9 Jul 2025

Music with Kirsten Zemke: Songs about climate change

From Nine To Noon, 11:05 am on 9 July 2025
Sunflower on sheet of music

Photo: Pixabay

Music correspondent Kirsten Zemke looks at songs over the past 50 years that have tried to focus attention on issues like climate change and damage done to the environment. 

"Big Yellow Taxi" Joni Mitchell 1970

"Recycling Song" Jack Johnson 3Rs 2006 

"Pollution" Tom Lehrer 1967

"Four Degrees" Anohni 2016 

"Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" Marvin Gaye 1971

Kirsten Zemke is an ethnomusicologist at the University of Auckland's School of Social Sciences.