Postcard from Poznan

by J J Cohen

Climate change works in two registers: the meteorological and the emotional. The mood of the world has changed. Nations take new joy in perilous exclusions. We are building walls. We are patrolling borders with vigor. Animosities thought to have vanished revive.

We are wondering who ought to be admitted through the gates of our increasingly small communities, who ought to be preserved. Who will knock and find no welcome? Who will perish at the outside? What price will those within protective walls have paid for their security?

Climate change: global warming and cold hearts.

(Illustration is one of my favorite pictures of Noah's ark, BL Additional 11639 f. 521. It's from a miscellany with a Jewish scribe and various Christian illustrators, a collaboration born of a fleeting moment.)