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An Eco Poem

January 13, 2024
1 min read

Old Rio is Dead?
 
Thursday, December 20, 2007.
 
By Nimmo Bassey
 
Today’s battles were lost yesterday
Tomorrow’s battles must be fought today
 
Tears rolled down many eyes
When your speech tumbled down
Parrots echo talks failed partnerships
Eco-tourists from rich nations
Eco-tourism in poor nations
 
Fossilised ideas revived and up-scaled
Pipelines
Cleaner dirty energy
Oil spills, gas flares: do they make you dance?
Don’t you know that carbon sinks will sink the world?
 
Today’s battles were lost yesterday
Tomorrow’s battles must be fought today
 
Would you just because you have a technology
Use it?
Would you use nuclear power to light a stove?
If clean technologies roast the sky
Won’t you think?
 
Be careful people
Snares are set in the matrix
And this is no movie
No matter how voluntary,
Shopping baskets work very poorly at the well
 
Today’s battles were lost yesterday
Tomorrow’s battles must be fought today
 
Tears rolled down many eyes
From shock, sorrows and agony
15 years since Rio
Should we still crawl?
Did we fly over the oceans, deserts and forests
To insist on replication of battles long lost
 
You say fossil fuels will last your lifetime
But what will you do
If your well runs dry?
 
Tomorrow’s battles must be fought today
For today’s battles were lost yesterday
 
Poem delivered by Nimmo Bassey, Director, Environmental Rights Action Nigeria at the UN’s Commission for Sustainable Development’s Intergovernmental Prep Meeting on Air Pollution and Climate Change.
 
Picture: Clear-winged butterfly (Photo provided by Colin Orians).
 
Please e-mail comments to comments@thenewblackmagazine.com
 

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