After the party is over

Humanity likes to feast; hundreds of millions of Christians feast at Christmas; other religions also have feasts and set times of their calendars. A feast is a feature of many festivals where all the joys of partying with loved ones come to the fore.

Of course, perpetual feasts and festivals would soon pall and people would long for the quietude of normality.

However, it seems when it comes to the use of fossil fuel energy and the earth’s rare resources the party never ends. Those people who are not invited to the partying of the western industrialised nations are rapidly starting their own parties modest at first but ever growing never ending, or at least never ending until the planet calls a halt. I am minded of Browning words about the partying of the people of Venice in their pomp.

“As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,
Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:
What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?”