Green guilt

110. 21 October 2021

Nice people worry about global heating

And biodiversity and pollution and fossil fuels.

We feel guilty about driving and going on holiday

To Majorca — though we still do it.

Guilt is the price of enjoying ourselves.

If we feel guilty for whatever it was we did,

Whatever eco-sin we committed,

Then somehow we’ve paid for the sin, and CO2

Is mysteriously scrubbed from the atmosphere

By the guilt or else, by the magic of tree-planting and

Suchlike guilt assuagers, offset.

*

Guilt offsets billions of tons of CO2 by itself,

Though the mathematics have never appeared in models;

The guiltier we feel, the better it is for our battered planet,

Though remarkably She doesn’t seem to notice the vast

Plumes of guilt arising from wherever nice people live.

*

Oddly guilt doesn’t seem to make any difference

To the models that say we must change or die.