Yeah, I've noticed that line. Ben Gibbard has written about air pollution before ("Why You'd Want to Live Here" on Death Cab's "The Photo Album"), but that was O3, not CO2. ("I'm in Los Angeles today. Asked the gas station employee if he ever had trouble breathing and he said it varies from season to season.")

Still doesn't beat a Stars concert I went to, where Torquil Campbell said something along the lines of, "we could be the first generation that says, `forget about getting there on time, I'm going to save the planet and walk.'"

Hey, we'll need a lot of help to make "dead" environmentalism a little more alive and relevant to folks, I guess, and some benefit concerts might be cool.

Local artists, definitely (not quite pop culture though....).

Jack Johnson has some great lyrics in "Staple it Together"

______

It's really too bad
He became a prisoner of his own past...
It's really no good
He's moving on before he understood
He shot the future in the foot with every step he took
From the places that he's been because he forgot to look

He better staple it together and call it bad weather

...If the weather gets better we should get together
...And if we get together we'd be twice as clever
So staple it together and call it bad weather

________

I am not sure what he meant when he wrote it but I guess it depends on how you interpret it.

This one is about air pollution etc. in general, also by Jack Johnson, called "Traffic in the Sky"

________

There's traffic in the sky
and it doesn't seem to be getting much better
There's kids playing games on the pavement
Drawing waves on the pavement
Shadows of the planes on the pavement

It's enough to make me cry
But that don't seem like it would make it feel better
Maybe it's a dream and if I scream
it will burst at the seams and
this whole place will fall into pieces
and then they'd say...

Well how could we have known?
I'll tell them it's not so hard to tell
if you keep adding stones
soon the water will be lost in the well

Puzzle pieces in the ground
but no one ever seems to be digging
Instead they're looking up towards the heavens
with their eyes on the heavens
the shadows on the way to the heavens

It's enough to make me cry
but that don't seem like it would make it feel better
The answers could be found
we could learn from digging down
but no one ever seems to be digging
instead they'll say...

Well how could we have known?
I'll tell them it's not so hard to tell
if you keep adding stones
soon the water will be lost in the well

Words of wisdom all around
but no one ever seems to listen
They talk about their plans on the paper
Building up from the pavement
there're shadows from the scrapers on the pavement

It's enough to make me sigh
but that don't seem like it would make it feel better
The words are all around
but the words are only sounds
and no one ever seems to listen
Instead they'll say...

Well how could we have known?
I'll tell them it's really not so hard to tell
If you keep adding stones
soon the water will be lost in the well
lost in the well

bring us "Global Warming"

Malathion in our air
Mutant race developing,
Hypodermic sewage on shorelines,
Oil spills in the sea
Marine life disappears,
Extermination we contend,
Vanishing life we see
Reality's nightmare,
Environmental litigations,
Hazardous contamination
Lost cause situation,
Power plants pump the waste,
Dump sites overwhelm
Wildlife deteriorating.
Cars polluting / All our air /
Smog fills / Our lungs to hell
Politicians / Don't really care /
End this crisis
They never will.
Rapid pollution of the sea
Sewage falling out of greed
Global warming! Nationwide situation
Harmful waste! Nuclear cultivation
Garbage overflows...
..From land to shining sea
We deserve what we create,
In the Land of the Free
Toxic waste, generations harvest
Carbon dioxide in the air
That we breathe
In the air that we breathe!
Lead: DF
Global warming! Nationwide situation
Harmful waste! Nuclear cultivation
Nitrogen oxide, cancerous affliction
We deserve what we create
In the Land of the Free
Ultra violet / Radiation /
Groundwater / Contamination
Oil refineries / Spew the carbons /
Lung damage
Ozone depletion!
Global warming...
..Making profits all they care
Global warming...
..Clean air act is not enough

the engaging songwriter SONiA, of disappear fear, had this to say from their album "Echo My Call":

VERTIGO   by Sonia Rutstein

The grossest understatement of the year. Two thousand people melt cause our hearts are made of fear.  We built empires of money mania design. Now they expire, cause we live in a coffin of Time...Life could be simple...Life could be simple.

CHORUS:

Why don't we all fall down

when the earth spins round?

Cause we're wrapped up tight

in alibis.  Why don't we all fall down

when the earth spins round?

Cause we mistake lies for good advice.

I'd like to tell you a tenth of what i feel

I'm busy sleeping on your magnetic wheel.

The main league of scientists are talking till

They're blue in the face.  They gave the world a clock...three seconds are what we've got

To run our of human race...run our of human race.  CHORUS

If we lived our lives like we had three more seconds to live...they be no question just give and give and give and give and give and give and give and give and give and... CHORUS.

One section of the song goes:
It's a cool place and they say it gets colder,
You're bundled up now wait till you get older.
But the meteor men beg to differ,
Judging by the hole in the satellite picture.
The ice we skate, is getting pretty thin,
The water's getting warm, so we might as well swim.
My world's on fire, how about yours?
That's the way I like it and I'll never get bored.

I think the last line sums up how some people feel?

There's a problem, feathers iron
Bargain buildings, weights and pullies
Feathers hit the ground before the weight can leave the air
Buy the sky and sell the sky and tell the sky and tell the sky

Don't fall on me
(what is it up in the air for)
(it's gonna fall)
Fall on me
(if it's there for long)
(it's gonna fall)
Fall on me
(it's over it's over me)
(it's gonna fall)

There's the progress we have found
(when the rain)
A way to talk around the problem
(when the children reign)
Building towered foresight
(keep your conscience in the dark)
Isn't anything at all
(the statues in the park)

Buy the sky and sell the sky and bleed the sky and tell the sky

(repeat chorus)
Don't fall on me

Well I could keep it above
But then it wouldn't be sky anymore
So if I send it to you you've got to promise to keep it whole

Buy the sky and sell the sky and lift your arms up to the sky
And ask the sky and ask the sky

(repeat chorus, etc.)

this is an OPM song (Original Pilipino Music) sung by Lea Salonga, or Ryan Cayabyab or the band, Smokey Mountain, and even Christina Aguilera.

Return to a land called Paraiso
A place where a dying river ends
No birds there fly over Paraiso
No space allows them to endure

The smoke that screens the air
The grass that's never there
And if I could see a single bird, what a joy
I try to write some words and create a single song
To be heard by the rest of the world

I live in this land called Paraiso
In a house made of cardboard floors and walls
I learned to be free in Paraiso
Free to claim anything I see

Matching rags for my clothes
Plastic bags for the cold.
And if empty cans were all I have, what a joy
I never fight to take someone else's coins
And live with fear like the rest of the boys

Paraiso, help me make a stand
Paraiso, take me by the hand
Paraiso, make the world understand
That if I could see a single bird, what a joy
This tired and hungry land could expect
Some truth and hope and respect from the rest of the world

(Instrumental)

And if empty cans were all I have, what a joy
I never fight to take someone else's coins
And live with fear like the rest of the boys

Paraiso, help me make a stand
Paraiso, take me by the hand
Paraiso, make the world understand
That if I could see a single bird, what a joy
This tired and hungry land could expect
Some truth and hope and respect from the rest
Of the world...

Paraiso, help me make a stand
Paraiso, take me by the hand
Paraiso, make the world understand
That if I could see a single bird, what a joy
This tired and hungry land could expect
Some truth and hope and respect from the rest
Of the world...