BlueStockings

The Green Rap I want to share here is entitled We can do better than this!

In 2019, I watched The True Cost, a documentary showing the true cost of fast fashion, and Plastic China, where you can see children sorting out mountains of plastic waste. These documentaries shocked me, made me angry and I started questioning the absurdity of our economic system and its consequences. Why is profit always prioritised no matter the costs it has on people or nature? Is it truly impossible to shift this paradigm?  

In The True Cost, an economist is interviewed and declares assertively: “Come on! We can do better than this! A system that we don’t change nor criticise for a long time becomes dangerous.” This sentence deeply resonated with me and inspired me to write a song about it.

Come on! We can do better than modern slavery, child labor, food waste, planned obsolescence, deforestation, corruption… and the list goes on! The system is absurd, unjust, cruel, unequal, and unsustainable. Come on, we could do better! I want to sing endlessly that We can do better than this and transmit the positive energy we need for more radical action.

Cover photo credit: taken at the Guerreiro do Divino Amor exhibition at the Swiss Pavilion of the 2024 Venice Biennale.

Ah please, take some time to freeze

Look at the world it’s turning

Although some weird disease, is flowing,

In the seas and the rivers and the trees

Ah, we can do better than this

Like this, we’re gonna to pass and miss

An opportunity to stop the mess, stop the stress

By rolling on the same way, playing the same game

until iT cracks and lacks, the minimum to live ey

Ah we can do better than this

Come on, we can do better than this

I cant believe that we won’t achieve

to change the system we conceived

Capitalism is a force that we can’t control,

it’s stronger than us. uncriticizable god.

Can’t question it, it’s perfect.

Let’s break this myth

every system can be subject to change

It’s time to turn this page

Let’s be creative!

And think outside the box

And thank apart from god

It’s time for freedom

I wanna fly away from this place

If no one dares to stay

Lets do iT now! Something good. Clean this planet just like we should.

Right now. Do iT good.

Ah we can do better than than that

Look at the facts, look at the cracks

There people lying about people dying

Handled like slaves for your own sake

to produce our wealth, look at their Health.

Look at the waste

we throw in their face far away

Go there face to face and say in Their eyes that we can’t do better than that ?

Really? It’s immoral and dirty,

it rips my heart in two different pieces

However remember we are all part of the same species

in the same game, same pace, same phase, same race !!! same place !!!

Was just a reminder

It seems like we live on different worlds

Since one is used by the other. for things we don’t wanna

Like all our trash and the work and the harm and the ash, and the negative impacts, the dirty facts, no direct contact, pay in cash and reduce the tax

Where are we going?

River of no return

With this system that is following

abstract money towards the worse

Stop care about your purse

Look around and value nature

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At 18 years old, I started my Bachelor’s in Global Sustainability Sciences and had to face the many inconvenient truths about what our system does to the world. I discovered the connection between my European lifestyle and the negative impacts it has on the health, livelihoods and environment of distant people. I watched documentaries about plastic waste, e-waste, the fast fashion industry etc.

This was an intense eye-opening year and I was flooded with emotions…The frustration and sadness that emerged from this also pushed me to advocate for urgent action to change the system towards a more environmentally and socially sustainable one. I wrote these “Green Raps” (didn’t find a better name hihi), as a way to express my emotions and share my thoughts on these complex topics.

I write down what I feel, what I think, what I care about, what makes me angry and what I want to scream to the world. My thoughts and emotions come together quite intuitively into lyrics that I can then sing and communicate through rhythm and melody.

Julie Thibaudeau

PS: My lyrics are available on my website (see the section called « Conflicts and Barriers » ):  https://www.greencollective.online