By Michael Whelan

I am sorry my son but we have done it alas
We inherited great riches of oil coal and gas
A bounty of time over millions of years
We spent them in a life time at the cost of your tears

Our generation’s greed will be our badge 
We denied the problem and left it to you
I had places to see and things to enjoy
So fix if you can what we have destroyed

We travel and covet things from afar
The colonial spirit is alive in our heart
When they travel to our land to seek help from war
We scorn and repel them get away from our shore

We drive our cars and burn our bright lights 
All powered by coal well into the night
There are renewable options but we do not care  
We cannot impact our lifestyle or shares

We hope you have time and the energy to spare 
To fix the mess we have left in the air
We bequeath it to you in the spirit of our time
We hope you get over it but we really don’t care