“I remembered the days when I wasn’t afraid of the sunshine”

This week, Jim is seeking a song that references climate change or the environment more generally. Quite simply, this is what popped into my head as soon as I saw the prompt.

We don’t own this place, though we act as if we did
It’s a loan from the children of our children’s kids
The actual owners haven’t even been born yet

But we never tend the garden and rarely we pay the rent
Some of it is broken and the rest of it is bent
Put it all on plastic and I wonder where we’ll be when the bills hit

We can run
But we can’t hide from it
Of all possible worlds
We only got one:
We gotta to ride on it
Whatever we’ve done
We’ll never get far from what we leave behind
Baby, we can run, run, run, but we can’t hide
Oh no, we can’t hide

I’m dumpin’ my trash in your back yard
Makin’ certain you don’t notice really isn’t so hard
You’re so busy with your guns and all of your excuses to use them

Well, it’s oil for the rich and babies for the poor
We got everyone believin’ that more is more
If a reckoning comes, maybe we will know what to do then

All these complications seem to leave no choice
I heard the tongues of billions speak with just one voice
Saying, “Just leave all the rest to me
I need it worse than you, you see.”
And then I heard
The sound of one child crying

Today I went walking in the amber wind
There’s a hole in the sky where the light pours in
I remembered the days when I wasn’t afraid of the sunshine

But now it beats down on the asphalt land
Like a hammering blow from God’s left hand
What little still grows cringes in the shade like a bad vine

Written by John Barlow and Brent Mydland

Song Lyric Sunday 5 October 2025