WINTERSON. UK writer Jeanette Winterson’s novel “The Gap of Time” (Penguin, London , 2015, page 162) is a modern version of William Shakespeare’s play “The Winter’s Tale” and includes the following conversation between the lovers Zel (WS’s Florizel, son of King Polixenes of Bohemia) and Perdita (WS’s Perdita, daughter of Sicilia’s Queen Hermione and King Leontes who in mad jealousy believes that Polixenes has fathered both his son Mamillius and the girl subsequently called Perdita). With the passage of time (16 years), the young lovers Zel and Perdita sort out the mess bequeathed them (would that this were to be true of the worsening Climate Genocide but a catastrophic plus 2 degree Centigrade temperature rise is now unavoidable):
“Zel: “Benjamin Franklin said that if you have to choose between liberty and security, choose liberty.
Perdita: I guess they didn’t have world terrorism back then.
Zel: That’s just a way of scaring us.
Perdita: I don’t agree. People get killed.
Zel: Yes they do, but some guy with a bomb in a backpack – how often does that happen, and to how many people? But no work, no, home, no healthcare, no hope – that’s the everyday life of millions, billions of people. To me, that the threat. And climate change is the threat. And war, and drought and famine…
Perdita: OK – so we need security. A secure future.
Zel: No!. We need to be free from corporate control that runs the world for the few and ruins it for the rest of us”.