Björk has been thinking about the end of the world a lot lately.

Specifically, she has been thinking about what will happen to the world if a group of politicians doesn’t hurry up and act to save the planet from destruction. “We are overwhelming the planet,” she said.

And she’s so focused on the future that, for now, she’s put her next album on the back burner. “I’ve finished a tour and I’m back and I’m writing a new album, but I cannot ignore this and just keep writing,” Björk said.

The musician, along with David Bowie, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Yoko Ono, actors Steve Coogan and Emma Thompson, authors Ian McEwan and Philip Pullman, and a host of others in the creative industry, wrote a letter urging negotiators and politicians at the climate summit in Paris to reach a deal to curb global warming. “I think we should have started reacting awhile ago,” Björk said. “We are already borderline too late.”

While Björk believes the matter is urgent, she does not think the planet is too far gone to make a difference—which is why the climate deal reached last Saturday may come as some relief. “I’m actually an optimist,” she said. “I really think that we have the technology and the people to make this change.”

It’s not just on a global scale that Bjork is stepping up as an activist. “I’ve been really active for the last 15 years in Iceland with a big group trying to keep the highlands in Iceland untouched,” said Björk. “We are fighting very hard now to change it into a national park.”

The group she is fighting against is the right-wing coalition that has taken over Iceland’s government and is seemingly determined to develop the country’s untamed interior highlands in the name of economic development. “We have a very small but very greedy group of rednecks who want to privatize all the land in the highlands and just build. Right now they have planned 50 projects in the highlands,” said Björk. “In the space of 5 to 10 years there will be no more highlands.”

This is a particularly devastating possibility for the artist who found her voice, literally, while exploring the natural world of her homeland. “My personal fount is the highlands,” said Björk. “I used to walk outside on the outskirts of Reykjavik—it was a 40-minute walk to school through winter, in the dark, and in blizzards sometimes. This is where I started writing my melodies. This is where I come from, what I’m made of. I feel I owe it to the highlands. That’s my personal story to fight them.”

It’s not the easiest role to take on for a woman who just wants to be back at her “little cabin in nature" working on her new album, but she views the issue as so vital, that she is willing to step up. “I think, like this issue with global warming, it might be helpful to think the same way that a musician or artist would think, which is first think how you are in relationship with the earth,” said Björk. “Maybe artists have exercised this muscle of seeing a few years ahead, because we have to work this way.”

For more information and to petition Björk’s government, visit Gætum Garðsins (Protect the Park)’s Facebook page, Icelandic citizenship not necessary.