Last month CNN reporter John Sutter came down asking me to write a piece about the importance of the 2 degree number to climate change, as a part of his series on 2 degrees:
http://edition.cnn.com/specials/opinions/two-degrees
I agreed to do it – with a little spin of my own, by challenging the 2 degrees estimate, which actually places more islands under water, than 1.5 (which is what our island leaders have been pushing for).
Here’s the video of the poem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUVTVPbmG5g
And here’s the full text of the piece:
2 Degrees
The other night my
1-year-old was a fever
pressed against my chest
We wrestled with a thermometer
that read
99.8 degrees
the doctor says
technically
100.4
is a fever
but I can see her flushed face
how she drapes
across my lap, listless
LiPeinam is usually a
wobbly walking
toddler all chunks and
duck footed shaky knees
stomping squeaky yellow
light up shoes across
the edge of the reef
And I think
what a difference
a few degrees
can make
Scientists say
if humans warm the world
more than 2 degrees
then catastrophe will hit
Imagine North American wildfires increasing by 400%
animal extinction rising by 30%
fresh water declining by 20%
thousands, millions displaced
left wandering
wondering
what
happened?
At a climate change conference
a colleague tells me 2 degrees
is an estimate
I tell him for my islands 2 degrees
is a gamble
at 2 degrees my islands, the Marshall Islands
will already be under water
this is why our leaders push
for 1.5
Seems small
like 0.5 degrees
shouldn’t matter
like 0.5 degrees
are just crumbs
like the Marshall Islands
must look
on a map
just crumbs you
dust off the table, wipe
your hands clean
Today LiPeinam is feeling better
she bobs around our backyard
drops pebbles and leaves
into a plastic bucket
before emptying the bucket out
and dropping pebbles in again
As I watch I think about futility
I think about the world
making the same mistakes
since the industrial revolution
since 1977
when a scientist said 2 degrees
was the estimate
On Kili atoll
the tides were underestimated
patients with a nuclear history threaded
into their bloodlines, sleeping
in the only clinic on island woke
to a wild water world
a rushing rapid of salt
closing in around them
a sewage of syringes and gauze
Later
they wheeled their hospital beds out
let them rest in the sun
they must be
stained rusted our people
creaking brackish from
salt spray and radiation blasts
so so tired, wandering wondering
if the world will
wheel us out to rest in the sun
or will they just
dust their hands of us, wipe
them clean
My father told me that idik
– when the tide is nearest an equilibrium
is the best time for fishing
Maybe I’m
fishing for recognition
writing the tide towards
an equilibrium
willing the world
to find its balance
So that people
remember
that beyond
the discussions
are faces
all the way out here
that there is
a toddler
stomping squeaky
yellow light up shoes
walking wobbly
on the edge of the reef
not yet
under water
wise and powerful words. Thanks for caring and working to address climate change. blessings, Brad
Moving, powerful, simply superb!
Quite compelling……..stunning DENIAL places the Eaarth at this unbelievable precipice.
Could these words by Dada artist Marcel Duchamp give meaning to ignorance, or to ignoring….the root of DENIAL?
“As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences everything gets distorted, language is just no damn good—I use it because I have to, but I don’t put any trust in it. We never understand each other.”
Marcel Duchamp (1887 – 1968)
Is it okay to reblog this on my Ripple Poetry blog, and of course write something about you as well. https://ripplepoetry.wordpress.com/
I heard you read this on Democracy Now and found it deeply moving, well wrought and compelling. Yes, yes, Yes, do the necessary work of creating and inspiring, creating and reminding us of the threat and the possibility. Let us will good and make it manifest
for ourselves and our posterity. Thank you for sharing your words and wisdom.