Martin was bright as he stood up
And sang in the choir
His heart all in pieces was breaking
His head was on fire
They took him from that place and buried him deep in the ground
Out with the light
Quiet the sound

And it's a slow revolution that quietly turns
As the true word burns
And all of the people marching together out across the floor
And all that was after is now
As it was before

Sylvia sat staring out
Into the depths of her room
A moment of light from her brain cut through the dark
And pierced the gloom
Her children's voices were music came faint through the wall
From such a great height she looked down
There was only the fall

And it's a slow revolution that quietly turns
As the true word burns
And all of the people marching, stomping out across the floor
And all that was after is now
As it was before

So look at the shadows bent forward
Trying to break through the night
Huddled against the darkness
So close to the light
And my voice is breaking out here in this wilderness


For I see a time it is coming
I see a time of change
The Sun is burning the deserts
But water's filling the plains
And Noah is crazily chipping away at his ark
While all of us ready ourselves
To go into the dark

And it's a slow revolution that quietly turns
As the true word burns
The true word burns
And all of the people marching, dancing out across the floor
And all of this matter soon won't
Matter much any more

You can let go now, Daniel. You don't have to be anything for these people. As well meaning as they may believe themselves to be, they have always been prison guards. You have come to depend on them. It's only natural. We all do it.

In this respect they had adapted themselves to the very condition of the plague, all the more potent for it's mediocrity. None of us was capable any longer of an exalted emotion; all had trite, monotonous feelings. "It's high time it stopped," people would say, because in time of calamity the obvious thing is to desire its end, and in fact they wanted it to end. But when making such remarks, we felt none of the passionate yearning or fierce resentment of the early phase; we merely voiced one of the few clear ideas that lingered in the twilight of our minds. The furious revolt of the first weeks had given place to a vast despondency, not to be taken for resignation, though it was none the less a sort of passive and provisional acquiescence.
--Camus, La Peste

..Dear Mr. President, Internal Revenue regulations will turn us into a nation of bookkeepers. The life of every citizen is becoming a business. This, it seems to me, is one of the worst interpretations of the meaning of human life history has ever seen. Man's life is not a business.
And how shall i sign this? though Moses. Indignant citizen? Indignation is so wearing that one should reserve it for the main injustice...
-Bellow, Herzog

The closer art appears to come to a true representation of life, the further it moves from reality.
The inverse also holds.

This winter has been deep and long
I spent it in the soporific Sun
Came close to dying in my sleep
And now am waking up to ice

Last night I went to the new Globe theatre in New York. I'm not so big on the theatre but someone had got me tickets so I figured I'd check out the show. There were all kinds of lights and fanfare and tinsel flying about outside and ushers dressed up in Elizabethan shoes and hats and people waving flags and I think I even heard trumpets peeling over the sound of traffic and cab horns. So I get in and head for my seat, which is in a special box according to my ticket stub but which I can't seem to find anywhere as there are no numbers that I can see and it's really pretty dark. Finally I end up being told to sit on a couch, which I think is pretty amusing given the circumstances. And when the curtain comes up I'm pretty impressed to discover that I've come to what must certainly be the hit show in town. Cause up on the stage is unfolding the biggest Shakespearian production ever mounted. It's not just one play they're doing, but all of them at the same time; and all the main parts are being played by presidential candidates. It's quite astounding, and I'm thinking they'll never pull this off, but as it goes on I see that they've really put some work in and even though I'm pretty sure they're reading their lines off tele-prompters they're really not at all bad on the delivery--not to mention that the sets and costumes and all that are damned incredible. And I'm thinking I can't believe this as I'm trying to make out who's who. I recognise Obama of course. He's playing Hamlet. Clinton's playing Romeo. I think Giuliani's supposed to be Richard III but he hasn't really bothered to dress up so I can't be sure. Macain is actually the most convincing of the lot and is doing an admirable job channeling King Lear. Edwards is Henry V and is about to launch into his St. Crispin's Day speech when Clinton's Romeo jumps in and starts doing it instead. In the confusion I hardly even notice Romney who's dressed as Julius Ceasar but seems to think he's in a nativity play. And as my eyes finally adjust to the dim light I realise the craziest thing of all. There's not one single person in the audience.

