FossilFreeUMC

Climate, Crisis and Numbers

I am growing weary of the phrase
'collective self-annihilation'
spoken by folks in power
asserting a perspective that their actions
and their behaviors are
‘ours.’ The royal ‘we.’

It is spoken in politeness,
in proximity—complicitly—
simultaneously
polite enough not to call out
or offend, but to pretend
and get to join, as if ‘we’
we really are buddies
enjoying the plunder
extraction and colonialism together.

Enough of that. There is—
let’s say it—there is
a very few, a very small group,
who is—who are
racing toward planetary annihilation.
A small set of power-brokers
intent on lifelessness, knowingly 
pumping consumption
deathly dominance—pump, pump, pump—
to the destruction of all
the rest of us, no rest for us,
and ultimately destruction for us.

A larger group rides along
perhaps enamored, perhaps
hoping for crumbs, perhaps
lusting for their chance to be crowned
by oil rigs and smoke stacks and choke for money.

Such has it been for recorded history.

What speaks to this in the voices that cry out?
Wicked men!
Touch nothing of theirs, lest
ye be consumed in all their sins.
The very earth opens up, a shared death,
whole families, whole tribes, two year olds.
These men have provoked the Lord.

Those two year olds had no part in it.
Never once fracked, never once
never loaded train cars full of oil
never lusted for foreign ports, never
never tore open verdant soils. Killed
with the rest. Murdered by the few.

We are racing, racing, racing
toward planetary destruction
on an unimaginable scale. But we? That we?
It is collective only in the sense that
all of us will suffer for it.
We do not share the culpability.
We want to live.

So get it right.

⸙

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Numbers 16 KJV
Cover photo by JF Martin
‘Smoking gun proof’: fossil fuel industry knew of climate danger as early as 1954, documents show

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Rev. Richenda Fairhurst is an Elder in the Greater Northwest Area, living in Southern Oregon. She volunteers with the United Methodist Creation Justice Movement and a number of other organizations at the intersection of faith and climate change. Find her at justcreation.org