After I posted my parody Cee Lo song yesterday on the recently passed House budget bill calling for drastic cuts in EPA funding, my colleague Liz Barratt-Brown chuckled and then she challenged me to parody an issue she works on: tar sands.
In case you're not familiar, this refers to the dirty fuel from Canada, which is derived by clearcutting pristine forests in order to mine and dril tar sands, then turning crude bitumen into crude oil. This process uses vast amounts of energy and water and causes significant air and water pollution -- and it's destroying Canada's majestic boreal forests and wetlands. America is the biggest consumer of tar sands oil, and NRDC is working with local allies on both sides of the border to prevent the construction of a massive oil pipeline that would extend from Alberta all the way to the coastal shipping centers along the Gulf of Mexico. The Keystone pipeline would put the Great Lakes, the Nebraska Sandhills and drinking water aquifers for hundreds of communities in its path at risk from unnecessary and inevitable pipeline spills. For more information, visit: StopDirtyFuels.org.
Anyway, that's the context for the song that follows. At Liz's suggestion, it's a parody of the Dire Straits classic hit, Money for Nothing.
Money for Pumping
I want my tar sands free
(X 16)
Now look at them oil boys that's the way they do it
They dig the tar sands so the crude flows free
That ain’t pumpin’ that's the way they do it
Money for pumpin' and our spills for free
Now that ain't pumpin' that's the way they do it
Lemme tell ya them guys don’t care
Maybe dump pollution in your little aquifer
Maybe dump emissions in your own clean air
They wanna install the Keystone pipeline
Canadian custom delivery
We gotta stop their excavatin’
We gotta keep oil tar sands-free
(See the little Canuck with the gold watch and the briefcase
Yeah buddy that's his penthouse there
That little Canuck got his own jet airplane
That little Canuck he's a millionaire)
They wanna install the Keystone pipeline
Canadian custom delivery
We gotta stop their excavatin’
We gotta keep oil tar sands-free
I shoulda bought a new hybrid car
I wouldn’t need all them oil drums
Look at that mammal, she got stuck inside a tar pit
Man we could save some
And he's down there, what's that? Bulldozer noises?
Cuttin’ down the forests like a chainsaw
All that pumpin' that is why they do that
Get their money for pumpin' and pollution for me
They wanna install the Keystone pipeline
Canadian custom delivery
We gotta stop their excavatin’
We gotta keep oil tar sands-free
Look a' here
All that pumpin' that's the way they do it
They dig it out and the crude flows free
That ain't pumpin’ that's the way they do it
Money for pumpin' and our spills for free
Money for pumpin' and our spills for free
Money for pumpin' and our spills for free
Look at that, look at that
Money for pumpin' and our spills for free
I want my, I want my, I want mine tar sands free
Pollute for nothin', make oil tar sands-free
(Fade)
I want my, I want my, I want my tar sands free