Baby carrots of the world, unite! (Poem)

“Wow, I say, so, really, you’re just a bunch of jokers? A little crease spreads across her lips. I think she’s smiling. “Yes, we discuss very important topics like mousse and baby carrots, and bread. Sometimes we have very heated discussions.” About chocolate mousse? “No!” she says, appalled. “The animals.” Do you discuss whether moose are in danger of extinction? “No! I don’t know if I want to say this. We joke we are a moose cult.” Why? “It’s a very long story. And then we have these internal jokes, like the poem about the baby carrot.” At this point, I have to admit to her that she’s lost me. But she’s on a roll. “It’s Henrik Ibsen. You can Google it. We sometimes have discussions where we just write ‘babycarrot, babycarrot, babycarrot’.” (I do Google it later, and discover it’s a source of contention whether Ibsen actually wrote the 11-word poem Dear Babycarrot.)

That’s bonkers, I say. She nods, happily. I love seeing her like this. It feels a privilege to be let into her private world, however briefly. Lots of people would think you don’t have the time or the inclination to mess around, I say. “I think we mess around a bit too much. I may make us sound like idiots now, but that’s what we do.”

I drag her away from the world of moose and baby carrots to discuss Cop26. How optimistic is she that the conference can achieve anything? “I am not. Nothing has changed from previous years really. The leaders will say we’ll do this and we’ll do this, and we will put our forces together and achieve this, and then they will do nothing. Maybe some symbolic things and creative accounting and things that don’t really have a big impact. We can have as many Cops as we want, but nothing real will come out of it.”“

Intrigued, I ‘SearchScened it’ (because I rarely use Google to search the web anymore!) and found an interesting article suggesting that the baby carrot symbolises the working class who live in the shadow of the ruling class, which is symbolised by the carrot. The simple 11 word poem, “Dear Babycarrot”, could be interpreted as a way of highlighting inequality and injustice in the world. It coud also be interpreted as the young, living in the shadow of older generations.

As an alarming report by UNICEF makes clear, nearly half the world’s 2.2 billion children are at “extremely high risk” from the impacts of the climate crisis and pollution. Impoverished people of all ages also experience more climate vulnerability, as they are less able to adapt to its consequences, and often live or work in more polluted areas. In my poem, I connected democracy (an idealised version where people are actually treated equitably) with climate justice (where those who have done the most to cause the climate crisis are expected to provide financial support to those who have done the least to cause it yet are most negatively impacted by its consequences). 

The meaning behind ‘Conference of Parrots’

I have referred to the forthcoming UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP 26), as the ‘Conference of Parrots’  in this poem because I think that some world leaders often sound like parrots, repeating the same vacuous soundbites, such as “Net zero by 2050”, while continuing to dig and drill for fossil fuels at the same time. There is a huge gap between their lofty words and their actions on the ground.

Greta Thunberg highlighted this frustrating inconsistancy brilliantly when she said in her speech to the Youth4Climate summit in Italy (28 September 2021):
“Build back better. Blah, blah, blah. Green economy. Blah blah blah. Net zero by 2050. Blah, blah, blah. This is all we hear from our so-called leaders. Words that sound great but so far have not led to action. Our hopes and ambitions drown in their empty promises.”

I imagine some parrots as the caged pets of some pirate captains of industry, continuously repeating various annoying soundbites that their masters have trained them to say. The plundering captains of industry also ‘deflect’ the blame away from their own corporations and onto individuals. As the world is in desperate need of systemic change, those individuals must then make difficult and often environmentally damaging choices in their diet, transport, energy, clothing, etc. If a plant-based diet, fossil fuel-free transportation system and renewable energy grid, and a sustainable clothing economy were were widely available, most people would happily choose them. Unfortunately, isolated individuals can only do so much as consumers. We need to mobilse our connected, collective power to make a real difference and bring about system change.

It also seems clear that some politicians are bound by the fossil fuel industry’s dark money tether. Why else would they oppose climate-related legislation that the vast majority of their electorate, and most scientific experts, strongly support? The fossil fuel industry’s oily fingerprints are usually plain to see but most people do not realise that some big technology companies also use some of their vast resources to support groups that lobby against legislation that is designed to address the climate crisis. As reported in Grist in October 2021, a new report from the non-profit, ClimateVoice, founded in 2020 by former Google and Facebook sustainability leader, Bill Weihl, clearly highlights this issue with a traffic light system of classification. Among other things, ClimateVoice are, “calling on Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft to commit 1 in 5 lobbying dollars for climate policy aimed at a just transition to keep us below 1.5°C degrees of warming.”

It is this kind of injustice and undemocratic power imbalance that prompted us to create SearchScene as a way to divert money away from the likes of Google and towards uplifting causes that benefit the many, not the few. We donate at least 95% of our profits to environmental and humanitarian organisations who are working hard to tackle both the causes and effects of climate change and climate injustice. (In fact, while we get SearchScene off the ground, we have been donating more than 100% of our profits and we have not taken any salary ourselves as co-founders). 

SearchScene is for you if you think of yourself either as an ‘enshadowed baby carrot’ or as a  ‘shadow maker that reflects’ – people (and the companines they lead) who mindfully reflect on their own privilege and good fortune, and who want to redirect their life-saving resources to those who are still struggling in the shadows. 

The meaning behind creating ‘support networks, like trees’  

Peter Wohlleben’s book, “The Hidden Life of Trees” (2016), beautifully explains how trees are “social beings”, communicating with each other through a fungal “wood wide web” underground. They even share nutrients with their children and neighbours when they sense that they are struggling, often due to being in the shadow of a larger, more established tree, or when suffering from ill health. Nature can teach us so much about a different kind of social network, one that is nourishing, uplifting and equitable.

By choosing to search the web with SearchScene, you can be part of a new kind of network of like-minded people who want to create A Brighter Future, for all life on Earth.