The list of celebrities who have become vocal advocates of climate change has increased exponentially over the recent past. A growing group of recent celebrities to contribute include Miley Cyrus and Shawn Mendez, adding to others who have been supporters of the movement for a while, such as leonardo dicaprio or Mark Ruffalo. Now joining them is singer Billie Eilish.

Who is Billie Eilish?

Ever since releasing her single “Ocean Eyes” in 2016, singer Billie Eilish has gained a rapidly expanding following. After the release of her debut album “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” in March 2019, that following has blown up.

Billie Eilish’s first album hit the top Billboard 200 spot in United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. Four if its songs reached the Billboard Top 40, one of which became a number-one single in the United States. She is the only artist born in the 2000s to have recorded a #1 single so far. Her videos have more than 3.7 billion views on Youtube. At 17 years old, she has an extremely strong influence on popular culture today.

“Our House Is On Fire”

On Saturday, Billie Eilish released a video titled “Our House Is On Fire”. In it, she and Woody Harrelson talk about ways that watchers can reduce their impact on the climate. They also urge listeners to collaborate to create change at the national level. Eilish and Harrelson make references to recent environmental disasters throughout the video, including the recently confronted Amazonian forest fires. The video clocks in at just over a minute in length. It reached number one on the Youtube trending page and 750 thousand views in 9 hours.

“History shows us that when enough people rise up and demand change, those in power have no choice but to act,” Harrelson urges viewers. Eilish also presents various changes to “live in a greener lifestyle”. Her suggestions include “cutting out meat and dairy in your diet and reducing plastic use.”

The duo urge their audience to get involved in movements like Greenpeace and Fridays for Future. Greenpeace is a non-governmental organization dedicated to empowering everyday people to help find nonviolent solutions to climate change. Fridays for Future, also known as School Strike for Climate, is a protest in which youth miss a day of school to spend the day protesting for climate action. The founder of this movement is teen activist Greta Thunberg.

Past Advocacy

This is not the first time Billie Eilish has supported the movement to combat climate change. In the description of her song “all the good girls go to hell”, from her 2019 album, she wrote the following note:

“Right now there are millions of people all over the world begging our leaders to pay attention. our earth is warming up at an unprecedented rate, icecaps are melting, our oceans are rising, our wildlife is being poisoned and our forests are burning. on september 23rd, the UN will host the 2019 Climate Action Summit to discuss how to tackle these issues. the clock is ticking. on friday september 20th and friday september 27th you can make your voice be heard. take it to the streets.”

Various lyrics in the song itself also echo fears of the consequences of increasing temperatures. Lines like “Hills burn in California” and “once the water starts to rise” are accompanied by visuals of an oil-covered scene catching on fire.

Ultimately, in all of her messages thus far on climate change, Eilish focuses on a very important point: change will not happen unless we make it happen. This can be through actual protests or less confrontational methods, like voting at least partially based on climate policy this November. Specific method of involvement does not matter as much as the act of being involved at all does.