Song and Video by Intensive Care
We have a climate emergency. Extreme weather events increase daily, leading to more deaths and destruction, especially in the developing world. Species are becoming extinct at an alarming rate. Despite this, many, from young to old and including prominent politicians (ie. in Canada, the US and UK) remain in denial about the reality. “Climate Crisis” confronts this reality. The song is both a protest against the excuses not to act and a raw and hopeful call to action. George M. Johnson, the band’s founder and lyricist, wrote the song while immersed in wildfire smoke in Kamloops, B.C. in the summer of 2021. A certain political party’s denial of climate change aroused him to anger, and the lyrics and a tune came quite quickly. His then 15-year old activist son Ben composed the music in his bedroom and recorded the first version using a computer program. “Climate Crisis” is one of the songs featured in Johnson’s award-winning eco-comedy, Boomerangst. In it an impulsive baby boomer forms a retirement commune in remote Toad Valley with friends from his former high school rock band, called Intensive Care, to get back to the garden of their youthful green ideals. They dig up more dirt than they can handle before uniting and rocking out against a mining company threatening to expropriate their land. The story is based on actual events when a multi-national mining company tried to develop a massive open-pit gold and copper mine just south of Kamloops, an initiative that divided our city.