Day 3 – energy + Eiffel

Ironically I’m sitting at the puta writing a poem about energy when I am exhausted after a very long day.

Two Notes:
1. Formatting is an issue (the poems don’t look as good as they do properly formatted in a word doc) as is often the way with WordPress.
2. The old maxim, sorry about the long poems, I didn’t have time to write short ones is particularly true tonight.

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Australian Energy                             —                          a call & response poem

Australia is 
the third-largest exporter of coal in the world 

no, it’s the biggest

home to two of the 10 largest coal mines in the world

four of the 10 

Australians believe  {of the total workforce} :
the coal mining industry makes up 11% 

in reality it’s just 0.3% 

oil & gas employment make up 20%

just 0.2% 

Australians believe  {of GDP} :
the economic value of the gas industry is 12.4% 

2.5%

coal mining contributes 13.6%

2.6%

50% of Australians believe  {of what we should be building} :
new gas power stations

only 21% believe we should be building new renewable energy projects

my apologies i was confused

let me try that again

50% of Australians believe:
new renewable energy projects

only 21% believe we should be building new gas power stations

the 2023-2024 Australian Federal Budget has been released 
fossil fuel subsidies (such as the Fuel Tax Credit)
– will cost the Budget over $41 billion 
over the next four years

significantly more than all the funded climate initiatives combined

despite fossil fuel industries being the past

& clean energy initiatives, the future 

(perhaps, assuming

we survive)

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Funfact Day 3 – TIL how to grow iconic French architecture 

Paris’s brutal metal heart
— the Eiffel Tower can be 
as much as fifteen to sixteen
centimetres taller in summer

{ thermal expansion heats the iron up
the particles gain kinetic energy 
& in so doing : take up more space }

think how tall she will get
when The Iron Lady starts 
experiencing month long 40+ degree days

when Ville-Lumière becomes Ville-Chaleur 
& Ville d’Amour becomes Ville d’Sueur

{ City of Light melts into City of Heat 
& City of Love drips into City of Sweat }

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Funfact Day 3 (bonus)  – TIL other Eiffel things

i.
the Tower was initially 
intended for Barcelona
but those pesky Catalans
thought it an awful eyeful (ouch!)
so Gustave pitched her to Paris instead

ii.
initially the French weren’t 
overly impressed either
metal-shaming her as
“useless & monstrous” 
“a stupefying folly”
& “an odious column of bolted metal” 

always something of a prickly loner
writer Guy de Maupassant 
dined every day at the cafe directly below 
— the only spot in Paris he claimed
he couldn’t see the damn thing

but they grew to love her
— as did the whole world
till she became what she now is
(like so many modern landmarks)
little more than Instafodder

Day 26 – 10 billion dollar fossils

Saw an article which was published yesterday with the headline: Australian fossil fuel subsidies hit $10.3 billion in 2020-21. This number seems shocking, unless you know anything at all about anything. Given how tired I am from getting all the past 9 days poems up, I thought it’s low hanging fruit, but I’m gonna pick it anyway. (Some poet days are harder than others.)

NB still had issues uploading photo so it’s not completely solved: had to restart computer three times before it “took”.

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10 billion dollar fossils 

Scummo & his LNP dinosaurs
are increasing fossil fuel subsides
as they’re being phased out worldwide

every minute of last year $19,686 
was given to coal oil & gas companies 
& major users of fossil fuels

they like to pretend 
they’re important players
giving back to the economy

instead of the socialist teat 
sucking velociraptors they are

— give em an indue card 
& be done with em

Day 21 – sacrifice zones

Big extractive companies don’t care where the goodies are; don’t care what has to be destroyed to get to them; just hope a new source of fossil fuels isn’t found near your place.

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sacrifice zones

big mining, petrochemical companies
& heavy industry — that is: extractivists — 
are all compelled by their gross beliefs

there are places that don’t matter
there are people that don’t matter
they must think this so these matter

less  nothings can be strip-mined-open-pit 
mined-clear-felled-transformed into toxic
waste dumps-dug up-drained-destroyed 

so air can be poisoned
so effluent can be pumped into rivers
so soil can be contaminated with heavy metals

& they will to continue to extract
in order to continue making a profit
they will continue to sacrifice everything

even the   earth   herself

Day 20 — solastalgia

Playing with a word I learnt last year and thought might make a good poem title (& hopefully poem).

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solastalgia 

The homesickness you have when you are still at home.

word & definition coined by Glenn Albrecht
Australian philosopher & Professor of Sustainability

that peculiar 
form of distress 
that envelopes us 
in a misty kind 
of claustrophobic 
cling wrap
when we see our 
homelands both 
lived & idealised
lands which bring 
peace simply by being
give us tranquility
remind us to breath
to hope  to sit 
quietly   & still   & just

when we feel those lands
callously destroyed 
paddocks ploughed under
for another subdivision
megahardware store
or discount supermarket 
or cut open for coal
or fracked  set on fire  covered in oil  torn up by trucks

then
there is no solace

Day 18 — frackwit

Pretty self-explanatory.

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frackwit

the same Prime Smirker 
who once gloated about
how good coal is on the floor
of the Australian parliament
is today raving about 
the multitude of climate saving
virtues (to hear him spout it)
of natural gas

the same guy who appointed 
a couple of natural gas wonks
to his COVID-19 recovery taskforce
which later (to no one’s surprise)
revealed that the way out of our
Covid-induced economic coma was … 
{ da-dah }
Nat. U. Ral.  Gas. &. Lots of it.

this fracking clown is relentlessly
smirking while the world burns

i only hope the pentecostal hell
he so fervently believes in is real
& he ends up sweating down there

eternally