IMMINENT CATASTROPHE by Clive James

imminent catastrophe goes on

Not showing many signs of happening.

The ice at the North Pole that should be gone

By now, is awkwardly still lingering,

And though sometimes the weather is extreme

It seems no more so than when we were young

Who soon will hear no more of this grim theme

Reiterated in the special tongue

Of manufactured fright. Sea Level Rise

Will be here soon and could do such-and-such,

Say tenured pundits with unblinking eyes.

Continuing to not go up by much,

The sea supports the sceptics, but they, too,

Lapse into oratory when they predict

The sure collapse of the alarmist view

Like a house of cards, for they could not have picked

A metaphor less suited to their wish.

A house of cards subsides with just a sigh

And all the cards are still there. Feverish

Talk of apocalypse might, by and by,

Die down, but the deep anguish will persist.

His death, and not the Earth’s, is the true fear

That motivates the doomsday fantasist:

There can be no world if he is not here.