'It's a warning, set to a dance beat': Jon Batiste on his new song urging climate action 20 years after Katrina

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https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/aug/28/jon-batiste-climate-crisis-song-petrichor

‘It’s a warning, set to a dance beat’: Jon Batiste on his new song urging climate action 20 years after Katrina

Mark Hertsgaard

The global music star, whose home town of New Orleans was devastated by the hurricane in 2005, says ‘people power’ can change the world

Thu 28 Aug 2025 07.00 EDT

Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged his home town of New Orleans, Jon Batiste has released a new song imploring people to take action against climate change “by raising your voice, and insisting, and voting the right people into office”.

“As an artist, you have to make a statement,” the global star said in an interview on Tuesday with the international media collaboration Covering Climate Now. “You got to bring people together. People power is the way that you can change things in the world.

“It’s a warning, set to a dance beat,” Batiste said about the song, Petrichor, which appears on his new album Big Money. The Oscar- and multiple Grammy-winning composer and his band performed Petrichor live during Tuesday’s interview; that performance can be seen below.

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With a refrain that repeatedly declares “they burning the planet down”, Petrichor does not sugarcoat the dangers of climate change, yet Batiste remains optimistic. “When you make a song, you want to inspire people, but you also want to let them know what they can do,” he said. “And the things that we can do [are] really very simple. It’s clean energy technology, right now, that we can switch to. We can make the world be powered by things that don’t destroy the planet.

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Batiste confirmed that he is part of that 89% climate majority – as is his mother, Katherine Batiste, who did environmental work for the US government in Louisiana for most of Jon’s childhood and sat next to him throughout the Covering Climate Now interview.

“We believe in science,” Katherine Batiste said.

“There you go,” Jon said, smiling. “You heard it.”

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[BoRaGard]

1. You (r) burning the planet down