Uninhabitable Earth, Paragraph One

It is worse, much worse than you think (than you think)

The slowness of global warming is a fairy tale (it's a fairy tale)

Perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn't happening at all (ain't happening at all)

And it comes to us bundled with several others (several others)

In an anthology of comforting delusions

That all this warming is an Arctic saga unfolding remotely

That it is strictly a matter of sea level and coastline

Not an enveloping crisis sparing no place and leaving no life, undeformed

That it is a crisis of the "natural" world

Not the human one

None of this is true

None of this is true

None of this is true

That those two are distinct (natural and human)

That we live today somehow outside or beyond

Or at least defended against nature

Not inescapably within and literally overwhelmed by it

Not inescapably within and literally overwhelmed by it

None of this is true (none of this is true)

None of this is true (none of this is true)

None of this is true (none of this is true)

That wealth can be a shield against the ravages

That the burning of fossil fuel is the price of continued economic growth

That growth and the technology it produces

Will inevitably engineer a way out of disaster

A way out of disaster

That there is any analogue

To the scale and the scope

Of this threat in the long span of human history

That might give us confidence in staring it down

None of this is true (none of this is true, none of this is true)

None of this is true (none of this is true, none of this is true)

None of this is true (none of this is true, none of this is true)

None of this is true (none of this is true, none of this is true)

None of this is true (none of this is true, none of this is true)

None of this is true (none of this is true, none of this is true)

None of this is true (none of this is true, none of this is true)

None of this is true (none of this is true, none of this is true)

None of this is true (none of this is true, none of this is true)

None of this is true (none of this is true, none of this is true)

None of this is true (none of this is true, none of this is true)

None of this is true (none of this is true)