Listen to the songs (Soundcloud channel)

Soundcloud playlists:
Climate change songs of the '60s (18)
Climate change songs of the '70s (13)
Climate change songs 1980-2006 (7)
Bob Dylan climate change songs (11)
Beatles climate change songs (7)
Lindisfarne climate change songs (6)

Neil Young climate change songs (2)

The story of Climate Songs

Global warming will affect the conditions of life for coming generations, as well as for all other living species. It's already happening, and the emissions of greenhouse gases increase year by year, making the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere rise faster and faster.

 

What can you do ?

Hopefully you can be inspired by the songs. You are also welcome to make better recordings of these songs, improve the texts, add animations to the songs or contribute with new songs.

Sing songs about Climate Change  -  Karaoke

Go to YouTube channel »  Karaoke Global Warming Songs

The karaoke songs:

The Second Sunday (Whiter Shade of Pale/Procul Harum) - Karaoke
The Perfect Crime (We Both Go Down Together/Decemberists) - Karaoke

A Beauty in Disgrace (Space Oddity/David Bowie) - Karaoke

Make Our Planet Great Again (Je ne regrette rien/Édith Piaf)  -  Karaoke

We Owe It (I Will Survive/Gloria Gaynor)  -  Karaoke

We Were Given  (Nights in White Satin - Justin Hayward/The Moody Blues)  -  Karaoke

Make My Dream Untrue  (Make You Feel My Love/Dylan) - Karaoke
Blowin' in the Wind (Dylan) - Karaoke
Who Changed the Climate?  (Positively 4th Street/Dylan) -  Karaoke  

Castle of Doubt  (All Along the Watchtower/Dylan) -  Karaoke

Just a Market Failure  (Democracy/Leonard Cohen) -  Karaoke

The Climate is a-Changing  (The Times They are a-Changin'/Bob Dylan) -  Karaoke

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall  (Bob Dylan) -  Karaoke

Exhausta est ratio carbonis (Strawberry Fields Forever/Beatles) -  Karaoke

What can we do about climate change ?

We live in a global market economy. We can do simple and obvious things like trying to avoid car-driving and air flights, but as consumers we can only choose between the products that the market has decided to make.  For every single product we buy there are normally thousands and thousands of decisions taken, all with the same common basis: The climate has no value; There is no cost for emitting CO2, it's free.  These decisions involve just about everything: how the product is transported and packaged, how it is produced, where it is produced, what products and raw materials are used in the production, how are these materials produced and transported, etc. Trying to trace all of the decisions taken by the market for a complex product would lead into an endless incalculable network of decisions. 

There is really only one way of taking control over the emissions, and that is to have a cost for emitting CO2. The good news is that it is a really powerful tool.  It is stupid to complain about the market not considering the effects climate change, when it is both easy and our responsibility to provide the market with what it needs to solve this, a cost for CO2 emissions.  

With a cost for emitting CO2 all the thousands and thousands of decisions taken by the market will work to reduce the emissions. It's simple and it's effective. Climate negotiations that does not lead to a cost for emitting CO2 have little meaning. A cost for emitting CO2 can be introduced either as a carbon tax or a carbon emission trading system. Read more about carbon pricing.

Other sites with climate songs

Dedications

Make Our Planet Great Again  To the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, for his speech Make Our Planet Great Again.

We Owe It     To climatologist and geophysicist Professor Michael E. Mann, famous for his studies of the temperature history of the earth, especially a graph of the temperature the last 1000 years known as the "hockey stick" because of its shape. His latest book is "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines"  ("one of the most useful books yet in explaining climate science", "Mann's shocking first-hand testimony of the repeated attempts to discredit him and his work")

While Glaciers Weep   To George Harrison and the Beatles.

Make my Dream Untrue    To James Hansen, NASA's former lead climate scientist. “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO₂ will need to be reduced from [current levels] to at most 350 ppm.” A recent study by Hansen and 16 co-authors, concludes that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates, resulting in sea level rise of at least 3 meters in as little as 50 years.

Six Degrees      This song is about global warming and about the love of this earth. It is for my wife who has given me a world of love. 

Carbon Man      To John Lennon and the Beatles

Damage Done      To Neil Young. Listen to his new climate anthem: Who's gonna stand up. - (Acoustic version)

Climate Hero      To Mark Lynas, who wrote the book Six degrees which also inspired the song with the same name. See the film Six Degrees.   

Everybody Knows    To my oldest daughter  

For No One        To Paul McCartney and the Beatles. Listen to his Love Song to the Earth

CO₂ Society     To my son.

Who Changed the Climate     To Bob Dylan

Poor Old Planet     To climate scientist and meteorologist professor Bert Bolin. His most important achievement is associated with the foundation of the UN climate panel, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He led the panel’s work during the first crucial years (1988–1997). His highly significant role as leader of the IPCC remains widely acknowledged.

Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall    To my second daughter. Listen to Dylan's best performance ever of A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall together with the Tokyo New Philharmonic orchestra the eighth century Buddhist temple of Tōdai-ji, in Nara, Japan in May 1994. In front of the world's largest wooden building, housing the largest Buddha statue in the world "... he really opens his lungs and heart and sings, like he's not done for many a year...The only word for it majestic."  

Blowing in the Wind     To my youngest daughter

We Can Work It Out     To Andrin

The Climate is a-Changing     To Al Gore. See his "An Inconvenient Truth".   

All Fall Down      To Alan Hull and Lindisfarne

Just a Market Failure        To Sir Nicholas Stern, the economist behind the report  "Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change".   Nicholas Stern: "Climate change is the greatest market failure the world has ever seen"

Exhausta est Ratio Carbonis        To Lenya Elisa. The music is Strawberry Fields Forever and the title means "The carbon budget is spent". 

Beauty in Disgrace         To Kevin Anderson.

Greta Thunberg's Speech         To Greta. The song lyrics are taken from her speech in the UK Parliament in April 2019. Read the full speech here.

Castle of Doubt         To Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, who recorded the first (?) really great climate song in 1991: "The Trees are all Gone".   "The glaciers near the polar camp / Have all begun to melt / Temperatures are on the rise / ... / Water levels shifting tides / ... / What will finally happen when / The farm lands turn to dust"

You Don't Care        To Trump for not pretending .... The song is about the men, probably much more dangerous, who oppose what is needed like carbon pricing but claim to have a balanced view. Those who fight any, or all, of the costs and actions necessary for saving the planet for the billions to be born.

The Great Concert Against Global Warming

I have a dream of a Concert Against Global Warming. In my dream great artists from the sixties/seventies would be standing up and singing for the preservation of our planet. Singers like Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Roger McGuinn (Byrds), David Crosby (Byrds), Donovan, Justin Hayward (Moody Blues), Mick Jagger (Rolling Stones), Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Ringo Starr, Joan Baez, Al Stewart, Tom Rapp (Pearls Before Swine), Neil Innes (Rutles) and many more …. would sing great songs with great texts about global warming. But my dream doesn’t stop with the icons of my youth, the concert would also include singers like Colin Meloy (Decemberists), Mike Scott (Waterboys) Jakob Dylan, Julian Lennon, Bonnie ”Prince” Billie, Conor Oberst, Steve Forbert, Dixie Chicks and many, many more.

And this concert would be followed by hundreds of concerts all over the world and musicians, singers, songwriters would everywhere would demand a stop to what we are doing with the climate. Artists would call for real action - a global carbon pricing that would make emissions drop.