Too little? Too late? Too bad?

Today we're going to begin with a request to turn on your imagination full power. The poem we're sharing was written more than two centuries ago, before neoliberalism, before global capitalism, before space flight, before the invention of the internet and social media platforms and cell phones. 

In the time since the poem was written, humans have triggered climate breakdown; a sixth extinction; worldwide pandemics which, fortunately, haven't yet approached mortality levels comparable to the Black Death; and the pollution and/or destruction and/or disruption of much of the natural systems on which all life on earth depends.

Thus far humanity and its global leaders are failing miserably to meet the greenhouse gas reduction targets set in 2015; failing to share essential resources to bring the pandemic under control; failing to institute adequate safeguards on mining and agriculture to enable critical, essential, supplies to be safely delivered in adequate quantities. increasingly failing to teach tolerance and critical thinking to those in school; and providing, misguidedly, too much emphasis on individual freedom and not enough on each individual's responsibility to family and community and home planet.

So, to accompany the words of an exceptional poet of two centuries back, we think it might help to add the words of a contemporary young woman, Greta Thunberg, in her recent testimony before US Congress:

The gap between what we are doing and what actually needs to be done in order to stay below the 1.5 degrees Celsius targets is widening by the second. And the simple fact, an uncomfortable fact is that if we are to live up to our promises and commitments in the Paris Agreement, we have to end fossil fuel subsidies, stop new exploration and extraction, completely divest from fossil fuels, and keep the carbon in the ground now. Especially the US taking into account the fact that it is the biggest emitter in history.

In your now warmed up imaginations, what do you imagine Wordsworth would write these days?

 

The World Is Too Much With Us

By William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.