168. “Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell is probably the song which best speaks to the issues that may, as science hypothesizes, lead to our destruction. In an interview Joni stated, “I wrote Big Yellow Taxi on my first trip to Hawaii. I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart…this blight on paradise.” “Don’t it always seem to go / That you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone? / They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” The pink hotel mentioned in the song is most likely The Royal Hawaiian in Honolulu, and the tree museum a reference to the Foster Botanical Gardens, where visitors pay to see trees. DDT is a pesticide that has a devastating effect on wildlife.
