Tag: environment

Australians all let us rejoice

For we are young and free

We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil

Our home is girt by sea

Our land abounds in nature’s gifts

Of beauty rich and rare

In history’s page, let every stage

Advance Australia Fair

In joyful strains then let us sing

Advance Australia Fair

The majestic beauty of our land 

Its frailties so easily exposed.

Crops inundated by floods

And starved by drought 

Farmers wandering what to sow

The beauty of our coastal plains 

And our coral reefs diversity,

Whispering their bittersweet  swansong

To our nation 

So Poignantly 

A story of unrelenting turmoil and tragedy.

Un-listened

Unheard, 

Unrecognised

Affected by this new and terrible reality.

The imperceptible creeping rise of H20

It’s higher tides and storm surges 

With its urges 

To wash away all signs of our humanity

While we struggle to see the impending calamity

As it lurches ever closer

The harsh price we pay

With weather patterns 

Taking no pity on our damaged lands

Our bedraggled homes pummeled by  downpours and blight

Our browning lawns gasping

Eeking out paltry vapours as they fight

For their very  survival.

We stare on in false ecstasy 

With false bravado at our lucky country

With idle chatter and polite social conversation 

We fixate on investment, 

Of house prices with all their fallacies

Choosing to ignore the elephant trumpeting in our room

Can you not see Caesar!

Rome is burning!

Why so much apathy to this danger?

The signals clearly in front of our eyes

How big do the billboards need to be 

to be recognised?

Do the neon lights need to be flashing?

The foghorns blaring?

What can we surmise?

What will it take

For us to stumble off the couch

Stumbling as if drunk

With bleary eyes

With uncertainty 

With sweaty bodies fattened by inaction

With little consensus of the right path

With trepidation and meditation

But now with conviction 

Be brave

Suck it in

We will enter the fray.

Lead on McDuff!

Lead on!

Are we deer frozen by some blinding headlights?

Is our political system too broken? 

To focused  on sound bites that have no might

Our media chasing headline stories 

Of vacuous celebrities that amount only to a pregnant pause.

Our scientists shouting in the wilderness 

Their voices drowned out

Not finding a voice that can be heard 

Not finding a connection to the greater cause

In this desert

Do we simply bury our heads in the sand?

Is the problem too large for us to understand?

So do we shrug our shoulders and continue on our way?

Do we have the power and wherewithal to stay

To fight

Are we delegating our responsibility?

Believing that a higher power will be our salvation?

That there is no need for consternation.

That the Mighty Lord in his revelations 

Will save us from our flaws.

Is that our mitigation?

But just in case…

Can we not in our busy lives,

simply take a moment to

Inhale

Close our eyes

Listen

Pause…

Do we not feel some foreboding?

A faint tingling in our bodies

The tip of our tongue

Our second sense

If we strain our eyes 

do we not see the shadows lurking?

How do we tear away a popcorn generation.

One weaned on the teat that is our fixation.

A Facebook generation that will pout, take a pic, and share their devotion 

Hungrily counting their ephemeral adulation

And a commitment so slight 

That as a wispy breeze it simply ends with a like. 

How do we put a stop to mind numbing activity 

How do we shift our gaze to the fore

To help us realise that the world’s fuse has been lit

That this may lead to a moment

A moment that leaves the world with no option

No option but to eject us 

Eject us while our species 

Our species that is still in its infancy

A not-so-innocent babe in arms

Snuffed out

Before Its legacy has even  begun 

How do we wake up a generation from its slumber

That it is being led by a Joker

An orange pied piper – a ludicrous New Yorker

Perhaps to our eventual elimination?

To shake man, women and child  from their complacency

To show them it is not too late

That we can crawl to the starting gate

And That we through many small steps walk the talk with conviction

And then,  as a nation our future generations will be ready to run at the problems head on, tempered by experience

 and armed with the knowledge that there is no one else

That we have gifted this world to them

This problem to solve

In our shame…

For there is no one else to blame…

I hope …not too late…

The is hope…

Can we use technology effectively to connect emotionally

To tear the bleary eyed from their stupor

With tools to hook them

Not with far fetched fantasy

But to show them the effects of climate change now to their hometowns, communities and families

With tools that let them see the impact first hand

That tell a  story that they can understand 

To open their eyes and digest a future chapter to be written

From that dusty book

You know – that book that they never picked up from the library

In a lonely corner

What’s it called?

Ah yes!

That’s the section

That’s called non-fiction

With attention hooked

Can we take the protagonist on their life journey

The ups and downs

Can we show them the bigger picture

The impact of inaction 

not simply to the economy.

But life itself in all its glory

On a knife edge 

and in that cutting moment

Which way will it fall?

Can we help them guide its sway?

Can we show them how the lack of environmental policy,

not demanding we answer  the hard questions, 

Gaia’s wicked problems to be solved.

Can we put data  in their hands.

Help them with the crossword puzzle

To make informed  decisions for our land.

Can we dis-intermediate  the flow of information

Not controlled by faceless men 

Of corporations who seek to profit

From a status quo

That cannot be maintained

Disintermediate

Those who want to hide and ignore the worse cases

And those who seek to alarm of only worst cases

Allow people to understand 

To understand the risks

and take their own journey

Allow them to find their own story

Can one empowered with information 

Armed with knowledge

For with knowledge comes enlightenment 

Can one build a sense of urgency

And With conviction to follow it to its bitter end

To be willing to make sacrifices on the way

A way that should have started yesterday

And though we fear our fortune

Let us believe, let us hope that it is not too late

Than our pregnant pause has not Sealed our fate

That we can get out of the starting gate

Let us embark on our journey

On its twisted and turning path

 that will require some radical change

We must remember

To be resilient

To be tenacious

Not give up hope

We must realise that

To run we must first walk

To walk we must first crawl

To crawl we must first know why

In our youth and freedom

To rejoice, to be free

For history’s gaze

Will require that we toil

Nature’s gifts are waiting

And through our strains

We will rebuild our luck country

And we will sing

We will advance Australia fair.