Meltdown #12: Social Code Red
This week a shrill cry of Code Red for humanity
From the international climate academy
Alarm bells were deafening
Our moment of reckoning
We’re facing a slow burn climate calamity
IPCC has sounded an empirical warning
The tip of melting icebergs, with carbon swarming
Damage irreversible
Evidence irrefutable
Of humankind’s hand in induced global warming
Although the report’s stark findings are so terrifying
Our laggard Prime Minister is blindly denying
Blamed developing nations
For the climate situation
It’s other countries’ problem, yet our reef is dying
We’re in the COVID crisis because world leaders dithered
The same reason our climate systems have withered
Our battered Earth laments
To worsening weather events
Destructive droughts, famines, floods, bushfires and blizzards
But extreme climate crises are becoming the norm
Heatwaves, rising sea levels, coastal erosion and storms
A hell and high-water mark
No refuge on Noah’s Ark
Can the COVID upheaval be a catalyst for reform
We must help restrain warming to 1.5 degrees
In the same way we’ve confronted this COVID disease
The science must prevail
Or our planet will fail
And net-zero carbon won’t be enough to succeed
All our leaders must unite at COP26
Our last spin of the globe for climate to be fixed
A more ambitious goal
And a death knell for coal
Phase out fossil fuels before the planet’s eclipsed
We must reuse, recycle and migrate to EVs
Build renewable energy and more batteries
But we need climate policies
For cleaner technologies
For hydrogen, biofuels and to plant more trees
COVID’s the dress rehearsal for the climate battle
But we need to unleash the political shackles
We must mobilise funds
To eliminate tonnes
Of the carbon that’s strangling Earth’s deathly rattle
Meet the scale of the crisis with commitment it commands
To rescue the skies, rivers, oceans, our air, land and farms
The Earth is in tatters
How we now respond matters
The overwhelming urgency this moment demands
A vaccine needle can’t fix all the damage we’ve done
Carbon and COVID together, riding shotgun
The atmosphere polluted
Will need to be abluted
Time’s fast running out, we’re being cooked by the sun
Meanwhile we’re plunged into deeper COVID trouble
New South Wales leadership’s the cause of our struggle
Reputations on the line
For locking down out of time
And no sign of resuming the Trans-Tasman bubble
So in this Code Red week, it’s a crying call to arms
With COVID and climate change, both sounding alarms
Not just more mitigation
We will need adaptation
To the norm of extreme weather and COVID’s constant harm
But here’s to future limericks that are more upbeat
With firm climate targets and COVID in retreat
With no more dithering
Sliding or slithering
For a climate emergency …. and vaccination complete
Kevin Holmes • 14th August 2021
