cacophony subsides,

Piano replaces forte.

The wind howls in rage

Across denuded hills.

A torrent of tears falls across the

The naked land.

 

An emerald ocean of waving leaves

Subsides to the naked skin

With just a thin green underwear covering

To hide its shame.

Vibrant becomes calm.

Dangerous becomes tame.

Many become few,

Noisy becomes peaceful,

Complex becomes simple,

Slowly, gradually

Piece by piece

So we do not notice

What has gone.

Until we believe

The green desert

Is really nature,

That the agricultural wasteland

Is the countryside,

That the red tractor

Spraying the fields

Is part of our

Bucolic heritage.

 

The last vestiges

Creep away to hide

As the chemicals

Soaks the soil,

As the plough

Turns the sods

As the culvert is laid,

The unneeded pond

Filled in

And the last hedges

Covered in nets.

 

If Harold was to return

And survey the green desert

We have created,

And compare it to

That emerald ocean,

He knew so well,

I wonder if he would still

Believe it was worth

Dying for?

 

Opher – 19.4.2019

 

 

 

 

I had to be a little loose with the creatures of those times. By the time Harold came along the last bear had been killed at least four hundred years in the past. But the wolf and beaver were there right up until the 17th century when they were hunted out of existence.

What we take as the beautiful British countryside is really nothing more than an open air industrial site. It bears no comparison with real nature.

What we see as the rich tapestry of nature is the tiny rump of what was once flourishing here.

We don’t even know what we have lost.

A traveller through time from a thousand years before would not recognise this green desert we have created.

My Britain – a country worth dying for?

Untold trillions have.

She would probably shake her head and weep. I know I do.

A response to a ‘friend’ who doesn’t believe that nature is under threat at all.

Posted on by Opher

I have a ‘friend’ on an American site who does not believe in global warming or species extinction. He believes that nature is incredibly resilient and humans are not having a profound effect on it. He does not really care about cruelty and the way creatures are being massacred or their habitats destroyed. He thinks that the only thing that is important are humans.

Personally I think cruelty and mindless destruction are unpardonable. I’d lock people up for life.

I wrote him a diatribe including a section from the article on Turtle Oblivion in Brazil

Turtle oblivion: the rise and fall of an Amazon trade

Here’s a little extract talking about the immense damage done to one little part of nature – the turtles. Bear in mind that this was done to most other groups of animals across the globe – manatees, penguins, sea-lions, whales, dolphins, porpoises, bears, tigers, seals……..:

One witness calculated that based on a turtle laying a minimum of eighty eggs, to make one twelve-litre jar of manteiga required the eggs of forty turtles, a total of some 3,200 eggs. Another horrified observer referred to a stretch of beach that annually yielded two thousand jars of oil, each jar requiring about twenty-five hundred eggs, in that one locality alone causing the destruction of five million eggs. It was estimated that by the late nineteenth century a total of around 250 million turtle eggs were being destroyed each year simply for the production of manteiga.

This is just one example of the massive impact we have had on animal communities across the globe.

Something you seem to deny.

Across the world I have seen overfishing, overhunting and destruction of habitat. Quite apart from the immense cruelty (slowly roasting live turtles on open fires for instance) this is simply unsustainable. Watching lorry loads of bush meat – chimps, gorillas and monkeys – going past in Zambia. Walking through silent jungles in Vietnam and Zimbabwe. Seeing the refuse trucks from Lima depositing tipping their waste on the beaches alongside barrels of industrial waste to fill the ocean with crap, slicks of raw sewage from the Townships in South Africa. I could go on and on. But it doesn’t concern you does it? You didn’t shit in those toilets, dump your rubbish in a bin in Lima or shoot the chimps and you really don’t care. You think that all those chimps and gorillas will magically repopulate themselves and the remaining forests will reclaim their populations of animals. Nature is so resilient. There’s always another dodo or passenger pigeon. We’ve all seen a rhino. Who needs orangutans anyway? Besides – you aren’t actively killing them. Why worry. It’s only people that matter. We can live in concrete jungles. We don’t need nature at all.

Let us mourn the dead.

Posted on by Opher

Let us mourn the dead.

 

Yesterday I drove three hundred miles

I parked the car and looked out

Through the windscreen in dismay.

There were no splattered insects.

 

‘Shall I check the oil, sir?’

‘Check the tyre pressures?

‘Clean the windscreen?’

 

Voices from an age long gone.

These days the engines do not leak oil,

The tyres do not leak air

And there are no insects to splatter

The windscreen.

 

I looked up into the blue

Summer sky and it was empty.

No more flocks of swifts

Chasing each other

Shrieking in delight;

No more blue tinged swallows

Diving to skim the grass

And snatch their dinner

From the air

 

Opher – 18.4.2019

 

 

The flies, bees, crickets, grasshoppers, butterflies and bugs are gone.

In my youth the meadows were strewn with splashes of colour and alive with the buzz of life.

I’d lie on my back and watch ladybirds crawling up the flower-heads, beetles scurrying in the undergrowth and, up above, the birds soared, wheeled and dived.

It felt like heaven.

There were frogs and newts in the ponds, sticklebacks in the streams, lizard, slowworms and snakes in the fields.

At night the voles, shrews and hedgehogs came out from their dens.

But they all live off insects.

They are spraying all the fields again today.