Climate change will effect us all, but not equally.

It is a present reality for many places in the world- not just the high-profile disasters like forest fires and flooding, but also the encroachment of sea over low lying pacific islands, or threat to many marginal ways of living through altered growing conditions or depleted wildlife. It is likely that we will see more political/economic instability as resources become squeezed.

We have been told to expect mass movements of refugees as people are forced to move away from places that are no longer able to support them, or as they are displaced by wars of unrest. But we are used to refugees, right?

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Other

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I am not like you are

I breathe under water

I make mystery prayers

To a god you don’t know, and

I lurk at your border with outrageous demands

I see what you have and I hold out my hands

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I am not like you are

My skin is of scales

Should your tongue cut me deep

I will not feel pain, so

I climb in small boats and I sneak across sea

I see all that you are and I wish it were me

.

I am not like you are

I ate my own child

I walked through the fire but

Others were burned, and

I swarm through your neighbourhood, take over your town

The house that you live in is where I am bound

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I am not like you are

I walk on all fours

I beg and I steal

But still feel no shame

I snatch what you offer, give nothing back

Wait the right moment when I will attack

Pandemic

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Did we learn?

Did we listen to the deep rumblings

In the ground beneath our clay feet?

Or are we unteachable, even

By the old year passing?

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They say that hindsight

Is always twenty-twenty, but

What if they were wrong?

What if, when eventually unlocked

We carry on regardless, as if

The plastic pot we feed from will

Always cost nothing, and as if

That last Advent candle

Will burn on forever?

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Can collective stupidity of this kind

Have any hope of vaccination?

It is as if the only infestation

That matters on this planet is human

The pandemic is not sickness after all

It is cure

We need to talk about hypocrisy.

hypocrisy hɪˈpɒkrɪsi noun

The practice of claiming to have higher standards or more noble beliefs than is the case.”his target was the hypocrisy of suburban life”

It is a word that I have heard often used in and around the climate debate. The gathering of world leaders arriving by private jet, only then to be whisked around Glasgow in massive convoys of gas guzzling luxury vehicles. The eco-warriors who chug around in old vans and take sneaky foreign holidays. The virtue signallers who fill their expensive houses with eco-technology and their garages with Tesla supercars whilst having a carbon footprint many times that of their neibours.

The COP has started with some interesting announcements. Two proto-fascists (Modi and Bolsanaro) have made big promises. Even BJ has said things that make people like me nod in agreement. Now we just need action.

I have even heard Rainbow Warrior called hypocritical for forcing traffic to stop over a bridge whilst it sailed upstream to protest outside the COP. Or protesters who glued their hands to the road called hypocrites because an ambulance might have to take a detour.

Then there is my own hypocisy. I grow my own veg, try to live simply and in ways that do as little damage to the environment as possible. I write pompous poems and try to convince others of the rightness of my cause. I have decided not to fly anywhere ever again. Meanwhile I drive a diesel car, and live a live of comfort that most of the world could not dream of in my own house, surrounded by my own land. Even though I try to eschew consumerism, I am not immune to the allure of gadgets, even though I already have far too much stuff.

But there are worse things to be. Better to reach out towards something good than never reach at all.

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Thorn

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It has been said there are three kinds of people

Hypocrites (whose actions never match their ambition)

Cynics (mostly only adept at calling out hypocrites) and

The morally pure who could throw that first stone

(If it were ethically permissible)

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Me, I know what I am, for

Like St Paul, if I rise on my own pride

A thorn in my side soon bursts my bubble

I crash back to earth and lie

Motionless

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But intent is not nothing

Better hypocrite than cynic

For there is no fool more foolish than

Those who only see the fool in others

Who see a brick as something to throw

When in fact it a palace in embryo

A school seed

It is the foundation of my teetering tower

So, great men and women are meeting in Glasgow, with the fate of the world in their hands.

Meanwhile, other forces are pushing back. Using the same spoil tactics developed by the tobacco industry, the paid-for ‘think tanks’, stacked with sypathetic pseudo-science aimed to cast doubt and confuse; the politicians in the back pocket, the media outlets primed and ready to push an agenda suited to those whose power and wealth is threatened by a change to the status quo. (If you want to know more about exactly how this works, I would suggest watching this BBC film.)

Here is another poem. My retelling of the Gaia myth.

The woman beneath the hill of the world

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They say the earth is a woman

Wrapped in a gossamer layer of

Brown-green skin

Runnelled and pooled by

Salt tears

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They say the woman is barren, for her sterile

Soils are not fed from the falling leaves

Now the trees are gone, and

Long tresses of her deep green hair

Have been stored as silage

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They say the woman mourns her children

Whose bones now brine the ocean, and

Whose dawn song is no longer sung

Whose savannahs have all

Been stolen

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They say the woman speaks to mountains

But they no longer listen; that she

Looks for signs in distant stars but their blink

Is blurred by all the smoke from her

Burning forests

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They say the woman would write her story

Except that the black ink in her wells

Have all been pumped dry, and the

Tail-feather-quills from her favourite flightless birds

Have all been plucked away

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The woman has not gone yet, they say

For she has nowhere else to go. There are

No lands beyond these fields for her

No other ground she could lay down

So beneath her hill she stays