Lyrics

Hey. Wal-Mart!

(The Global Warming Song)

The temperatures are rising
The days are staying hot
Mother Earth, she has a fever
Her ozone shield has been forgot
By industry and government and consumer as well -
“Someone else should do something”
we all like to yell....
But our battle cry is hollow
The warming still goes on
It's time we used our Voice and Hands
to sing out a new song.....

CHORUS:
[We're singing...]
Hey, Wal-Mart, what do you say?
Why aren't you a leader in a really big way?
Why aren't you selling SOLAR things, and WIND POWER? ..fuels are free...
You methane-making feedlots,
could be using GAS for ENERGY,
Hey GM, Ford and Chrysler, what do you have in store for us?
Why can't we buy a SOLAR car
as easy as a Taurus?
Hey all you corporate giants
with all the clout you've got
Why don't you use your power to heal our world instead of fill your pockets?

The movie makers churn out the violence and the sex
TV talk shows give us enough dirt to make us crane our necks
into other people's lives and homes
without a second thought
And singers, actors, painters shock us saying
“Well, that's what they bought!”
The media is big on blood and bombs and body parts
While Nature keeps on weeping
“Have we all lost our hearts?”

CHORUS:
We're singing....
Hey, Garth, what do you say?
Why don't you use your talent in a really big way?
Why aren't you singing songs of hope and visions of a future,
painting pictures of a healing that we all could start to nurture....
In our world and in our families...
There's such a lot to do, to care
How can we keep pretending
That the dragon isn't there?
Hey all you artists, singers, moviemakers and TV
Why don't you use your power to heal our world
instead of watch it die?

REPRISE
We're singing...
Hey, PEOPLE, what do you say?
Why don't we all use our talents in a really big way?
If each of us would speak out and do what's right for us,
then we'd create a bright new vision
of a world SUSTAINED by Love.

One summer, through circumstances you don't want to hear, I ended up living full-time in a used 32' RV on the rural grain elevator property that I'd owned for years. The temperature was hitting 105° most days. Then we realized that our newly acquired RV's hot water heater was not functioning. The local home-store had 40 gallon home water heaters on sale for $120, but an RV 10 gallon hot water heater was selling for the outrageous price of $300.

Well-water cold showers at 7 a.m. were a harsh wake-up routing. Meanwhile, I found I could shower at 2 p.m. and have a REALLY hot shower - the 100' of water hose leading to the RV held a lot of solar-heated water with those 100° plus temperatures.

However, if I wanted to shower as the sun rose, I was stuck with a cold shower, as the heat did not hold.

On a sweltering 100° September day, my frustration reached a boiling point, and I wrote my first consumer-protest song.....Hey, Wal-Mart, why don't you carry solar hot water heaters - for RV's AND for homes? I just want to buy a nice, economical 10 gallon-sit-on-the-roof solar water heater, and have a hot shower in the morning.