AR6 IPCC Climate Report: Mitigation of Climate Change Poetry
Round-Up of Poems on Keeping At Going Through It All (+The Latest Climate Report)
Today, the IPCC released the much-awaited Working Group III portion of the Sixth Assessment Report titled AR6 Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. It also happened to be my 31st birthday. Here's the best explainer article I've seen, from the brilliant Amy Westervelt for Drilled.
The report states with absolute certainty that there are less-than-even odds of limiting warming to 1.5°C along the most ambitious pathway. Nonetheless, the report lays out clear directions and benchmarks to limit warming to 1.5°C, beyond which extreme impacts become increasingly untenable for people and ecosystems.
Here then are poems I've been reading and reflecting through, to keep at it--- fighting for a livable future--- through it all.
For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid, by William Stafford
There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot--air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being
afraid. That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed. What you fear
will not go away: it will take you into
yourself and bless you and keep you.
That's the world, and we all live there.
From Mahogany L. Browne, ‘This is the Honey’
There is no room on this planet for anything less than a miracle
We gather here today to revel in the rebellion of a silent tongue
Every day, we lean forward into the light of our brightest designs
& cherish the sun
Praise our hands & throats
each incantation, a jubilee of a people dreaming wildly
Despite the dirt
beneath our feet
or the wind
pushing against
our greatest efforts
From Marge Piercy, ‘To be of use’
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
Jared Beloff, ‘Playing with Climate Models'
Tonight, I’m hoping to catch the complexity of a curve refusing to touch its limit: the deep ocean seething, air wicking sweat from the soil’s scrabble. What am I willing to admit? The line bends straight as ants trusting scent given by the one that plods along before them—who will mourn the last to follow as it lays down draping mold in the dirt?
Previous IPCC Climate Report Poetry Round-Ups:
Two of My Poems You may Enjoy:
Adam Powers