Punk Rocker Patti Smith Says We've 'Raped And Pillaged' The Planet Ahead Of Climate Change Benefit Concert

New York Daily News - Spencer Dukoff

Patti Smith doesn't know what she'd say to President Trump about climate change because she has doubts that he has "a core." (Jason Davis/Getty Images for NAMM) 

Rocker Patti Smith was just a kid when she first became aware that humans were wreaking havoc on the environment.
"I'd go to play by a stream near my house when I was young and it would be all filled with weird oil and dead minnows," Smith told the Daily News. "I would ask my father what happened, and he'd say, 'I don't know, something is seeping through the ground. Somebody is dumping something.'"

In addition to being a punk legend and celebrated author, Patti Smith is a lifelong activist. (Michael Buckner/Getty Images for BFCA)

Smith rattles off memory after memory of factors that contributed to the punk legend's rising consciousness as a climate change activist.
"In my lifetime, I've seen how our world is changing," she says. "The beautiful glaciers that I saw, and friends of mine took photographs of 25 years ago in Greenland, are now 60% melted away. They look just like tortured skeletons instead of these beautiful, magnificent floating sculptures."
Smith, 70, was born in Chicago, but later lived in Philadelphia and different parts of New Jersey as a child, where she had another disturbing experience.
"I saw my first really horrendous dump site when I was about 10," Smith says. "I lived in rural South Jersey and there was a lot of illegal dumping. I saw how beautiful areas were being destroyed by all this dumping."
"We're given the Earth and it's beautiful, and we've just raped and pillaged it," she added.

On Sunday, Smith will join other artists like R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, Joan Baez and Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers, as well as environmentalists like Bill McKibben at Carnegie Hall for Pathway to Paris: Concert to Fight Climate Change.

The effects of climate change around the world. VIEW GALLERY

Pathway to Paris, a group of artists, activists, academics, musicians and politicians who "fight for climate justice," was founded by musicians Rebecca Foon and Jesse Paris Smith, who also happens to be Smith's daughter.
Foon believes that addressing climate change is a matter of life or death.
"Can we do it fast enough so we can be able to survive? And if we can, that means we’ve gotten to the crux of this issue and are a more enlightened species," Foon told the Daily News.
While Smith has participated in previous Pathway to Paris events, she feels a greater sense of urgency with this year's concert given the Trump administration's embrace of climate change skepticism and the President's June announcement that the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris Agreement.
"It goes right up to the top in America," Smith said. "We have a terrible person in the EPA. We have an administration that seems to have a completely deaf ear to any environmental concerns."
When asked what she would say to President Trump about climate change if given the chance, Smith isn't sure she — or anyone — could be persuasive with him.

Smith points to melting glaciers as evidence that climate change is a dire issue for the planet. (Mario Tama/Getty Images) 

"Despite all the detestable things, the embarrassing things, does he actually have a core?" Smith wondered. "And what frightens me is I don't believe he actually has one. So it's hard for me to answer when I feel in my heart that I wouldn't be talking to a real person."
But regardless of Trump's personal beliefs and policies, Smith asserts that progress starts with individual citizens, and that it's her responsibility as an artist to use her platform for advocacy.
"When my husband and I wrote, 'People Have the Power,' it's what we meant," Smith said, referencing her late husband Fred "Sonic" Smith and their 1988 single. "The people vote, the people protest, the people en masse have to make a change."
Pathway to Paris first started in 2014 as a small concert at (Le) Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village, but has since grown to a global initiative that partners with the United Nations Development Program and international environmental group 350.org to help turn the Paris Agreement into action.

Patti Smith performs at Pathway to Paris at Le Trianon, Paris, in 2015. (MARTIN BUREAU/AFP/Getty Images) 

Sunday's event will feature the unveiling of a new Pathway to Paris campaign, 1000 Cities, which seeks to get 1000 cities worldwide to pledge to transition off fossil fuels and move to 100% renewable energy by 2040.

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