Life & Wisdom Quote by Carol Ann Duffy

Duffy’s line has the clipped urgency of someone updating an old warning label for a new era. “The dangers are different now” doesn’t just mark time; it signals a moral shift. The threat isn’t a single enemy you can point to, negotiate with, or defeat. It’s distributed, ambient, and largely self-authored. By framing danger as “different,” Duffy sidesteps apocalyptic cliché and instead insists on a harder truth: our crisis is not exceptional heroism waiting to happen, but ordinary behavior refusing to change.

The phrase “abuse of the planet and our resources” is deliberately unsentimental. “Abuse” is an ethical word, not a scientific one. It implies agency, harm, and a relationship with power built into it. The planet becomes less a scenic backdrop and more a victim of human entitlement. “Our resources” carries a quiet indictment too; the possessive pronoun exposes the logic that enables extraction in the first place. We claim ownership, then act surprised by the consequences.

Calling it “an anxiety” is where Duffy’s poet’s ear shows. Anxiety is not fear; it’s fear turned chronic, low-grade, and internalized. She’s naming a contemporary mood: climate dread as background noise, something we live with while still commuting, shopping, scrolling. The subtext is that guilt has become a lifestyle accessory unless it’s translated into responsibility. Duffy, writing in a period when ecological collapse is both measurable and routinely deferred, captures the uncomfortable intimacy of the problem: the danger isn’t coming. It’s us, already here, uneasy with what we know.