THE CHANGE OF CLIMATE

(to the tune of Paul Simon’s The Sound of Silence)
 
I saw on the news today
A hundred homes were washed away.
Stormy waters pouring from the skies
Met the seas as they began to rise.
Elsewhere, of water there’s no drop.
This man’s crop
Was lost due to the change of climate.

Forests going up in fire
Ice caps melting, seas going higher.
Is this just on distant continents?
Will we too be touched by such events?
Can we escape this world-wide tragedy,
You and me?
Should we worry ‘bout the changing climate?

Once folks cooked their food on wood,
And kept warm as best they could.
Then some wonderful black rocks called coal
Warmed our homes and made the railroads roll
And when oil came gushing up we could go far
In our car
We didn’t think about the changing climate.

Oil and coal and natural gas
Were created eons past.
Carbon locked within them will go free
When we burn them for electricity
Carbon joins with air to make up something new:
CO2.
Too much of it will change our climate.

Fact’ries whirl and spew out stuff.
No one tells them “That’s enough!”
Bringing all that stuff from here to there
Planes and trucks have to pollute our air
Make us sick and spout that carbon to the sky
Way up high
Where it’s going to change our climate.

Famine stalks the parched land.
Verdant pastures turn to sand.
Glaciers shrink and mountain streams run dry.
Lightning flashes from a heated sky.
And who will help those people when they flee
Refugee
Victims of the changing climate?

How to fix the mess we’re in?
Well, here’s how we can begin.
Catch the wind and then the sparkling sun
And our atom friend Uranium
Whose tiny size belies enormous powers
Which are ours
To use against the changing climate.

Keep those fossils in the hole.
Yes we’ll fight a war on coal!
Make polluters pay the laws they flout.
Plant some trees to suck the carbon out
And we’ll get our power in ways that are carbon free,
You and me,
We’ll work to stop that changing climate.
 
- Julie Wornan