A sleeping giant is about to awaken
As we obliviously go about our daily lives
And when it does, it will make us reflect fondly
On all the diseases we suffer from today.
War, famine, pestilence, hunger.
They will all be rendered meaningless
When the giant fully awakes.
How important will the problems of this world be
Without a world to live in?
The giant has already stirred in Asia.
A tsunami that claimed 250,000 lives.
Two hundred and fifty thousand.
He has stirred in Alaska
Where the ice caps have melted so much,
Polar bears can no longer complete a journey
They have been making for thousands of years.
He has stirred in Africa
Where wildfires burn for months
Over desertified land.
He has stirred in the Amazon rainforest
Where naked tribesmen fight tractors with spears,
Trying to preserve what's left of their ancient home.
He has stirred in our own backyard,
And we named it Katrina.
When our grabbing is over,
When there is nothing left to plunder,
When the giant is awake,
We will wistfully long for the day
When AIDS, terrorism and nuclear war
Were all we had to worry about.
To the giant, it will be nothing personal,
Though it probably should be.
The earth has survived
Meteor showers, great floods,
Ice ages and cataclysmic eruptions.
She will surely survive us
And begin to heal
After the cancer is destroyed.
"Nothing will be left. Nothing in the air, nothing on the land, nothing in the seas. All will be hunted down. All destroyed." - Leonardo Da Vinci
Author notes
If you can spare $19.95 a month, please join Greenpeace as a monthly supporter at www.greenpeace.org/international/supportus and become a member of the second superpower - World Opinion. If this poem comes to pass, you will at least be able to tell your grandchildren that you did your part to try to prevent it.
Did you know that eating red meat is one of the main causes of rainforest destruction? Please read on -
"Cattle ranching is a major cause of rainforest destruction in Central and South America. Ranchers slash and burn rainforests to grow grass pasture for cattle. Once the cattle have grazed sufficiently, they are slaughtered and exported to industrialized countries, including the United States, to be made into fast food hamburgers and frozen meat products. It has been estimated that for every quarter pound hamburger made from rainforest cattle, fifty-five square feet of rainforest was cleared—an area equal to the size of a small kitchen.
"Industrial society has tended to see forests as free sources of valuable materials or as needless woods, occupying land and getting 'in the way' of development. As a result of these pressures, every second the planet loses another two football fields of its precious rainforest cloak.
Our consumer culture takes a heavy toll on the environment. Although the impacts are not always immediately apparent, all products come from the Earth and must return to it in one form or another. Americans consume 40 percent of the world's gasoline and more paper, steel, aluminum, energy, water, and meat per capita than any other society on the planet.
The activities of multinational corporations, particularly resource extraction corporations involved in mining, oil drilling, and logging, are one of the leading causes of rainforest destruction. Even when these activities aren't directly responsible for large-scale rainforest destruction, they create the infrastructure (such as roads) that opens the way for the degradation of forest areas."
( From www.rainforestweb.org )
Written January 3rd, 2006
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