It’s been a year since I’ve posted anything on this blog. I haven’t been doing much writing (except for songs – more on that later), but I have been busy singing and playing guitar and getting out more into the music community. Doing so has helped immensely with the other thing I’ve been “busy” with: being thrown into a state of depression by the daily sucker-punches to our country by the demented man in the White House and those in Congress who enable him—and by the ever more horrifying news about climate change. Almost daily, there’s a stunning new report to take in; most recently, just to name a few: temperatures soaring over 46 degrees Celsius in Australia’s recent heat wave, causing massive animal die-offs (23,000 spectacled flying foxes, just one example); the melting of the ice sheet in Greenland reaching a tipping point; the catastrophic collapse of insect populations worldwide.
There are two warring viewpoints on who or what’s responsible for the climate crisis and what to do about it: A number of articles implore us to alter our habits and life styles to cut back on carbon emissions, and a nearly equal number that claim we’ve been hoodwinked into thinking climate change is our fault, while it’s really the capitalist world order and the rapaciousness of large corporations (the fossil fuel companies the most notable examples) that have placed short-term profits over the health and well being of all life on the planet. I personally place responsibility both on the profit-driven corporations and the individual. One individual cannot have much of an impact, whether for good or bad, of course, but one plus one plus one, up to millions, can add up to a huge impact, indeed.
Taking action, however, requires us to end our denial about climate change and start doing those things in our own power to help curb it. Along with demonstrating and demanding action from our leaders, we can end, or at least limit, our meat (and dairy) intake, since emissions from livestock contribute around 6 billion tons of greenhouse gases per year. We can also cut back on or eliminate air travel.
Cattle contribute large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere. One cow releases between 70 and 120 kg of methane per year. Since methane has a negative impact of the environment that is 23 times higher than the effect of carbon dioxide, the methane release of just one cow equals on average about 2,300 kilograms of CO2. A Japanese study showed that producing a kilogram of beef leads to the emission of greenhouse gases with a global warming potential equivalent to 36.4 kgs of carbon dioxide.
Air travel is also responsible for huge carbon emissions. Emissions for airlines were forecasted by the International Air Transport Association to grow to 897 million tons in 2018. What does this mean for an individual? Here’s an example: If you take one round-trip flight between New York and California, you’ll generate about 20 percent of the greenhouse gases that your car emits over an entire year. According to the World Bank, the average American generates about 16.4 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. A round-trip flight from New York to San Francisco emits about .9 metric tons of carbon dioxide per person, which for an American, represents about one-eighteenth of his or her carbon emissions for an entire year. But, a travel-by-air-loving individual reading this article might say, the plane would take off whether I’m on it or not! To which I say, if more and more people cut back on flying, fewer and fewer flights will take off. The airlines are, of course, in it for the profits, and are not about to fly nearly empty planes. (Such a situation would also surely accelerate the production of planes that emit far less carbon dioxide, including solar-powered aircraft.)
This denial/head-in-the-sand kind of mentality, and the direness of the situation we face, compelled me to write a song about climate change, which I’ve entitled “End of Days.” I plan to do my part (I’m already a vegetarian, and I have decided to cut way back on or eliminate my own flying) by performing it as much as possible. I’m posting the lyrics here. Please contact me if you’d like me to come sing it at any event you think appropriate.
End of Days
– Marsha G. Low
Passing by City Hall the other day
I spotted a woman wearing a sign, saying
“End of days! Mankind, you’re out of time!”
Many a time I’ve laughed at warnings
Of fire. brimstone, floods, and blight
But now I think, she may be right
The end of humankind might be in sight
Chorus: (2x)
End of days, end of days,
Could it truly be the end of days?
Another big storm heads up the East Coast
Fires out West burn out of control
They’re still drilling for oil and fracking for gas
As the death toll of man and beast keeps rising
Temps are soaring higher and higher
The White House clown is a climate denier
There’ll be no action from that quarter
Time to hit the streets and sow disorder
Chorus
You may think this song’s a bummer
But we must act now, cast caution asunder
March in the streets, put our bodies on the line
If you love living things, now is the time
There’s plenty to do once we stop our denying
Like eat less meat, and cut back on flying
And demand fossil fuels remain underground
Or to extinction we may be bound!
Chorus
ACT NOW, so it won’t be end of days! – 3x