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Blood Money

by Hakim Be

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about

Written for the Climate Connections Town Hall hosted by the Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club on April 30th, 2013 in Albuquerque, NM.

lyrics

Blood Money for Sierra Club, NM

“Water is the main ingredient in substantially all of our products. It is also a limited resource in many parts of the world, facing unprecedented challenges from overexploitation, increasing pollution, poor management, and climate change. As demand for water continues to increase around the world, and as water becomes scarcer and the quality of available water deteriorates, our system may incur increasing production costs or face capacity constraints which could adversely affect our profitability or net operating revenues in the long run.” – From the SEC Disclosure…of Coca-Cola….

the blood
coursing through the veins
of our mother
is blue

water is the main ingredient
in her offspring
in us

we will incur
the costs

our profitability
will be obsolete

our net operating revenue
will flat line
in the long run

which is not very long
at all

while we gamble
on the next strike

we are promising ourselves
a stroke

spend money
we do not have
on terror
we cannot see
but won’t spend a dime
on the climate
bending in our bones

the flood
ravaging our sinuses
the apocalypse
brewing in our gut

the future we can touch
right now

there is a famine in our soul
wailing el reparto
but we cannot hear it

singing the song of three sisters
mourning maize, bean and squash

in a rush to armor borders
instead of vegetation
we leave our food supply unprotected
as if there is anything else
worth saving

not even fava beans
can adapt to a drought
of common sense

when will we ask
if we can weather this wealth?

when will we start blaming acts of God
on the inaction of men?

when will we look the storm in the eye
and do more than apologize?

when natural catastrophes in the past 30 years
have more than doubled globally
yet have quadrupled in North America, alone
will we cast stones at Haiti
and keep calling our mother out her name
until we become Sodom and Gomorrah?

our beliefs are not enough
reality is heating up
you can pray
or you can plan
but, I suggest we do both

what are we waiting for?
Albuquerque to become beachfront property?
for snow packs to become life support instead of a weekend getaway?
for Atlantic City to resemble Atlantis
for wildfires to replace bonfires on the Fourth of July?

for Mother Nature to stand her ground
bitchslap the coal and electric plants with power outages every summer
tide the fossil highways with all of her broken water
and force us to evolve

how come we are not born again, even after
Super Storm Sandy baptized Wall Street?

what if water was currency?

would we spill it from our pockets
and not pick it up?

would we hoard it
under our beds
and in our bodies?

would we save it
for our children’s future?

tell me how much a football field
of New York City taxicabs under water costs?

tell me cost of pretending God doesn’t exist?

the biggest treehugger known to man
been talking to us through plagues, floods and burnin’ bushes since Noah’s kids

hey, Oklahoma Senator Jim “Climate Change Is a Hoax” Inhofe let me give you a tip
if you really want more people of color in your voting district, this is it
cause when the tide rises 4 feet by century’s end
and the coastal states with all their immigrants migrate in, you’ll get your wish

your habit is expensive
your denial
the costliest of sins

the government spending you loathe will lessen
as soon as you let climate change legislation begin

don’t worry about upsetting the publicly traded companies you hope fund your re-election bid…
because the truth is green
and the SEC’s been requiring them to disclose the Climate Change risk to their bottom line since 2010

your profitability
is obsolete

all net operating revenue
flatlines
in the long run

which is not very long
at all

sadly,
in the end

all of us
are not going to share in the profits
but we will all

reap the costs.

© Hakim Bellamy April 30th, 2013

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released April 30, 2013
Written and recorded by Hakim Bellamy

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all rights reserved

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Hakim Be Albuquerque, New Mexico

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