The
bet
‘And yf that olde bokes weren aweye,
Yloren
were of remembraunce the keye’
‘If we
didn´t have the old books any more,
the
key to memory would be lost.’
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women
The school day ´s over, in my mind
thoughts still whizz and scenes replay
and now and then I have a brainwave
on what I should have said or done.
With buzzing head and heavy legs
I settle snugly in my armchair
To look at stories I might read
with my junior English students.
‘What kind of story would they
like?‘
I wonder. Funny or exciting
they were sure to say and short
with preferably a happy ending.
That´s fine with me if in addition
the story helps us view the world
in a somewhat different light.
We´ll see, I think, and just start reading.
An evening of a lovely day,
a steam boat to America
a storm breaks out, the rolling ship
makes plates and glasses slide down tables.
Queasy with their seasickness
some passengers excuse themselves.
There´s one, however, who is pleased,
he thinks: ‘The storm could make my fortune.
Why should the captain not be wrong
about the ship´s run till tomorrow?’
No sooner thought than done he bets
his savings on the low field.
He knew he´d put their joint account
at stake, but pictured his arrival.
His wife would be surprised and smiling,
he in their dream car driving up.
When he wakes up in the morning,
all is calm. The storm has gone.
Am I still dreaming? … No, it´s true!
I´m lost! The look my wife will give me!
His mind is wandering. Oh, my God!
How still to win against all odds?
Slow down the ship. But how to do it?
Bribe the captain, share the spoils?
… He
could jump, why ever not?
An accident, they wouldn´t doubt it.
Man overboard! Full speed astern!
The low field sure to win the pool.
He thinks it through quite carefully:
Light clothes – less weight to draw him down,
a witness - the lady on the railing.
Thus reassured he jumps far out.
The lady hears his shout for help
and sees him fall into the sea.
and then upon a crest his head,
and, waving frantically, his arm.
‘A man has just gone overboard.’
she says addressing another lady,
who meanwhile has turned up beside her.
‘Nonsense,’ chides this lady´s voice.
‘You are imagining things’, she adds.
‘Now come with me.’ ‘But he was kind!’
her charge insists. ‘He even waved
to me.’ She´s firmly led away.
… By this ending strangely touched
I lay the book aside still musing.
A powerful story, thought-provoking,
but what would be my students´ view?
Thus hovering between thought and dream
and sleep I lose all sense of time
until I feel a suffocating
heat envelop me completely.
My eyes are blinded by the light
though foliage provides some shade.
My hands touch sandy ground, my body
leans against a tree´s rough bark.
It takes some time until I notice
sitting cross-legged facing me,
quite close, a woman of great beauty.
‘I thought you´d never wake.’ She says.
I ask confoundedly. ‘Where am
I?’
She laughs: ‘How come you do not
know?
It seems, you´ve walked the earth
eyes closed,
ignored the danger drawing near.
The temperature on earth has
risen,
close to three degrees, the sea
is threatening people´s
livelihood,
the desert´s likewise spreading
fast.
You have not heeded any
warning,
refused to act on obvious clues.
No effort can reverse the
process,
you have to face the
consequences.’
The heat is growing more
intense,
the glare invading on the shadow.
sweat ´s running down my face and
chest,
my shirt clings to my back with
wet.
‘And who are you?’ I gasp, quite
short
of breath. ‘I´m Earth
personified’,
is her reply. ‘My purpose is
to enlighten mankind on its
plight.’
Her voice is fading out, my
head
is spinning and my vision´s
blurring.
Then all is dark, my neck is
hurting
my eyelids heavy, hard to lift.
Now finally I wake up aching
in my armchair still quite dazed.
What has happened? What a dream!
How strange and still how true it´s
been!
Global warming is a threat
not taken seriously enough.
The course which has so far been followed
is indeed a bet on life.
Of course, it´s complex, men need jobs
and companies must be successful,
the basis of a thriving country,
of prosperity for all.
But corporations are too powerful.
They dictate conditions. Looming job cuts
Soon make politicians yield.
The profit motive rules the world.
Instead sustainability
should have first priority,
decide the value of a company,
the size of management salaries.
Mankind needs a social contract
preventing economic agents
from exploitation both of man and nature
by holding them more to account.
Beware
of those who sweepingly
condemn as red tape regulations
set up to limit abuse of power
be it by banks or corporations.
We should not bet on food and water
on people´s livelihood. Worldwide,
succeeding generations deserve
a liveable
environment!
You see, my mind has come full circle,
picturing the story´s outcome.
Will nations have the strength to change
their course as time is running out?
You can be sure, the earth keeps spinning.
Let´s listen to
Geoffrey Chaucer once more, this time to Parliament
of Fowls, ll. 57-58. Guided by Africanus the Elder on a tour across the
heavens in a dream, the narrator sees the planet Earth from above:
'Thanne shewede he hym the lytel earthe that
here is,
At regard of the hevenes quantite.'
‘Then he showed him the little earth.
How small it was compared to the heavens!’
Gudrun Rogge-Wiest, August 2017
Annotations:
Sources:
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women (1372-1380), l. 25-26
The Riverside Chaucer, 1987
Dahl, Roald (1953) 'Dip in the Pool', Great English Short Stories, Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Sprachen.
