Artist	Song
Marvin Gaye	Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)
from Number 1's: Marvin Gaye (2007)
Joni Mitchell	Big Yellow Taxi
from Ladies of the Canyon (2007)
Melissa Etheridge	I Need to Wake Up (From "An Inconvenient Truth")
from I Need to Wake Up - Single (2006)
Peter Gabriel	Down to Earth
from WALL•E (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture) (2008)
Pete Seeger	My Dirty Stream (The Hudson River Song)
from God Bless the Grass (1998)
Talking Heads	(Nothing But) Flowers
from The Best of Talking Heads (2004)
Jack Johnson	3 Rs
from Sing-a-Longs and Lullabies for the Film Curious George (2006)
Pixies	Monkey Gone to Heaven
from Doolittle (1998)
Michael Jackson	Earth Song
from History: Past, Present and Future, Book 1 (1995)
Metallica	Blackened
from ...And Justice for All (2008)
Cat Stevens	Where Do the Children Play?
from Tea for the Tillerman (2000)
John Prine	Paradise
from German Afternoons (1988)
Jackson Browne	Before the Deluge
from Late for the Sky (2008)
Soundgarden	Hands All Over
from Louder Than Love (1989)
Spirit	Nature's Way
from The Best of Spirit (2003)
Steel Pulse	Earth Crisis
from Smash Hits (1993)
The Beach Boys	Don't Go Near the Water
from Sunflower / Surf's Up (2000)
John Denver	Rocky Mountain High
from The Essential John Denver (2007)
Tom Paxton	whose Garden Was This
from The Best of Tom Paxton: I Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound: The Elektra Years (2005)
Massive Attack	Hymn of the Big Wheel
from Blue Lines (1991)
Jamiroquai	Emergency On Planet Earth
from Emergency On Planet Earth (1991)
The Byrds	Hungry Planet
from (Untitled) /(Unissued) (2000)
10,000 Maniacs	Poison In the Well
from Blind Man's Zoo (2008)
Bruce Hornsby	Look Out Any Window
from Greatest Radio Hits (2003)
Sheryl Crow	Gasoline
from Detours (2008)

Comment:

When it comes to songs about change, nothing hits closer to home than home itself. This is where we live, which is why Mother Earth's well-being has been at the top of so many artists' minds for so long. Half a decade before Earth Day hit the national calendar, Pete Seeger cleaned up a whole river with nothing more than a banjo — and a ballad — when the plainspoken folksiness of "My Dirty Stream (The Hudson River Song)" helped spur Congress to pass the Federal Water Pollution Control Act . . . over a Presidential veto. Marvin Gaye dragged eco-consciousness from the meadowlands to Motown with "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)," featured on [i]What's Going On[/i], a state-of-the-union address as stunningly gorgeous as it is soulfully sad. And global warming couldn't get much hotter than it was in 2006, when Melissa Etheridge sounded a planet-wide S.O.S. in "I Need to Wake Up (From 'An Inconvenient Truth')," whispering, screaming, and [i]pleading[/i] her way to an Academy Award® for Best Original Song in the process. From Joni Mitchell to Michael Jackson, from the Pixies to Metallica, your favorite artists have been the canaries in the coal mine of environmental activism, singing songs of warning and making us care . . . even before we knew we needed to.

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