S Sorrensen
Byron. Saturday 8.30pm
It’s a numbers game. Two glasses of Ginger Necktar (no added vodka, I’m driving) have disappeared like refugees at sea. Where did they go? Squiggly noise from my stomach is a clue.
It’s been three hours since the sun dropped like a soccer player, the sunset colours competing with an industrial estate lighting up. Orange loses, white wins.
Next door, 14 cars in the supermarket carpark bathe in the light flooding from four super lamps on towers. Four children of a languid decade snort steam and throw their skateboards down, hoodies giving their faces respite from the heavy light, their teenage attitude belying the love and safety that surrounds them.
Here, in this hippie-chic house, 50 people gather. Downstairs is a mud cake with six candles; upstairs are 24 photos of a life flicking by on a screen. My friend celebrates his 60th birthday.
It’s a numbers game. Sixty is a big number. Well, it’s not as big as, say, 153. That’s a lot of asylum seekers to turn our backs on; to say no, bugger off, to. But 60 is way bigger than 37, the number of children on that boat.
The birthday bloke has two children to one woman, two lovers ago. He would never say no to a child needing protection. He’s human, and at 60, he’s an adult.
I contemplate having a glass of the organic cabernet sauvignon. It’s a numbers game. One hundred millilitres of wine is a standard drink and I can have two over the next hour if I am to drive.
Sixty years ago the number of people stuffed onto this blue planet increased by the birthday bloke’s one to 2,713,172,027. Now, there are 7,243,784,121people (give or take)… and counting. There’ll be 9 billion in 2040 if population continues to increase at this rate. But it won’t.
Everything has its time. Flowers bloom and wither. Governments come and go. People live and die. Civilisations flourish and fall. Species evolve and go extinct. Suns burn and burn out.
When you’re 60, you understand this and if this insight is not corrupted by ideas of heaven or rebirth, you acquire an empathy for all living things. You become an adult. Knowing we all die, makes life – all life – precious.
Sixty-six million years ago, dinosaurs, lords of their planet, looked up to see a big rock coming their way. They wondered ‘what the hell?’ as the asteroid blocked the sun and crashed like an economy, triggering a mass extinction of species. Seventy-five per cent of all species at that time ended their evolutionary story right then. Today, approximately three species an hour become extinct.
It’s a numbers game. I can have 200mls of wine at 12.5 per cent alcohol over the next 60 minutes and still be under 0.05 on the breathalyser. The federal government is trailling in the polls 45 per cent to 55 per cent but ‘stopping the boats’ is a vote winner with 71 per cent support.
Forty years ago I met the birthday bloke. There were 3,995,304,922 people on the planet including him and me. So, as we’ve filled these past 40 years with love, pain and pain relief, the population on this planet has nearly doubled. And there are 37 children bobbing on a big ocean…
CO2 in the atmosphere is now at 401.3 parts per million. At the start of the Industrial Revolutuion, 150 years ago, the CO2 atmospheric content was 280 parts per million. Like a blanket around a child refugee turned away, the CO2-charged atmosphere warms us but gives us no comfort.
What does it all mean, these numbers?
Nothing. Except…
Thrity-seven children are waiting for an adult to help them.
Evil will flourish when good people do nothing. Stand up Australia. These are children, these are people, open our eyes. The reprehensible actions are being done in our name only because we are not saying NO.
Well, you won’t find any adults in the Australian political leadership