Low field:
the distances
shorter than the 20-mile range defined by the captain´s estimate. (Dahl,
9)
Facts on climate change
99 % of all
climate scientists are convinced that the average temperature on the surface of
the earth has risen due to human influence since the era of industrialization,
i.e. roughly over the last 150 years.
Global warming is largely responsible for the increasing force and frequency of
natural disasters such as devastating hurricanes, flooding of vast areas and
severe droughts that have caused millions of deaths and destruction on a large
scale. The respective impacts of the flooding in South East Asia and of the
hurricanes Harvey and Irma in the Caribbean, Mexico and the US are only the
most recent incidents in 2017.
It is
apparent that the effects of climate change are about to become a more and more
important cause of migration. ‘The refugee will be the iconic figure of the 21st,
just as the worker in the 19th and the victims of oppression in the
20th, because both the number of conflicts and the effects of
climate change are going to increase.’
Nevertheless,
representatives of nations have failed to stipulate emission standards that
would make it possible to control climate change by keeping the increase in
temperature under two degrees or preferably even under 1.5 degrees. The
national climate protection plans handed in at the UN Climate Conference in
Paris in December 2015, do not add up to a sufficient reduction of greenhouse
gases.
Despite the
urgency of the issue and although Germany has failed to live up to its
reputation as a model for climate policy, climate change has hardly been a
topic during the parliamentary election campaign. Germany´s greenhouse gas emissions are the fifth highest within
Europe, 50 % of its electricity is generated by coal and the greenhouse gas
emissions caused by traffic have even risen since 1990 instead of falling
according to plan.
The diesel emissions
scandal has shown that the industry does not take emission standards seriously
even though they have been adapted to their liking.
Ein Beispiel sind die Überflutungen in Südostasien im Sommer 2017:
‘Hundreds
dead in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, while millions have been forced from their
homes and 18,000 schools shut down across the region’ […] ‘The
International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) says
the fourth significant floods this year have affected more than 7.4 million
people in Bangladesh, damaging or destroying more than 697,000 houses.’
Vergleich der
Länder Europas: http://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/384/bilder/dateien/3_abb_thg-emi-eu-vergleich-pro-kopf_2016-10-10.pdf
Importance of regulations
Due to
lobbying by the car industry the German federal governments´ proposal to the EU
commission for exhaust emission standards allowed emissions to be so high that
they would not improve the quality of the air significantly. Although the industry was virtually given the
chance to set the limits themselves, their cars still exceeded them.
In the case
of the Grenfell Gower in London fire safety regulations were violated. The
burning high-rise is positive proof of the high stakes companies are willing to
play for in order to raise their profits. Simultaneously, voices within
government circles spoke out for a relaxation of fire safety standards to cut
down on public spending. In this context it was even considered not to equip
state schools with fire sprinklers any more in future.
Environmental
protection and nature conservation laws are often the first target of campaigns
against so-called red tape. The current administrator of the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) in the USA, who in his carreer so far has stood out as
a staunch opponent of the agency he now runs, is commissioned to repeal the
environmental laws set up during Barack Obama´s presidency. The budget of the agency has been
cut by 31 %, so that many projects such as ‘a program, which helps restore some
of the nation’s most polluted sites,’ can´t be continued.
In Poland property
owners can cut down trees without a permit after a change in law brought about
by the right wing conservative government. ‘As soon as news of the new law
began to spread you could hear axes blow and chainsaws screeching not only in
the forests or gardens in the countryside, but also in the city centres of
Warsaw, Krakow, Gdansk or Wroclaw. In Warsaw old trees were cut down in several
parks. The square in front of the city hall in the ‘Śródmieście’ borough in the
city centre, which is controlled by the nationally governing Law and Justice
Party, has been turned into a clear-felled area. Around Lake Sarbski, which is
close to the Baltic Sea and famous for the picturesque forests of its surroundings,
thousands of trees were cut down within two days.
The Polish
government also violated EU nature conservation law by commissioning vast areas
of primeval/virgin forest in the Białowieża National Park, which is a world nature heritage
site, to be logged.
Although
Germany´s social market economy seems to have tamed capitalist forces, caution is
called for, as well, both with regard to the right wing populist AfD (Alternative
for Germany) and the FDP (Liberal Democratic Party). The new CDU-FDP coalition
government in North Rhine-Westphalia is about to abolish the 8-hour workday,
the 11-hour break between two workdays and rent regulation. Subsidies for
renewable energy are to be cancelled.
‚Das
Bundesdieselamt von Heike Faller*, Simon Kerbusk und Claas Tatje.
Die Zeit, 3.August 2017
’Last October, schools minister Nick Gibb said
the inclusion of sprinklers in new school buildings would add 2%-6% to the cost
of works. Controversial government proposals to relax fire safety
standards for new school buildings as a cost-cutting measure are to be dropped
by ministers in a major policy U-turn following the Grenfell Tower fire.’ UK
News, The Observer, Saturday 24 June,
Florian Hassel ‚Bäume fällen leicht gemacht‘, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 9.3.2017,
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/umwelt-baeumefaellen-leichtgemacht-1.3412023
‚Polen rodet letzten Urwald Europas‘, Spiegel Online, 31.7.2017
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/bialowieza-urwald-polen-laesst-trotz-eugh-verbot-baeume-faellen-a-1160753.html
