Celebrating The ‘Sorry’ Video By Prince Ea
After an incredible 14.6 million views on YouTube in the almost four year time period since it was posted, it seems appropriate to remind people of one of the most powerful inspirational environmental messages of the 21st Century. A message not given by a politician from a high office but from a straight talking native of St Louis, Missouri, USA.
The video, which was released to celebrate Earth Day 2015, shows Richard Williams, better known as Prince Ea, transporting himself to an imaginary (maybe one day real) future where he finds himself apologising to future generations for the ignorance and stupidity of humans on present day Earth.
Possibly the greatest ever spoken rap on the topic of saving the planet or perhaps just let down by its inclusion of a personal attack on an individual politician?
We’ll let you decide…
Dear Future Generations
I think I speak for the rest of us when I say
Sorry.
Sorry we left you with our mess of a planet
Sorry that we were too caught up in our own doings to do something
Sorry we listened to people who made excuses
To do nothing
I hope you forgive us
We just didn’t realise how special the earth was
Like a marriage going wrong
We didn’t know what we had until it was gone
For example
I’m guessing you probably know the Amazon Desert, right?
Well believe it or not
It was once called once called the Amazon Rainforest
And there were billions of trees there
And all of them gorgeous and …
Oh, you don’t know much about trees, do you?
Well let me tell you that trees are amazing
I mean, we literally breath the air
They are creating, and they clean up our pollution
Our carbon, they store and purify water,
Give us medicine that cures ours diseases, food that feeds us
Which is why I am so sorry, to tell you that
We burned them down
Cut them down with brutal machines, horrific
At a rate of 40 football fields every minute
That’s 50% of all the trees in the world
Gone, in the last 100 years
Why? For this.
And that wouldn’t make me so sad
If there weren’t so many pictures of leaves on it
You know when I was a child
I read how the Native Americans had such consideration
For the planet that they felt responsible
For how they left the land for the next 7 generations
Which brings me great sorrow, because most of us today
Don’t even care about tomorrow
So I’m sorry,
I’m sorry that we put profit above people
Greed above need, the rule of gold above the golden rule
I’m sorry we used nature as a credit card with no spending limit
Overdrafting animals to extinction
Stealing your chance to ever see their uniqueness
Or become friends with them
Sorry we poison the oceans so much that you can’t even swim in them
But most of all, I’m sorry about our mindset
’cause we had the nerve to call this destruction
“Progress”
Hey Fox News, if you don’t think climate change is a threat
I dare you to interview the thousands of homeless people in Bangladesh
See, while you were in your penthouse nestled
Their homes were literally washed away
Beneath their feet due to the rising sea levels
And Sarah Palin, you said that you love the smell of fossil fuels
Well I urge you to talk to the kids of Beijing
Who are forced to wear pollution masks just to go to school
See, you can ignore this, but the thing about truth is
It can be denied, not avoided
So I’m sorry future generations
I’m sorry that our footprint became a sinkhole and not a garden
I’m sorry that we paid so much attention to ISIS
And very little to how fast the ice is melting in the arctic
I’m sorry we doomed you
And I’m sorry we didn’t find another planet in time to move to
I am s…
You know what, cut the beat, I’m not sorry
This future I do not accept it
Because an error does not become a mistake
Until you refuse to correct it
We can redirect this. How?
Let me suggest that if a farmer sees a tree that is unhealthy
They don’t look at the branches to diagnosis it
They look at the root, so like that farmer
We must look at the root
And not to the branches of government
Not to the politicians run by corporations
We are the root, we are the foundation, this generation
It is up to us to take care of this planet
It is our only home, we must globally warm our hearts
And change the climate of our souls
And realise that we are not apart from nature
We are a part of nature
And to betray nature is to betray us
To save nature, is to save us
Because whatever you’re fighting for:
Racism or poverty, Feminism, Gay Rights
Or any type of Equality
It won’t matter in the least
Because if we don’t all work together to save the environment
We will be Equally Extinct
Sorry.
