Omar Khayyam’s guide to the climate crisis
“Lo, the moving finger writes and, having writ, moves on …”. The climatic warning signs grow ever more critical. Our politicians take some steps to address them, but always with an eye back to those whose interests that action might compromise.
Fossil fuel industry lobbyists keep that retrospective eye focused on their industry’s interests. Our governments seem to succumb to this, or else, as Mark Beeson observes, “…they are incapable of grasping the immediacy of the problem or the scale of the necessary response needed to avoid catastrophe”.
This inadequacy of government response gives a Khayyamian inevitability to our environmental decline, and while politicians from older generations seem ready to accept this as a necessary price for retaining power, it is, as Beeson observes, the young who will wear the cost.
Climate challenges don’t diminish in response to governmental wishful thinking. We need leadership of courage and vision to accept the scale of the problem that procrastination has created, to get Khayyam’s finger moving us forwards towards a sustainable future. As Khayyam continues: “… nor all thy piety nor wit shall call it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it”.
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