Save our Rainforest

Bruce Cockburn - If A Tree Falls
Music Video Codes

I was at a forum today to discuss ways of trying to promote sustainable forest management in Malaysia which has one of the richest species diversity and the world's oldest rainforest. Sadly, there was little concensus or agreement on how to achieve this. Without this agreement, much of the remaining forest may be ravaged by uncontrolled and discriminate logging within the next ten years. The way I see it, economics is driving the destruction of the rainforest and it is economics that can stop it. Consumers in Europe, North America and elsewhere are beginning to say that they want products from sustainably managed forests. I hope consumers will also be willing to back that up by being willing to pay a premium for such products.

I hope you enjoy the video and help get the message spread. I know it's an old video (1988) but I think it is still the anthem for the rainforest. Bruce Cockburn wrote this and is one artiste with a social and environmental consciousness that shows up powerfully in his work. Lyrics are provided below.

Rain forest
Mist and mystery
Teeming green
Green brain facing lobotomy
Climate control centre for the world
Ancient cord of coexistence
Hacked by parasitic greedhead scam -
From Sarawak to Amazonas
Costa Rica to mangy B.C. hills -
Cortege rhythm of falling timber.

What kind of currency grows in these new deserts,
These brand new flood plains?
If a tree falls in the forest does anybody hear?
If a tree falls in the forest does anybody hear?
Anybody hear the forest fall?
Cut and move on
Cut and move on
Take out trees
Take out wildlife at a rate of species every single day
Take out people who've lived with this for 100,000 years -
Inject a billion burgers worth of beef -
Grain eaters - methane dispensers.

Through thinning ozone,
Waves fall on wrinkled earth -
Gravity, light, ancient refuse of stars,
Speak of a drowning -
But this, this is something other.
Busy monster eats dark holes in the spirit world
Where wild things have to go
To disappear
Forever
If a tree falls in the forest does anybody hear?
If a tree falls in the forest does anybody hear?
Anybody hear the forest fall?