Popular Environmental Issues

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Every good movement needs its music. This weekend, in New York City and around the world, environmental activists are making their voices heard days before President Obama and world leaders attend a Climate Summit at the United Nations. This playlist is presented in tribute. The list is highly debatable—songs about ecology, nature and the environment cut across musical genres and generations—and the category is a bit reductive, if not trite. But there’s nothing trite about the people in the streets this weekend. These songs are for them.

1. Marvin Gaye, Mercy Mercy Me

2. Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi

3. Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, This Land is Your Land

4. John Prine, Paradise (Muhlenberg County)

5. Mos Def, New World Water

6. Malvina Reynolds, What Have They Done to the Rain?

7. Ziggy Marley, Dragonfly