The Great Silence

I recently read The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace Wells. It scared the hell out of me! The bottom line is that we have about three decades to significantly reduce carbon emissions to achieve a best case scenario; an increase of one or two degrees Celsius. Even then, there will be dire consequences. If we don’t act now, the results will be catastrophic! The poem is a summation of what I read. I borrowed freely some lines from the author and his sources. They anchor the poem and appear in italics. The blackened landscape from the 2016 Pioneer Fire in Idaho was shot on a camping trip in 2021. So I ask: Where is the political will?

Be afraid!

It is much worse than you think,

and it has only just begun,

with so much more to come.

The Great Dying!

As we dance a mindless shuffle

toward a hot inevitable collapse,

we will learn soon enough;

that technology will not save us,

nor faith…or love!

In the new Dark Ages,

how easy it is to die.

The fragility of ordinary life

descending like a knife

in the enormous empty night.

Suffocating, Drowning, Burning,

within a single generation.

Close enough to touch, to share,

to blame

for a hubris so intense.

Climate nihilism so entrenched,

our greatest challenge:

Too late we understand

the fatal myth of man

separate from nature.

Progress was never inevitable.

The elements of chaos irrepressible,

fast encroaching upon our shores.

A Devil’s bargain lost, and then

The Great Silence!