The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #169018   Message #4110299
Posted By: GUEST,John Davison
15-Jun-21 - 06:05 PM
Thread Name: Origins: We're Using Up the World (Suzanne Harris)
Subject: RE: Origins: Suzanne Harris.
The lyrics of "We're Using Up the World" were reprinted in FoE's Environmental Handbook (pp167-168 Edited by John Barr,
ISBN 0 345 02137 1). They run thus:

I've seen the mighty redwoods
Standing a hundred feet high,
The along came the loggingmen
And chopped them all down
And left a big hole in the sky.

Factories by the thousand
Are turning the rivers black,
And the working man says:
'It's hard to make a living
But easy to turn your back.'

Smoke and dust and oil and soot
Fill every breath we breathe,
So now it costs us our very life
To have what once was free.

CHORUS:
We're using up the world,
Can't you see?
Saying that it's all
For you and me,
We're using up the world,
One more time,
And taking away
What's yours and mine.

We can always blame the government
Or men in foreign lands,
But we're the ones
Who've covered the green
With rusty old cars and tin cans.

If you drive across my country
You'll get your just reward,
For the signs and rhymes
Unite to tell you
America's going by the board. Repeat CHORUS

There are influential ladies
Who choose to wear their wealth,
So the leopard and the tiger
Are fast disappearing
As the ladies admire themselves.

Some folks go on safari
Just to watch the animals fall.
They don't need the meat,
They've got plenty to eat,
They just want another trophy for the wall. Repeat CHORUS

We can always sing this song again,
Or tell a story told before,
But we cannot make earthly things
Live and breathe once more.