Waiting.
The water was rising but in places that didn’t matter enough. No palaces, no parliaments. It’s okay we have floods now and again. We come together as a community, it’s a beautiful thing to see. Let’s not make this political—it’s a time for togetherness. The water may have been dirty and destructive. But cool to the skin, accidental. No need to shout, the water wasn’t tepid. They just needed better defences for the next time. The frogs would be happy for the deluge.
Waiting.
Think of our future, a girl said, why should we pay for your mistakes? She tried to put them all in hot water. No charts, tables, graphs or evidence could be as emotive as a girl's voice, or, as the march of children in the street. Children matter, of course. Emotive, yes. But, business mattered more. Denial. The companies who thrived on destruction, pretended it wasn’t there or pretended to care. Hey, look, we plant trees. They certainly needed trees. The world was on fire—but not enough of it. They could look over in pity. A cruel natural disaster. The frogs were hot in the forests, their skin boiling, but the water was still too cool.
Waiting.
They were in hot water, heading close to a tipping point they couldn’t see. All the shouting and striking and fighting had done nothing. No reduction. The world wasn’t hot enough yet—the issue was too opaque for them, too distant. Was it at a boiling point yet? It didn’t feel so hot. Too many carbon comforts. Too many powers comfortable in complacency. Change had a cost. Short-term gains, long-term costs. They were never very good at picking the sensible option. They celebrated greed and materialism while the debris of their countries plagued elsewhere. Stinking mountains of greed. Out of sight, out of mind. They were moving too close to the sun now but could not feel the burn. Yet.
They were still waiting.
Waiting for what? What if the deniers were right? That it was all wrong and they accidentally made a better and cleaner world? Would that be so bad?
What if it was right and like frogs in hot water they boiled?
Would they jump to action before they burned?
Or, would they end up waiting--
waiting for the end?