A soap bubble was blown so long ago
The wide-eyed, Wonderland-oblivious toddler of humanity blew clumsily through the loop
Gripped in one chubby fist

Billions of people
Billions, billions
(Billions of people will die)
Will die

And the soap film hesitantly bulged out
Powered by bronze, steel, the horse collar, crop rotation, sailing ships and steam engines
Smoothed into the fragile sphere
As were pickaxes, dynamite, production-lines, industrial farming, the Haber Process, internal combustion engines, and the fractional distillation of crude oil, fast-breeder reactors
Embedded in the almost imaginary skin of this bubble we blew
This quintessentially breakable world we knew through all our lives
And implicitly assumed was real

Billions
(Billions, billions of people)
Of People
(Billion of people)
Billions, billions
(Billions of people will start to die)
Will die

When it turns out it is not
We built a civilisation on stuff we borrowed
We assumed that fossil fuel in the ground was a permanent state: a natural condition forever.
We thought fertile topsoil was a given
And clean water another gift, temperate climate, fish-filled oceans, the very air

Billions
(Billions, billions of people)
Of People
(Billion of people)
Billions, billions
(Billions of people are starting to die)
Will die

As our assumptions start to crack along fine lines
And this is a bubble in the purest economic sense
Because it actually worked through all the time during which it seemed to work
Until one day
Suddenly
Boom!
It’s always been a lie

If this island earth were a spaceship
Power failing, the food limited, life support pumping dodgy air
We’d get all of engineering there
And have a meeting to decide
Who can be stuffed in lifeboats
Who can be stuffed in freezers, and who
– because engineers are nothing if not completely realistic –
Won’t reach their destination.
Now you can try to get that one before the United Nations
Now good luck with that
And not to be a bore, but

Billions
(Billions, billions of people)
Of People
(Billion of people)
Billions, billions
(Billions of people will die)
Will die

And I don’t trust that lot to do much about it
Although, also, I, with my slightly less than human head on
– because I have one of those – I say:
OK, billions will die, it is hard to overestimate the size of disaster facing us
But it’s not the end of the world
It’s just the end of the world as we know it
And as long as we don’t completely blow it
And as long as we weather the change, ride the tsunami
Take what life remains us
As and where we find it
And not go end-of-days-fucking-crazy
With a Mad Max style weapons stash and supercharger
On everybody’s Christmas list, then

For the billions
Who by chance
Do not die
Do not die
Do not die
(For the billions who by chance do not die)

There will be some loss of privileges
We won’t be eating meat
we won’t be mining bitcoin
May not be driving personal cars
But we can hope still to be here in some form
We haven’t been attempting the impossible

It’s not that a planet cannot support an apical species with a silly headcount
It’s just that we didn’t do our homework
We don’t have all the required tech
Have not closed the carbon curve
Balanced the energy budget
Or worked out what happens when ageing plastics want to retire

Not produced a society that can keep its calm on pressure-cooker starship Earth
But it can be done
Still, not a comfortable thought
And it’s going to take some time
During which

Billions, billions, billions, billions
Billions, billions, billions, billions
Billions
Billions
Billions
(Billions of people)

Billions, billions, billions, billions
Billions, billions, billions, billions
Billions
Billions
Billions
(Will die)

Billions, billions, billions, billions
Billions, billions, billions, billions
Billions
Billions
Billions
(Billions of people)

Billions, billions, billions, billions
Billions, billions, billions, billions
Billions
Billions
Billions
(Will die)

It’s not the end of the world
It’s just a soap bubble
It’s the end of the world as we know it

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