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Years ago I wrote some verses for that great Tom Lehrer song "We Will All Go Together When We Go". Lehrer was writing about global nuclear annihilation, a distinct possibility at the time. My verses also contemplated nuclear annihilation.

Today , 2015, while nuclear annihilation is still quite possible, as there is a new cast of "madmen who would use them", the greater danger is slower extinction of the human species , and many other species, due to human over-population and consequent ever-worsening ecological impacts, including global climate change.. So we might not all go together, ie simultaneously, but we could all go more slowly.

Maybe I should change the line to "we will all go more slowly when we go" ? Indeed, I think I will do that. The result is below :

MIDI music : "We Will All Go Together When We Go"

We Will All Go More Slowly When We Go

(to the tune of "We Will All Go Together When We Go" by Tom Lehrer

by Pam Green , © 2015, 2020

We will all go more slowly when we go :
Global Climate Change has ended rain and snow.
Though a chill would be damn nice,
There's no longer even sham ice
In the Ninth Circle of the In-ferno

We will all hear the tolling of that bell
That summons us to Heaven or to Hell ;
But if you ever get a day off
There won't be much of a payoff,
For there'll be nobody left whom you can tell.

We will cease before midnight with much pain
River Lethe will be aflood with acid rain .
Charon's boat needs to be larger
Hordes of passengers to barger
(and I need another line for this cinquain)

You will all go directly to your respective Nirvanas
You won't return as mice or men or as bananas.

We will all die more slowly when we die
It won't matter if you're gay or straight or bi-
Civil Union or Marriage
When you ride in Death's carriage
The horses' heads are towards E-ternit-tie

It won't matter if you're black or white or green,
If you are a pauper or a queen.
Vulcans, Klingons, or Cardashes,
When we're all reduced to ashes,
It turns out that all bigotry's obscene

You will all go directly to be judged by Osiris
Your soul may not outweigh a feather or a virus.

And we will all go more slowly when we go,
Ev'ry denizen of Desolation Row.
No re-writing your Back Pages
By those self-appointed sages
Who cite God as the source of all they know

With a lot less conversation and still less action ;
Seven billion corpses can't get no satisfaction.
No more laying all the blame
On that "Man of weath and fame" ;
It's each one of us who did the malefaction.

With a chorus of whimpers, not a bang,
Without the drama of nuclear Sturm and Drang,
As the global climate's warming
And the bees no longer swarming,
We will all hang together when we hang.

Our world won't end in frost, won't end in fire ,
No phoenix rising from our funeral pyre :
With drought's impact on farming,
Loss of acquifers alarming,
Starvation's not a nice way to expire.

The world won't end in fire or in ice
Widespread epidemics will suffice :
With emerging diseases
And the old ones spread by fleas-ses
With a little help from 'skeeters , rats, and mice.

As we race ungently into that good night,
It won't matter who was on the Left or Right.
Population explosion
And pollution corrosion
Will have turned our planet into global blight

We will all go more slowly when we go
Our extinction is inexorable but slow.
Our excessive population
Fueling ev'ry devastation
Seven billion, counting, still those numbers grow.

footnotes :

"Ninth Circle" : you did read Dante, didn't you ?
"you won't return" : no more reincarnation (for Buddists , Hindus , and Pythagoreans)
"when you ride in Death's carriage" etc is from Emily Dickenson's "because I could not stop for Death"
(added 2020) the question of Civil Union / Registered Domestic Partnership versus Marriage has been mostly settled by the Supreme Court in Obergefell v Hodges. Some couples still prefer Domestic Partnership , which in California provides the same benefits and burdens as does marriage.
in the Egyptian "Book of the Dead", which could be titled "What to Expect When You're Expiring" , it's jackel-headed Anubis who judges the soul of the deceased against a feather, but I didn't have a rhyme for Anubis. ( "virus" may be stretching it, as the ancient Egyptians didn't know about viruses. )
"Desolation Row" and "Back Pages" are Bob Dylan.
"a little less conversation" is Elvis Presley, then the verse segues into Rolling Stones, who "can't get no satisfaction" and who tell us that "that Man of wealth and fame" is He for whom we should have Sympathy.
fire & ice is Robert Frost, contemplating how the world ends
(added in 2020) :The phrase "skeeters , rats, and mice" could change to "skeeters, ticks, and mice". Fleas are infamous for Black Death, Yersina pestis, which in the past was mostly spread by rat fleas, but which can also be spread by other rodent fleas. Today it is still occasionally found in wild rodents' fleas, but if diagnosed in time it can be cured with antibiotics. Mosquitos spread many human and animal diseases, including West Nile, maleria, Zika, and several forms of encephalitis. Mice can spread Hanta Virus. Ticks, which are expanding their range for many species, carry quite a few diseases to humans and animals, including Lyme Disease, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Ehrlichosis, and many others. (I attended a symposium talk on Ticks at the vet school ; it was quite alarming !)
world population is over 7 billion in 2015 ; it was only 3 billion when Lehrer wrote the original song. and in 2020 , it's still higher, still growing, but no one publicly identifies this as the root problem that fuels so many of our other critical problems.

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created 7/11/2015	revised 9/02/2015, 9/03/2020
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