Remember This: 350 Parts Per Million
By Bill McKibben
The Washington Post, Friday, December 28, 2007; A21

This month may have been the most important yet in the two-decade history of the fight against global warming. Al Gore got his Nobel in Stockholm; international negotiators made real progress on a treaty in Bali; and in Washington, Congress actually worked up the nerve to raise gas mileage standards for cars.

But what may turn out to be the most crucial development went largely unnoticed. It happened at an academic conclave in San Francisco. A NASA scientist named James Hansen offered a simple, straightforward and mind-blowing bottom line for the planet: 350, as in parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It's a number that may make what happened in Washington and Bali seem quaint and nearly irrelevant. It's the number that may define our future.

To understand what it means, you need a little background.

Twenty years ago, Hansen kicked off this issue by testifying before Congress that the planet was warming and that people were the cause. At the time, we could only guess how much warming it would take to put us in real danger. Since the pre-Industrial Revolution concentration of carbon in the atmosphere was roughly 275 parts per million, scientists and policymakers focused on what would happen if that number doubled -- 550 was a crude and mythical red line, but politicians and economists set about trying to see if we could stop short of that point. The answer was: not easily, but it could be done.

In the past five years, though, scientists began to worry that the planet was reacting more quickly than they had expected to the relatively small temperature increases we've already seen. The rapid melt of most glacial systems, for instance, convinced many that 450 parts per million was a more prudent target. That's what the European Union and many of the big environmental groups have been proposing in recent years, and the economic modeling makes clear that achieving it is still possible, though the chances diminish with every new coal-fired power plant.

But the data just keep getting worse. The news this fall that Arctic sea ice was melting at an off-the-charts pace and data from Greenland suggesting that its giant ice sheet was starting to slide into the ocean make even 450 look too high. Consider: We're already at 383 parts per million, and it's knocking the planet off kilter in substantial ways. So, what does that mean?

It means, Hansen says, that we've gone too far. "The evidence indicates we've aimed too high -- that the safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2is no more than 350 ppm," he said after his presentation. Hansen has reams of paleo-climatic data to support his statements (as do other scientists who presented papers at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco this month). The last time the Earth warmed two or three degrees Celsius -- which is what 450 parts per million implies -- sea levels rose by tens of meters, something that would shake the foundations of the human enterprise should it happen again.

And we're already past 350. Does that mean we're doomed? Not quite. Not any more than your doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high means the game is over. Much like the way your body will thin its blood if you give up cheese fries, so the Earth naturally gets rid of some of its CO2each year. We just need to stop putting more in and, over time, the number will fall, perhaps fast enough to avert the worst damage.

That "just," of course, hides the biggest political and economic task we've ever faced: weaning ourselves from coal, gas and oil. The difference between 550 and 350 is that the weaning has to happen now, and everywhere. No more passing the buck. The gentle measures bandied about at Bali, themselves way too much for the Bush administration, don't come close. Hansen called for an immediate ban on new coal-fired power plants that don't capture carbon, the phaseout of old coal-fired generators, and a tax on carbon high enough to make sure that we leave tar sands and oil shale in the ground. To use the medical analogy, we're not talking statins to drop your cholesterol; we're talking huge changes in every aspect of your daily life.

Maybe too huge. The problems of global equity alone may be too much -- the Chinese aren't going to stop burning coal unless we give them some other way to pull people out of poverty. And we simply may have waited too long.

But at least we're homing in on the right number. Three hundred and fifty is the number every person needs to know.

Bill McKibben is a scholar in residence in environmental studies at Middlebury College and the author of the forthcoming "Bill McKibben Reader."