It Isn’t Really Up to Me

With climate change now set in stone

I go to turn on my TV,

And watch the other people moan:

“It isn’t really up to me.”

 

“I heard the US fracked for oil,

And China built some factory;

It’s them who rape and rot and spoil,

It isn’t really up to me.”

 

Of course I see their point of view,

They shirk responsibility.

But how can I change what they do?

It isn’t really up to me.

 

Lead by example I’ve been told;

Let others in their blindness see

Mistakes they’ve made as they grow old,

It isn’t really up to me.

 

But passiveness is not alive

To hear our Earth’s impassioned plea:

“Without you I will not survive,

It isn’t really up to me.”

 

“My atmosphere is turning bad

Because of your hypocrisy;

You stole away all that I had.

It isn’t really up to me.”

 

For evil to persist we know

That good need only oversee

The apathetic seeds we sow;

It isn’t really up to me.

 

And this is real, it’s not a dream;

So unless you start to agree,

There’ll be no one to hear you scream:

“It isn’t really up to me!”

 

Get on your bike, recycle more,

The answers are so plain to see;

Our problems you cannot ignore,

It isn’t really up to me.

 

 

This is a Kyrielle that was written for an event to promote Manchester’s public consultation on how we are going to tackle climate change together as a city. Climate change is real and climate change is happening. So many of us have become dead to this because of reading and hearing about it to such a great extent. Even worse, some of us think that we are not to blame and there is nothing that we can do about it. Well, we are to blame, but there is something that we can do about it. Don’t accept the fact that we are destroying the planet that we live on. My personal commitment is to have at least two days a week when I don’t eat meat, as reductions in meat consumption have been shown to lead to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, because of the high emissions in the production and transportation of meat.

An audio version of the poem can be heard here.