The poem is a warning about climate change and confronts the reader into making a choice. Do we want to continue to live as we soon will or do already, or do we want to try to control the changes while there might still be a chance to do so? What do we do with the glaciers that are melting, cattle that are too hot to live, Alaskan beetles? Is it too late to stop the drought, the floods, the hurricanes, the blizzards before we just see the extinction of all life?