Climate Movement Asks: How Can We Sleep While Our Beds Are Burning?
by SolveClimate Staff - Oct 2nd, 2009
Midnight Oil's "Beds are Burning" resounded across the airwaves in the late 1980s as a global call to conscience — "The time has come to say fair's fair, to pay the rent, to pay our share."
The song's powerful refrain — "How can we sleep while our beds are burning?" — is just as relevant today, and it's back, sung by dozens of world-famous musicians as the new anthem of a climate justice movement.
Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary-general and president of the Global Humanitarian Forum, unveiled the new rendition in Paris, describing it as a modern Band Aid to energize the Internet generation.
He urged people around the world to join the effort and become climate allies by recording themselves saying 'tck' and uploading it to the web site Time for Climate Justice to create a human clock ticking down a reminder of the urgent need for climate action. The goal is to create the biggest online petition ever, targeted at world leaders attending the UN climate negotiations at Copenhagen in December.
"Together, we can create such a noise that our leaders will not be able to ignore it when they meet in Copenhagen this December to agree a new post-Kyoto climate agreement," Annan said.
As Annan explains at the start of the video:
“Climate change is having a real impact on the lives of individuals and communities around the world. We must do something about it. In December in Copenhagen, our leaders will have an opportunity to come up with a robust climate agreement that is viable and will help make this planet a better place.”
Midnight Oil, whose frontman Peter Garrett is now Australia's environment minister, is joined on the new soundtrack by Serena Ryder, Lily Allen, Andre, Fergie, the Scorpions, and close to 40 other musicians, plus the voices of Annan and Desmond Tutu. Their new refrain:
The time has come to take a stand,
It's for the Earth, it's for our land.
The time has come, a fact's a fact.
The heat is on, no turning back.
How can we dance when our Earth is turning?
How can we sleep while our beds are burning?
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