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Sting isn’t afraid of tackling big issues in his music.

Child slavery (“Children’s Crusade”). Nuclear war (“Russians”). Englishmen in New York (“Englishman in New York”).

Now, he’s training his pipes on climate change.

The official video for “One Fine Day,” from the rocker’s new album “57TH & 9TH [Deluxe Edition]

,” features the following lyrics:

Apologists say

The weather’s just a cycle we can’t change

Scientists say

We’ve pushed those cycles way beyond

Dear leaders, please do something quick

Time is up, the planet’s sick

But hey, we’ll all be grateful

One fine day?

Today the North West Passage just got found

Three penguins and a bear got drowned

The ice they lived on disappeared

Seems things are worse than some had feared

It’s the same ol’ song from the rich and famous or, as some would say, “our betters.”

Only Sting’s eco-hypocrisy may be on par with Leonardo DiCaprio and James Cameron. And that’s saying something.

Let’s look at Sting’s largesse. British papers have reported on his lavish lifestyle, which hardly meshes with his environmental message. Imagine the energy required to pay Sting’s bills.

Here’s The Daily Mail dishing on Sting’s lifestyle circa 2008:

He keeps no fewer than four homes in Britain with his wife, Trudie Styler, including the 800 acre Lake House estate in Wiltshire.

The home has 14 bedrooms and 8 baths.

He also has a beach house in Malibu, an estate in Tuscany, a million pound home in New York and a love for 4x4 cars.

Last year, his former cook Jane Martin told an employment tribunal how “opulent extravagance reigned” at the home, and there was “no regard to cost, expense or wastage” of food or drink.

That doesn’t take into account his rock lifestyle. That same year, Sting’s band The Police topped the list of groups with the largest carbon footprint.

He once scored a highly profitable licensing fee for Jaguar to promote its gas-guzzling line with his hit song “Desert Rose.”

Earlier in his career he copped to jetting back home after each of his concerts. His Rainforest Foundation has earned terrible ratings in the past for the amount of money it actually pours into its various causes.

Times change, though. Three years after those Daily Mail revelations he told reporters none of that really matters until deforestation issues are put under control.

Now, he’s singing about our dying earth and what we need to do to save it. For all his eco-lectures and work on behalf of Mother Earth, he could start by practicing what he preaches. If only a little.

Photo credit: rtppt via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA