<
https://theconversation.com/david-bowie-and-the-birth-of-environmentalism-50-years-on-how-ziggy-stardust-and-the-first-un-climate-summit-changed-our-vision-of-the-future-181033>
"David Bowie released his seminal album
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust
and the Spiders from Mars 50 years ago, on June 16, 1972. It was an artsy and
ambitious rock album which captured the time’s sense of being on the cusp of
new technological and cultural frontiers.
In the early 1970s, the US Apollo programme was, briefly, making men visiting
the moon seem like a routine event. The possibilities of computer power were
beginning to unfold, and the countercultural youth revolt was challenging
prevailing values and norms. Bowie’s fictional alter ego encapsulated all these
groundbreaking developments: an androgynous rockstar from outer space with, in
the words of the album’s title song, “a god-given ass”. Bowie-Ziggy wore heavy
makeup, dyed his hair red, and dressed in clothes inspired by Japanese kabuki
theatre.
But coupled with its playful fascination for space technology, the
Ziggy
Stardust album also described a dread of the Pandora’s box that might be
opened as a result. Its opening track,
Five Years, warned listeners that
“Earth was really dying”. During the cold war, the prospect of man-made
armageddon through nuclear war was never far away. And by the early 1970s,
fears of an ecological crisis and overpopulation were starting to take on
similar apocalyptic proportions.
Indeed, the day of
Ziggy Stardust’s release coincided with the final day of a
landmark gathering in Sweden to discuss the future of the planet. The Stockholm
Conference, which began on June 5, 1972, was the first United Nations
conference on the human environment, and the starting point for global
environmental governance.
Today’s global climate summits, most recently COP 26 in Glasgow last November,
are its direct descendants. And like Bowie’s album, the Stockholm Conference
began amid conflicting emotions: hopes of a new dawn of environmental awareness
and technological possibility set against fears of global conflict and
planetary collapse."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
