Hey team, and welcome back to one5c! I grew up in a home where the stereo was always on. I’m not talking about nice, vibe-y background music. I’m talking about classic rock rumbling through vintage floor speakers so big we used them as end tables. Because of this, I have a borderline bonkers memory for songs of a certain era, lyrics in particular. Every day, headlines spark lyrical references that cue up a never-ending mixtape only I can hear.
This week is no exception. But in addition to stories about home-electrification buddies triggering “Our House” by CSNY to play on loop in my brain, Tyler’s got a fresh look at the role of mainstream music in the climate movement, complete with a playlist to get you revved up. —Corinne
WHAT WE’RE INTO THIS WEEK
By Shreya Agrawal
Greenwatch
The companies fueling plastic pollution
Every year, the world tosses 350 million metric tons of plastic. According to a new study in the journal Science Advances, just 56 companies account for half of branded plastic waste. The Coca-Cola Company is the largest contributor, creating 11% of the total, and PepsiCo comes in second with 5%. While these food and beverage giants tend to point at recycling as a mitigation strategy, the researchers say that pollution, in fact, traces back to production. “We know what works: make less plastic and use less plastic,” Neil Tangri, science and policy director for the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, told The Washington Post.
Good read
Biden’s scorecard for protecting public land
In this spring’s blitz of rule-making, President Biden’s administration has issued several measures about the use of public lands. While not every regulation has won universal praise from environmental advocates, a recent dive in High Country News explores the potential impact of the moves. One, for instance, blocks mining and extraction on 13 million acres (an area almost as big as West Virginia) and could mark the most significant change in public-land management since the 1970s. This is a “generation-defining shift in how we manage our shared resources,” Wilderness Society president Jamie Williams told HCN.
Accountability check
A call to tax billionaires
Last week, some G20 leaders suggested a 2% increase in taxes for the world’s 3,000 billionaires. This tax, originally proposed by a Nobel-winning economist, would help raise more than $300 billion to address global inequalities caused by the climate crisis, wars in the Middle East and Europe, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Brazil, Germany, Spain, and South Africa are leading this campaign, saying “it also ensures that everyone in society contributes to the common good in line with their ability to pay.” A billionaire tax is not just an international idea, either: A poll conducted by Bloomberg News/Morning Consult in seven swing states found that most voters approve of raising taxes on the nation’s wealthiest to fund Social Security programs.
Cause for optimism
Electric coaches to help part ways with fossil fuels
Right now, more than a quarter of households in the United States run only on electricity, but the majority still use natural gas, propane, and other fossil fuels. Transitioning to a fully electric home, however, can be an overwhelming enterprise—unless, perhaps, you can find a buddy to help you along the way. Since last October, nonprofit Rewiring America has been training “electric coaches.” According to reporting in Canary Media, these volunteers—largely homeowners who’ve already been through the switch themselves—can help folks navigate the challenges that come with rewiring.
MIC-DROP CLIMATE STAT
53%
The portion of mail in the United States that’s junk. Making and sending all those unwanted credit card offers and catalogs creates about the same emissions 9 million cars. Here’s our guide to opting out.
CONSUME THIS
The soundtrack of climate action
By Tyler Santora
Music has a long history with activism, and the environmental and climate justice movements are no exception. From folk and classical to hip-hop and pop, recorded tunes have incorporated environmental messages for nearly a century. As far back as the 1930s, you can find songs like blues musician Charley Patton’s “Dry Well Blues.” Since then, the use of music in the environmental movement has blossomed and diversified. It entered the mainstream following the first Earth Day in the 1970s, with songs like Joni Mitchell’s critique of urban development in “Big Yellow Taxi” and Neil Young’s vision of humans leaving a destroyed Earth for a new planet in “After the Gold Rush.”
Last week, the Museum for the United Nations took a new approach: They dropped a fresh playlist featuring Nature as a collaborating artist on re-released songs from headliners like Ellie Goulding and David Bowie. Profits from the playlist will go toward conservation efforts. Here’s why activists keep coming back to the power of music—especially when it comes to the climate.
Why music works
Facts and figures, books and speeches are great, but there’s a reason our favorite tunes stick with us. Music is inherently emotional, and performers use that emotion to motivate people to vote, protest for change, and take individual actions like, say, dialing back their emissions-heavy activities. “A great three-minute protest song can be more effective than a 400-page textbook: immediate and replicable, portable and efficient, wrapped in music, easy to understand by ordinary people,” Indigenous Cree Canadian singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie wrote in American Indian Magazine in 2013.
Environmental activist music is a powerful tool in particular, because it spans genres. It has a long, international history in hip-hop, featuring artists as mainstream as Taboo from the Black Eyed Peas. It’s present in choral and classical music: Japanese geoscientist Hiroto Nagai, for example, composed a haunting string quartet piece based on 40 years of climate data from the Arctic and Antarctic.
Songs can also spread awareness about specific issues. Take Lakota rapper Frank Waln’s “Oil 4 Blood,” rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline: “Words of my ancestors up in my head/ Food for thought, our kids underfed/Your oil is mud, they want the earth dead.” Taking a different approach, “But a Flint Holds Fire,” a choral song based on the 19th-century poem “Flint,” incorporates quotes from people living through the Flint water crisis.
Our climate playlist
Ready to feel inspired? We created a Spotify playlist featuring many of the songs in this story—plus a few others with environmental messages that, frankly, slap hard.