'Climate Changes Everything' by Herbert Girardet

The major climate changes now certain to affect the planet change everything. In 300 years we will have burned 300 million years worth of fossil fuels. Some of us are having a great time as a result, but in the process we are undoing much of the natural evolution of life on earth: Life over many millions of years has played a key role in removing carbon dioxide from at atmosphere, and tucking it away deep inside the earth's crust, out of harms way. In the last 300 years we have been reversing this process. But putting carbon, from coal, oil and gas, back in the atmosphere, we are changing the very precondition of life on earth, including human life.

This is the age of fire and the more fires we light – in the boilers in our houses, in the engines of our cars, trucks and planes – the faster we change the living conditions on our planet. Now we have to deal with the consequences and try and prevent the worst. This means taking urgent action! Action to stop the oceans from flooding the land, action to stop hurricanes from devastating our homes, action to stop the death of much of the earth's forests and coral reefs.

The fact is, that we know what to do: we can run our cities on the power of the sun, the wind and the sea. We can run our cars and trucks on the fuel of the universe – hydrogen. We can find new ways of leading prosperous lives, and not destroy the earth in the process. But it takes much determination to make theses changes, because those who are used to making decisions in our society have got set in their old, redundant ways. Ever since the pioneering days of the industrial revolution 200 years ago, burning fires to power the world became the norm. Now this can no longer work – we are in the process of destroying the natural world, of starving millions of people through draughts, and of endangering the lives of those not as yet born.

Let us celebrate together the beauty of the earth, the nature of the human creative spirit, and most specifically, the power of music. APE stands for Artists' Project Earth – deep down we are all artists. Climate change is forever – certainly as far as human life span is concerned. So let us work together to change the decisions that are made, and not the moderate climate of our home planet Earth that we cannot do without.