164 APPENDIX B
The most majestic icebergs thaw
Glaciers are melting
New trade routes emerge
As opportunity.
That submerges hope.
It is a more powerful motivator.
What about the opportunity
To save hundreds of millions,
Entire coastal cultures from submergence?
When debate is anchored in opportunism
Hope is reduced to a spectacle.
We must defy and contest such
Imaginaries. Call them out
Consistently
As misleading hopemongers.
Hope is not Janus-faced, it does not look away
When counter-arguments are deposited.
Hope rests in respectful judgement,
In rooting for measured deliberation.
With no respect, no room for basic dignity,
No recognition of the right to life
In all its fullness
And diversity
It is apocalypse now.
Channel hope
To resist the dislocation
That perpetuates fossil fuel hegemony
And paves the way
For regulation to depoliticise
What is the most political thing of all:
Our future, our here and now,
The right to echo the call
Championed by Greta Thunberg.