Pirate's Cove

But, hey, don’t worry, this whole thing is completely rational and grounded in science

The Climate Change in Our Veins – Scott Poynton

My father was diagnosed with cancer at the end of the year 2000 and his doctors gave him just 12 months to live. They put him on chemotherapy in a bid to extend his life but in February 2002, he succumbed in something of a flurry, at home, in my arms.

Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia” had been a big hit in Australia and it made a big impression on me; Tom Hanks’ star performance in the movie, Philadelphia, too. When my dad was battling his cancer, I’d listen to the song over and over, striving to make sense of it, grappling to understand what it must be like to hear your blood in your veins, knowing that it was at once giving you life while simultaneously carrying the disease that would kill you. I imagined a terrible, desperate despair.

I’m starting to feel again like I did during my father’s illness. I’m listening again to Springsteen’s song. This time I’m hearing the blood in my own veins and it’s tainted not by a privately borne disease but by climate change, the terrible malady affecting all humanity, all life on earth.

Oh, wait, it gets better

We lost Tom Hanks’ character in Philadelphia, dying in the arms of his beloved. Today, we cradle our own lives in our arms, not in any movie but in real, raw life. As long as blood still runs in our veins we have hope, but that blood carries indifference, the disease that could ultimately kill us. We’re fast running out of time to treat it and my despair is that we don’t appear to have the inclination.