Justitia, Old Bridge of Heidelberg

Justitia, Old Bridge of Heidelberg
Justitia, Old Bridge of Heidelberg © Gernot Keller, 2007
Blinkered Justice articles also appear on CrimeTalk and Government In The Lab

Friday 4 May 2012

Growth without prosperity

(c) Criminonymous
Leading you into the long weekend, I am delighted to host another piece of political poetry from Criminonymous. If you prefer your "shotgun duels over fossil fuels" on paper as I do, read on.

A never ending focus on these manmade lines
Designed for our safety, but designed to confine
Does any of this actually mean anything?
Does having dual nationality prepare me for more eventualities?
What is beyond our control does not enlighten the person
I’m a no-name global citizen with a purpose
And understandably, while I focus on my love and on my family
I still elevate wider humanity, see
That’s what matters to me
Progress as a process requires harnessing our energy

We’ve had growth without prosperity
And now we have neither
Disappeared in the ether
Take a step back and find Mother Earth needs a breather
You think it’s easy to please her
But her beauty is intrinsically bound to deceive you
Into thinking she’s unlimited, clearly she’s exhibited
The signs that she can take no more of these derivatives
Unlimited subsidies will be beyond prohibited
When people realise all of the damage they cause
A series of flaws
A flaming ball of wreckage like the track at Le Mans

But the problem with the debate is not the intransigence
It’s that so many issues are at the same resonance
Irrespective of anything, oil isn’t infinite
We can’t keep forever increasing our own use of it
Soon so expensive that it will only be available
To tax exiles in St Lucia and those in Monaco
The conflation of climate change with other things we know
Ensures our response to other issues is also slow

But that’s not what is best for me or you
I don’t want to wait until there’s shotgun duels over fossil fuels
Although some would say it’s already started
With ever-more dangerous tools
While a minority monopolise the writing of rules
And my heart goes out to all of those affected who are fatherless
Those in Fallujah, cancerous and powerless
The person in jail who made one mistake last year
The whistleblower executed in oil-rich Nigeria
The millions of families who have been foreclosed illegally
It’s all crime in the way that it speaks to me

Believe me, when you come to pick your battles
Energy and food security alone will be a handful
But we also need political stability
Replace profit maximisation with relaxation and common decency
In the future, we will take back our liberties
You may doubt me, but it’s as simple as that
Everything we’ve lost, we will recover tit-for-tat
My delivery may be poor, but the words still have meaning
Read them back to yourself if you don’t think that you believe me
If global warming is only happening in our minds
Then how come in the Arctic you’ve found new places to mine?

(c) Criminonymous

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