Anybody Listening?

I get tired of voices in my head, asking                        B7
Anybody listening?                                                            E
And I’m wired, and pitching it to you instead,            B7
Can you tell me what’s missing?                                     G#

Bananas in December, any place in town,                   C#7
Anybody listening?                                                           F#7
Does anybody want to turn the thermostat down?    B7
Tell me what’s missing.                                                    E  Bm E7

We’ve got feast or famine, there’s rage in the rain.  Amaj7  Am
The kind of weather’s hard to contain.                        G#m C#7
Anybody listening?                                                           F#7
Can you tell me what’s missing?                                    B7

So habit-forming, what people do now,                        B7
Anybody listening?                                                            E
We go anyplace, anytime our budgets allow.               B7
Tell me what’s missing                                                      G#

Acidify the ocean, sterilize the soil,                                C#7
Anybody listening?                                                            F#7
Just to have a little fun with our oil.                              B7
Tell me what’s missing.                                                     E  Bm E7

We got blinders on our eyes, fingers in our ears,         Amaj7  Am
Fooling people for all those years                                    G#m  C#7
Anybody listening?                                                             F#7
Can you tell me what’s missing?                                      B7

INSTRUMENTAL Verse1]                          B7 — E — B7 — G#7

On the edge of the roof, and we won’t look down         C#7
The answers that we need are all on the ground           F#7
Anybody listening?                                                              B7
Can you tell me what’s missing?                                       E  Bm E7          

I got solar panels, do what I can,                                     Amaj7  Am
Working on the city’s environmental plan,                   G#m  C#
Letters to the editor, march with our friends,               F#7
And gradually leaning vegetarian.                                   B7

But I’ve got to know, can you still stand tall, America? G#7, C#7
With your back against the wall, America?                     F#7  G#7
Is anybody listening?                                                           A     A#dim
Can you tell me what’s missing?                                        E   C#7
Oh, tell me what’s missing.                                                F#7  B7 E —

©Doug Hendren 2025

What’s it about?  While we are distracted by an authoritarian regime working to dismantle American democracy, it is easy to lose sight of the continuing threat of climate disruption.

While the technologies of low-carbon energy are now cheaper than fossil sources, and improving daily, our appetite for consuming more and more energy grows even faster. Nowhere is this more evident than in the unrestrained proliferation of electricity demand from artificial intelligence and data centers, much of which is wasted on nonessential activity.

Ocean chemistry has been altered by fossil fuel combustion, and chemical-dependent industrial farming has degraded more than a third of the world’s agricultural land, which in time will threaten food supplies and raise prices.

If we come to our collective senses, these problems, though enormous, are all solvable. I invite you to take a look at some of the magnificent work by Paul Hawken and his many collaborators, including Drawdown, Regeneration, and most recently, Carbon.

So what’s missing? What if we just stop bickering over nonessential things, and work together to preserve our life-support systems? They have always been provided for free, and they work really well. As popularized by R. Buckminster Fuller and others decades ago, “Spaceship Earth” is a remarkably beautiful, well-provisioned craft traveling through space, outfitted with everything we require. Let’s stop destroying it and ourselves, and start cleaning up our mess!

Has our ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, and our ability to function as a wealthy and capable nation been so poisoned that we will fail at our task, simply because we can’t talk to one another?