Leave Afghanistan Alone; Prepare for the Real War

It is surely obvious to more or less every thinking person in the world – except of course to politicians who are blinkered into short-sightedness by the need for re-election in four years’ time – that humanity is hurrying towards a crisis which will make even the horrendous deaths of First World War, Second World War, gulags, concentration camps, not to mention AIDS etc, look relatively trivial.

If Planet Earth continues to warm as it is doing now, vast areas of grain-producing temperate lands (such as the Great Plains of North America) will turn to dust, tropical countries will become completely uninhabitable, etc. It is now reckoned that of the fish which there used to be in the oceans only ten per cent are left. Etc. Etc. Incidentally the likely prediction is that if the Arctic ice melts much more, the Gulf Stream will turn from a warm current to a cold current and Britain and northern Europe will be submerged under 2 miles of pack ice.

There will be death not on a scale of millions, but of billions. Billions.

Scientists have discovered all sorts of ways of slowing down, even preventing, Global Warming. But politicians are, by definition, incapable of paying attention to scientists. First, most politicians are ignorant of science, and not interested enough to read about it. For heaven’ s sake, I’m not a scientist; I’m a poet. But I try and take an interest in what the scientists are doing, because they are changing our world – very rapidly.

Secondly, the solutions which might help Planet Earth – along with all of us human beings, not to mention the animals, birds, insects, fish, and so on – are not going to be working within the four years which is all that politicians think about.

So we, the ordinary citizens of the world, must hammer this message at our so-called leaders: Concentrate on what is really important. Stop wasting money (and sending people to their death) in Afghanistan. Spend a bit more of our money on what is really worth while.

More to come in future blogs.