Uncle Wally’s Tale

Uncle Wally’s Tale
by Tom Chapin
© 2000 The Last Music Co. (ASCAP)

It’s time, by gosh by golly,
For a tale told by Uncle Wally.
It’s a tale that he told me,
A tale that you and I should know.

In the Atlantic is a current,
A conveyor belt type current,
That flows north and south
And gives out heat,
More heat than the summer sun.
And mightier this current
Than a hundred Amazon Rivers,
And the heat that it delivers
Makes Western Europe run.

The Equator heats the water
Which flows north to warm up Europe,
That cools the current, so it sinks,
Heads south and starts again.
And if not for this heat conveyor,
All Europe would be icebound
And Paris would be Moscow
Perched on a frozen Seine.

Uncle Wally says to look out for the climate
For the climate could be changing very soon.
Uncle Wally says to look out for the climate.
This is Uncle Wally’s climate tune.

As we humans heat the earth up,
We don’t know what might happen.
This current could decide to stop
In just ten years or so.
And though it all seems crazy,
Europe plunging in an Ice Age,
Uncle Wally says it happened here
Twelve thousand years ago.

For when the world heats up
The Atlantic heats up too.
Some of the ice cap melts and in a blink,
Less salt in the water
Means the water won’t sink.
What you gonna do
When the water won’t sink
And that conveyor belt is through?

Uncle Wally says to look out for the climate
And the fossil fuels that burn out of control.
If we don't face up to our sins of emissions.
We may see the Common Market
Catch a cold.

Now logic seems to whisper
While money seems to shout.
And the only place Big Business walks
Is on the bottom line.
So we don’t hear Uncle Wally’s tale
When we’re voting on pollution
And I suggest we not invest
In Euros at this time.

Uncle Wally says to look out for the climate
’Cause our politicians live in a cocoon.
It’s you and I must speak and vote the climate
For the climate could be changing very soon.
This is Uncle Wally’s climate tune.
This is Uncle Wally Broecker’s tune.

This song appears on Tom Chapin's Common Ground CD.

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