Today’s poem is a mixture of quotation, paraphrase, & commentary on something one inactivist denier actually said. Presumably, with a straight face. A straight cold callous inhuman face.

*****

wet feet

should the West Antarctic Ice Sheet actually do 
what the scientists threaten — & slip off into the sea  
— is it really be the end-of-the-world calamity they contend

even if the sea rose 6 metres — it would only reclaim 
about 42,000 square kilometres of coastline
where roughly about 400 million people currently live

that sounds quite a lot of people — but hardly 
all humanity — less than 6% of world population
which is to say — 94% of us need not fear — inundation 

after all — it’s simply an equivalent number of people 
to the entire population of the US & UK — combined
a mere drop in the ocean — you might wryly remark

*****

Day 30 — TIL i learnt we’re bombing the ocean

hot water

year after year 
we’re setting 
ocean heat records 

last year alone
they absorbed 
eight Hiroshima 

atomic bombs 
detonating 
every second 

of every day

— nearly seven
hundred
thousand
every day

— five million
a week

— a Quarter.
Of a. Billion.
Bomb’s. Worth.
Every. Year.

* 480 a minute / 28 800 an hour / 691 200 a day / 4 838 400 a week / 251 596 800 a year