The Eleventh Hour

I was reading Shirley William's autobiography, and in the concluding chapters - and this was written ten years ago in 2009 - she had this to say:

"The future Western leaders are trying to construct rests upon the recovery of steady and sustained growth and rising prosperity based on consumption. Absent a miracle, it cannot be done. The resources to keep the growth economy going worldwide are simply not adequate in a world short of clean water, fertile soil and energy. The present global economic system is intrinsically wasteful. unjust and unsustainable. Arable land diminishes as desertification spreads. In many parts of the globe, water is already a scarce commodity, and will become more so as the world's forests are cut down. In our oceans, fish stocks are collapsing past the point of recovery."


It is not too late yet, but we are at the brink, the tipping point, and if we do nothing, there will be no planet for our descendants except at the very fragile subsistence level.

The Eleventh Hour

Heaping up our own funeral pyre
The climate changing, year by year
The year of the burn up, time of fire
That fatal hour drawing ever near

Industrial might, the time of power
Great machines, engines of delight
The card turned, the falling tower
Soon the world will end in night

Waste in the oceans, down the drain
Plastic packaging, and plastic waste
Microbeads entering the food chain
Nearly midnight, it is time for haste

To become extinct before one’s time
So much waste, and that’s our crime