Climate Change

• Oscar Kanaley, Grade 10
• Poetry
• 2021

I speak for the leaves,
Forever bound, forever attached, forever connected to their trees.
They’re urging us to change, to listen to their pleas.
We seek refuge in their bowers,
Yet a million trees are destroyed every three hours.
Climate change is no practice run, no dress rehearsal,
A few more years and there’ll be no reversal:
We’re getting smothered in dioxides,
6 tonnes in a year of car rides;
5 tonnes a return flight.
When the consequences are so bad, who cares if there’s cash in sight?
There are lessons to be learnt,
Because when the final tree’s burnt,
It won’t matter how much money we’ve earnt.
As we toil in the plastic that was once rich soil,
We’ll daydream of the future we lost. To think we did it all for coal and oil.