Pandoras Box – can we close it?
Image from chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china; Guiyu, Guangdong province, (广东省贵屿镇) rivers and reservoirs have been contaminated, the villager is washing in a seriously polluted pond.
Pandoras Box
Prawns feed in seagrass,
Bream take the prawns,
Snapper takes the bream,
then to the dolphin they fall.
But hiding away is an insidious evil,
Mercury is lurking, killing them all.
A dolphin goes belly up and floats in the surf,
“Too much mercury” says one expert.
“Didn’t happen here,” says another,
Who cares where it happened, brother?
Just know that it did!
“It’s not our problem!”
Who are we trying to kid?
The dolphin told us the time is at hand,
To take a step back and look at our land.
Look at the stuff we pour down our drains,
Then we wonder, “Why all these pains?”
It’s really not hard to see why it is,
If we look to our fishes, our oceans and seas.
A solitary can lies in sand amidst coral,
Testimony to man, visiting Great Keppel.
Take him and flog him for this heinous crime,
For sullying God’s paradise with filth and grime.
His laziness is littered all over our shores,
Like pus, oozing from festering sores.
What’s the medicine, the cure, be quick,
“Get off your ass, clean up the grass,
Give the fishes something clean to drink!”
Who’ll put the lid back on Pandoras Box,
And seal it up tight with great big locks?
Is it too late for the fish in the sea?
Maybe for that dolphin,
but what about you and me?
Was our dolphin the messenger, a martyr for us,
To wake us, to clean up our mess?
If we could start again and rewrite the pact
With Mother Earth, our planet, an agreement to enact
To honour the fishes, the birds and the sand,
Would she still let us be custodians of this land?
© Ray Jamieson 1996
Image from chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china; In the Yellow Sea coastline, countless sewage pipes buried in the beach and even extending into the deep sea.
I wrote this poem after a holiday on Great Keppel, in the mid 1990s. The pollution around the amazing island of Great Keppel off the Queensland Coast infuriated me. However, more recently, something else raised my ire. It shouted that Pandoras Box is still wide open!
Image from teachoceanscience.net; drink can in a coral reef, just as I saw while diving off Great Keppel Island, on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef!
A scientist was warning of the threat of sea levels rising due to ‘global warming’. By the end of the century, sea levels may rise by 200 millimetres and threaten vast areas of coastal settlements. That’s true; if it happens it would be an issue for low-lying areas of settlements. However, it seems that in the 2 decades since I wrote this poem, little has happened to deal with the much greater threat of the poisons we are pouring into our waterways and oceans and polluting the great planet we call home! So what if sea levels rise, if all the fish in the oceans are dead or mutated?
Science seems to be evenly divided on whether the planet is warming or not. There is little genuine scientific evidence either way, as temperatures do not seem to have risen appreciably over this time, and for everywhere that claims to have had a rise in temperatures, somewhere else claims a fall. There are as many scientists expecting a mini ice age as there are a global warming outcome and frankly, history suggests it will cool before it warms again! After the Hockey Stick Fraud, the Himalayan Glacial Fraud and the Forged Email fraud, the IPCC credibility as far as global warming goes has been left in tatters. Neither has the anti-global warming side been able to conclusively prove scientifically that there is no threat! But it doesn’t matter!
Nothing matters while our oceans and rivers are still polluted! Pandoras Box is wide open!
In 2011 I wrote a blog The Hypocrisy of the Greens on this topic and specifically pointed out the pollution levels of rivers and marine ecosystems across China and South East Asia, because of the billions of people affected by this pollution. It has now got to the stage where 40% of the Asian seafood available in Australian supermarkets is tainted with pollutants that were outlawed decades ago, and with the levels of these pollutants making the seafood unfit for human consumption! However, for those living on the rivers and their floodplains and relying on them for their daily meals, 100% of their daily intake is of toxic food.
Outside of Asia, we have industrial areas all over the planet pumping chemicals into great rivers such as the Rhine, Danube, Thames, Mississippi and many more, each with a vast floodplain, and each supporting millions of people and massive ecosystems, either directly or indirectly.
Image from encyclopediadubuque.org; MISSISSIPPI RIVER BASIN WITH FLOODPLAIN AREAS IN RED
It’s up to the local people in every ecosystem, every catchment area, to clean up their own local waterway. Pandoras Box is wide open – can we get it closed again? Can we solve the problems we created through pollution of the planet, without getting side-tracked by petty arguments about whether the temperate will rise or fall a degree, or whether sea levels will rise or fall a few millimetres over the next few decades?
Image from lplmc.com.au; Clean Up Australia Day on the waterways
This takes discipline from everyone involved, people, communities and nations, over long periods of time. The problem didn’t occur overnight and won’t be solved by next week, if ever this Pandoras Box can be closed again.
If you know other people who care about the planet and wish to contribute to healing it, then please pass this message on. The world needs as many of its residents as possible on the task!
Til next time, fair winds and full sails.
Ray Jamieson
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