TOO LATE FOR TEARS

It’s not often you see a politician cry. An event rarer than the eruption of hens' teeth. But today they are all crying, all across the world.

They tell us they have failed us. They tell us they are sorry. They tell us there are no adequate words to express their remorse. They tell us they have no excuses.

One hundred and twenty million are already dead, and counting. Seventy million are displaced.

Once the melting of the polar ice-caps reached tipping point there was simply no stopping it, no matter what we did.

Sea levels have risen an average of 12 feet across the globe in the last forty days.

Oh the politicians cry and cry and cry. In our living rooms they plead from our TVs, eyes brimming with salty tears, “We are so very, very sorry.”

And what is our reaction this day? Anger? What good is anger now?

It was the spineless predecessors of these pathetic men and women in dark blue and black business suits who let us all down. The many yellow-bellied, bravery-poor, ego-rich fools of politicians who came before them. The well-heeled, self-obsessed, politically-aware generations of lawyers and business-folk who opted for that extra rush of power and influence it gave them. They had, each and every one of them, allowed this to happen.

Oh, there had been warnings aplenty. Many academic and scientific careers had been built upon them. But of course there was never a right time, a convenient time, a good time, to heed them. There was always some very good reason not to act. There was always the easier option to give lip-service to action or worse still, to actively oppose it. There were always plenty of vested interests, business interests, only too willing to convince them that it would mean economic suicide to act.

Virtual murder was the result.

Underneath everything, if anyone was truly to blame for all that had happened it was the pressure groups who had lobbied constantly for inaction. Who lobbied indeed for ever less constraint on business and who only ever pushed for greater and greater growth and subsequently greater and greater pollution of our atmosphere. The greatest measure of anger was therefore directed at last to them. They who, behind the scenes had used their greatest bargaining chip, their money, to twist the arm of any politician susceptible to the bribe of election funding or the blackmail of bad PR.

How happy they must feel now that the several zeros they managed to add to their already huge bank accounts are safe and sound. Not that they will ever spend this money, even if they had intended to. I mean, there’s not a beach left, exclusive or otherwise, well, not the beaches we knew at least. The new beaches would hardly attract the tourist. Mounds of debris mixed with rock, slime and sand litter the new coastlines far inland in the middle of every kind of suburban and city landscape. Such ugliness as is everywhere now will certainly attract no high rollers anxious to spend their now almost useless fortunes.

The pawns of power, the politicians take most of the flak. They plead day and night for understanding and point at the pseudo-scientific reports they used to read to bolster their inaction. Reports saying Global Warming was a myth, a lie, a plot. They found them so convincing. It was convenient that they did so, don’t you see? Jobs mean votes. Economic growth means jobs. A no-brainer. Big business has the money, money brings impressive campaigns, the interests of big business are therefore vital. Besides, they bring jobs. And what do jobs bring? Votes, yes. But economic growth too, more this more that, infrastructure, factories, consumption. It must all spiral ever higher and if it doesn’t well it all comes down to jobs. Their jobs.

It was all very simple for them. Then.

Now? Now it seems hardly to matter. We are simply numb. We can’t take it in. We have reached the ultimate end of the business cycle. And it’s not pretty. It’s not pretty at all.

Somehow, subconsciously, we’d thought we were headed to some kind of material paradise. Instead we have ended up in the sludge heap of a sewage plant. And, not to put to fine a point on it, it stinks. Literally.

It doesn’t help a bit that all the moneyed skeptics and pseudo-christian naysayers have jaws dropped to the floor and that the politicians are bawling like babies. It doesn’t help at all. Nothing does.

The skeptics are all contrite as hell, begging us to see how they were honestly mistaken. But we have not the slightest interest in their words. It’s all far, far too late.

Too late even for tears.