BP Oil Spill Damage to Louisiana Wetlands and Wildlife Featured in Glee YouTube Video

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Sean Crowley, 202-572-3331, scrowley@edf.org

(Washington, DC—June 16, 2010) A powerful new video featuring the popular song, “Over the rainbow,” as Environmental Defense Fund coastal scientist Angelina Freeman examines the damage to Louisiana wetlands and wildlife from the BP oil disaster is now posted on YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jPjJPVdR4g). The video’s narrative track is the performance of “Over the rainbow” that ended the first season finale of the Fox hit TV show Glee.

Produced by Environmental Defense Fund, the video concludes with a link www.edf.org/cleanenergy that enables viewers to email their U.S. senators “to urge them to learn from this unprecedented disaster and to wisely lead us in a new direction away from fossil fuels toward cleaner energy alternatives.” The video is timely because last night President Obama challenged the U.S. Senate to make passage of clean energy legislation a priority.

“This beautiful song and the tragic images from the Gulf Coast oil disaster remind us that we have a choice to leave a better world for our children,” said Environmental Defense Fund Executive Director David Yarnold, who recently did an aerial and boat tour of coastal Louisiana when the video was shot and blogged about it today at http://blogs.edf.org/climate411/2010/06/16/somewhere-over-the-gulf-coast-a-“glee”-and-bp-oil-disaster-mashup//. “I wanted anyone and everyone to see what our addiction to oil had done to the Gulf and to contrast that with the sense of hope and possibility that ‘Over the rainbow’ exudes.”

“Over the rainbow” is number one on the “Songs of the Century” list compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts. The American Film Institute ranked “Over the Rainbow” the greatest movie song of all time on the list of “American Film Institutes’ 100 Years…100 Songs.”

The lyrics to “Over the rainbow” are:

Somewhere over the rainbow

Way up high

There’s a land that I dreamed of

Once in a lullaby

Somewhere over the rainbow

Skies are blue

And the dreams that you dare to dream

Really do come true ooh ooooh

Someday I’ll wish upon a star

Wake up where the clouds are far behind me ee ee eeh

Where troubles melt like lemon drops

High above the chimney tops that’s where you’ll find me oh

Somewhere over the rainbow bluebirds fly

Birds fly over the rainbow

Why, then oh why can’t I?

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