A change in climate, part 2
The day we arrived in Sheffield was a global day of action on climate change to mark the beginning of climate change negotiations in Paris. I didn’t go to Paris out of paranoia regarding my UK spouse visa. When I apply to renew the visa, I have to report on when and where and why I traveled. I’m worried that going to a protest event in Paris--where arrests are always possible--might not look good on my visa renewal form.
So my consolation was going to the Sheffield climate change vigil upon my arrival there (while David went shopping with Susan). The event reminded me why I’m not interested in being a campaign organiser for environmental organisations. About 100 of us stood in the rain while someone with a megaphone talked to us about the importance of what we were doing. It was raining heavily and the people in the back of the crowd couldn’t hear the elderly woman on the stage, so we deployed human microphones--the people in the front repeated everything she said to the people in the back. A volunteer handed out song sheets and we sang the songs printed on the sheets. The woman with the megaphone told us to make sure we had the larger sheet because some of the lyrics had changed and the smaller sheet had the old lyrics (Crowd yells: “Make sure you have the larger sheets because some of the lyrics have changed!”). I can just imagine the committee meeting where the Sheffield Socialist Choir (which led the singing) argued over which phrase best rhymed with Tory toffs. I can’t help feeling we are not a good match for the likes of Exxon, BP, and Shell.
So I stood in the rain singing things like:
(to the tune of Do Doo Ron Ron)
Walking down the high street
With my take-away
Consume doom doom doom
Consume doom doom
Send it to the landfill
and have a nice day
Consume doom doom doom
Consume doom doom
Yeah t’won’t biodegrade
Yeah it’s all manx-made
Yeah the workers are badly paid
Consume doom doom doom
consume doom doom
(to the tune of what can we do about a drunken sailor)
Insulate our homes and get them lined
Stop oil, gas and coal being mined
Use tidal, solar, wind and find, we’ll
Shrink our carbon footprint.
Organic, local, seasonal eating
Recycle, mend, turn down the heating
Share, cooperate, stop competing
Shrink our carbon footprint!
and
(to the dune of daisy daisy)
Tar sands, tar sands, what a calamity
Massive pollution, waste and toxicity
Ancestral lands and forests
Despoiled by greed for oil
Extracting tar to run my car
Causes global catastrophe.
There were five songs, 21 verses, we were to sing many of them multiple times. I think you can see that the songs don’t exactly roll off the tongue. Not made easier by holding an umbrella and shielding your soggy piece of paper from the wind. The songs represent the protest itself--heartfelt, passionate and yet ineffective and somehow embarrassing. Here we are with our face-painted children hoping that we can somehow stand up against Transnational Global Monolith Inc. and its paid stooges in legislatures around the world. I told myself that even though my little gesture isn’t going to make a difference in Paris, it was important for us protestors to be there for each other.
I looked at the faces around me and felt love and sorrow. Love because I know these faces, I’ve seen them at protest marches in Washington, D.C., and Harrisburg and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Kansas City, Missouri--these kind, caring faces, I have such fondness for them. And I thought how much I’ll miss them when we all drown or when the fracked earth cracks open and swallows us or spews out some poison that kills us.
Speaking of fracking, this song was particularly clever:
(to the tune of The Laughing Policeman):
Chorus:
You won’t be fracking long
You won’t be fracking long
Wherever fracking’s threatened
We’ll sing our fracking song
And if you fracking bankers
Can’t see there’s something wrong
You think you’re fracking clever
But you won’t be fracking long!
If you’re in the fracking business
You really ought to know
That all your fracking progress
Will be painfully slow
We’ll block your fracking test sites
And your fracking engineers
And we’ll bring your fracking business
Down around your fracking ears
So they’ve had their fracking tax break
From Osborne in Whitehall
Which isn’t so surprising
When you understand it all
The oil and gas investors
Pay for many a Tory toff
Yes they’re “all in this together”
Just like porkers at the trough!
So if you have some money
That you’re wanting to invest
Don’t put it into franking
That leaves the world a mess
There’s sun and wind and water
That can power the human race
And every green investor
Makes the world a safer place.
12-1