We live, beloved, at the complex height
Of what the scholar Brian Fagan dubbed
The Holocene Long Summer, since the Ice.
The implications of all this are stunning -
For religion, for our histories and for science.
Yet few, among our fellow human beings,
Have as yet acquired the flimsiest knowledge
Of the revolution that has taken place
In geo-science, just within our lifetimes.
Today, for instance, we can say it’s known
That there have been at least nine glacial eras,
Broken, every hundred thousand years,
By relative respites, called inter-glacials;
Which last, on average, just ten thousand years;
But ours has lasted half as long again.
The Vostok ice core, from Antarctica,
Allows us to infer that we have flourished
Chiefly in that half as long again.
Yet now we learn that that mere flourishing
Has itself brought quite disturbing change;
Which, we’re informed, could bring us all undone.
What are we to make of this new finding,
Even as alarums ring world-wide,
Of global over-warming, caused by wealth?
Before the onset of the said long summer,
No humans lived in lasting settlements,
Or cultivated fields, or tended kine;
But the summer caused our numbers to explode:
Our technologies, our factories and our yields;
And now we must learn fast, before the fall.