Does music have anything to do with climate change?

Some of the headlines just from this morning:

• How hot is too hot for the human body?
• Iconic Yellowstone Park faces startling climate threats
• The warming climate is sparking wildfires on the East Coast
• How to sabotage climate legislation? An Exxon lobbyist explains
• Ancient creatures went north to flee climate change, now animals are doing it again
• Western states face possible all-time heat records this weekend
• Heatwave killed an estimated 1 billion sea creatures, and scientists fear even worse
  

For me, writing and playing music is an anodyne. It puts me in another part of my brain--less anxious and in more flow.

I have had an interest in climate change since the 1980s. As I recall, it became more prevalent in the news, particularly in the science section of most major newspapers and in science magazines.

In 1997, I wrote a piece of music titled Hot New Earth, probably in reaction to something I was reading at the time. The Ozone Hole was still an issue then as well, and is what inspired the "removal of skin" line. The "No, man is too smart" line can also be read without the comma. The bouncy Motown-ish groove is kind of ironic with the gravity of the subject matter. The way the music sounds doesn't always have to match, and perhaps it's shouldn't: You don't want to make more people more depressed.

A few weeks ago, Shepard Fairey was interviewed on the Climate One podcast. I was questioning whether music or anything in the arts has anything to do with the climate system. It does in the sense that it energizes them with anodynes:

"It’s important that people understand the severity of the issue but is also important that they don't feel paralyzed because it's too overwhelming."

Recently from the School of Life on whether philosophy should be more like pop music:

"Since the 1960s, philosophy has stalled, while pop has conquered the world. It is now the foremost medium for the articulation of ideas on a mass scale. This explains why, if it is to survive, philosophy must study pop; part of its salvation lies in understanding pop’s techniques so as to be able to become, in crucial ways, a little more like it."

But once you've calmed down, what's the next step? Simply having an awareness about it, or even reading about it does nothing to the dire climate situation that we are in. Apparently, most are still ignoring as much as they ever have. It's a popular way of resolving cognitive dissonance.