Tag Archive for "climate change" tag

It’s Blog Action Day today, the theme this year is Climate Change and all I ask is that you think of, tell us about and listen to songs about the environment, ecology, nature, and what is to many the most pressing of global concerns. A link to the song and some prominent lyrics would be grand.

Here’s the obvious one, but it’s still the finest to my ears: Joni Mitchell’s original ‘Big Yellow Taxi’. (You may not know that the revised version of the song includes an entirely expected price increase for admission to the tree museum; it’s no longer “a dollar-and-a-half”, it now costs “an arm and a leg” just to see ‘em.)

Here are a few more, several of which have been covered by different artists:

- Beach Boys, ‘Don’t Go Near the Water’
- The Cranberries, ‘Time Is Ticking Out’
- Dream Academy, ‘Forest Fire’
- Marvin Gaye, ‘Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)’
- Tish Hinojosa, ‘Something In the Rain’
- Kraftwerk, ‘Radioactivity’
- Rush, ‘Red Tide’
- Cat Stevens, ‘Where Do the Children Play?’
- Stephen Stills, ‘Ecology Song’
- Joe Walsh, ‘Song For a Dying Planet’

A few lines from the aforementioned Joe Walsh number:

“Is anyone out there?
Does anybody listen or care anymore?
We are living on a dying planet,
We’re killing everything that’s alive,
And anyone who tries to deny it
Wears a tie and gets paid to lie.”

If all that’s not enough to keep your minds pre-occupied today, I’d also like to hear about those inspirational musicians that we’ve been talking about lately and their endorsement of environmental campaigns. What are musicians and their record labels doing to help save a dying planet, and which are doing most?

Oh, and here’s something for you all to sign. Please?

Have you heard about this? See Paul McCartney’s video message, here, which explains why it’s a good idea for everyone to reduce their unhealthy dependence upon meat and commit to a weekly meat-free day. (If you’ve got the time and desire to find out more, you can do worse than read Compassion in World Farming Trust’s 2004 report, ‘The Global Benefits of Eating Less Meat’).

Meat production has undeniably become a serious environmental hazard. A huge strain on the Earth’s resources, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, the world’s livestock population is responsible for some 18% of greenhouse gas emissions. The transport industry is responsible for 13%.

Livestock production uses 8% of the world’s (increasingly scarce) fresh water supplies. Indeed, you use more water producing meat than you do grain.

Animal waste pollutes. In North Carolina, USA, for example, there are roughly as many pigs as there are people… and the pigs produce four times as much waste.

With increased prosperity, we are consuming more meat. The World Cancer Research Fund recommends that we eat no more than 500g of red meat each week – roughly the equivalent of three 6oz steaks.

In the West, where meat consumption is at its highest, one billion people are overweight. Developing nations have adopted a similarly unhealthy, meat-based diet. Even though the West eats three times as much meat as the rest of the world, meat consumption in ‘poorer’ countries has doubled in just over a decade.

The demand for meat is a major cause of deforestation. Estimates suggest that 70% of the Amazonian rainforest has been flattened to make way for livestock.

Worldwide, about 200 million hectares of forest has been lost since the ’60s, much of it cleared to rear cattle for the hamburger trade – vulgarly referred to as “hamburgerisation” – or to grow subsidised crops for, you guessed it, animal feed.

Consequently, one way or another, livestock now claims more than 30% of our planet’s land surface.

Lastly, and perhaps the fundamental reason for vegetarianism: factory farming is irrefutably inhumane. Millions of living creatures, bred only to be slaughtered after often brief, miserable lives of deprivation and suffering in intensive farms, do not exercise, enjoy fresh air, graze casually or interact with other animals. Selective breeding to ensure unnatural growth has created myriad health problems and deformities, which further add to the animals’ unnecessary suffering.

So, with all this in mind, if you don’t already, will you forgo meat on a Monday from now on? As Paul says, “it not only addresses pollution, but better health, the ethical treatment of animals, global hunger and community and political activism.”

Today just so happens to be Paul’s birthday, so a very Happy Birthday to him.