12 years ago
We were already in Injury Time
Fighting for a temperature target of 1C
Today Nature has been patient enough
So patient not to call off the game
Though the ball has left the pitch
Nature has given humans a moment to think
This is extra time in Injury Time
It is time for action!
Here we are redefining idiocy
Trumping good sense with xenophobic nationalism
Silencing the victims via vaccine apartheid
Standing on Nationally determined
Self destruction
Here we are Conferencing and Partying
As though global warming
Has suddenly become a national warming
And not a global catastrophe
This is extra time in Injury Time
It is time for action!
The celebrated Paris Agreement
Set out “1.5 degrees” and obviously jokingly added
Or “Well below 2 degrees”
If my maths is right
Well below 2 should fall far below 1.5
Right?
But flags were raised, glasses clinked, backs were slapped
To celebrate such arrant technical nonsense
This is extra time in Injury Time
It is time for action!
Now the con men openly run crazy
Do what you can do
Lie about what you will do
Set deadlines to when the beings on the Planet may all be dead
Net Zero by 2030
Net Zero by 2050
Net Zero by 2060
Net Zero by the turn of the century
Net Zero isn’t Zero
This is extra time in Injury Time
It is time for action!
Keep polluting
We can capture the carbon
Keep consuming
We can bury the waste
Keep cooking the planet
We can set sunshades in the sky, fertilize the ocean
If folks stay stupid we can label whales and elephants carbon sinks
Reinvent slavery and colonialism for more sinks
This is extra time in Injury Time
It is time for action!
The Sahara is expanding
Deserts showing up in the Amazon
Polluters fighting to trash Okavango
Glaciers melting
Climate refugees floating on the Mediterranean
Forests burning
Oceans cooked
Islands disappearing
Mad cyclones, hurricanes
Yet you dig more fossils, burn more coal, oil, gas
And power locust invasions
Across the Horn of Africa
As you worship fossil dollars
On the altar of greed
This is extra time in Injury Time
It is time for action!
We refuse to allow polluters and mad men
shooting wildly with hot guns
On COP movie sets
Dancing with hot guns on the graves of the poor
On COP movie sets
Awake people,
Arise people
Mother Earth is not a movie set
This is extra time in Injury Time
It is time for action!
12 years ago
We were already in Injury Time
Fighting for a temperature target of 1C
Today Nature has been patient enough
So patient not to call off the game
Though the ball has left the pitch
Nature has given humans a moment to think
This is extra time in Injury Time
It is time for action!
This is time for a Peoples’ COP
I hear the echoes of Cochabamba
When People’s stood up for climate justice
And the Rights of Mother Earth
Rejecting militarism
Exposing the dirty fingers of market Environmentalism
Denouncing carbon markets shrouded in divers cloaks
Now they must hear our resounding rejection of so much noise without action
This is extra time in Injury Time
It is time for action!
- Nnimmo Bassey
6.11.2021 written and read at the Global Day of Action (COP26)