Climate activist Greta Thunberg has teamed up with UK band The 1975 to record a song in she calls for mass civil disobedience to force action on greenhouse gas emissions.
In the track, titled “The 1975,” Thunberg recites an essay over ambient music, urging listeners to join a popular rebellion against climate change.
“Everything needs to change. And it has to start today,” she says in the song, released July 24.
“So, everyone out there, it is now time for civil disobedience. It is time to rebel.”
Swedish 16-year-old Thunberg has become the figurehead of a burgeoning movement of youth climate activists after her weekly protests inspired student strikes in more than 100 cities worldwide. She spoke at the Extinction Rebellion climate protests in London, which brought the British capital to a standstill in April. Proceeds from the song will be donated to the UK-based grassroots organization.
Thunberg says a decisive effort is needed to prevent “unspoken sufferings for enormous amounts of people,” and calls for plain speaking about the scale of the disaster facing the planet.
“Solving the climate crisis is the greatest and most complex challenge that homo sapiens have ever faced,” she says.
“The main solution, however, is so simple that even a small child can understand it. We have to stop our emissions of greenhouse gases.”
The rules have changed, says the climate activist, and people need to wake up.
“To do your best is no longer good enough. We must all do the seemingly impossible,” says Thunberg,
“Because there are no gray areas when it comes to survival.”
The track will form part of The 1975’s upcoming album “Notes on a Conditional Form,” scheduled for release in August.
Singer Matt Healy said meeting Thunberg had been “such an inspiration”.
The song follows a call from prominent climate scientists to make environmental damage a war crime.
International lawmakers should agree a fifth Geneva convention that would include wildlife safeguards in conflict areas, control the spread of weapons, and make armed forces accountable for environmental damage they cause, according to a letter in the journal Nature.
The letter was co-signed by 24 scientists and published ahead of a meeting of the United Nations’ International Law Commission.