Interview – Gaiaisi

By: Jenna Melanson

Gaiaisi (Gabriel Nicolau) got together with five major environmental groups to release a music video aiming to raise awareness on the climate crisis. The song “Change The Earth” has already been viewed over 40,000 times on YouTube.

We thought it would be great to find out more about Gaiaisi and the cause, so I did an interview with Gabriel, keep reading for more information. You could also check out his social networking pages:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Gaiaisi
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Gaiaisi
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/gaiaisimusic

First off, let’s hear when you first got into music?

Gaiaisi: I first started writing raps in grade 10, the year 2000, lost my fear of singing a few years later. Since then the obsession has basically just grown exponentially.

How did you get involved with the groups in which you work with for your song, “Change The Earth”?

Gaiaisi: A lot of phone calls, emails, following up, and in the case of Greenpeace just walking in to their head office here to meet a human being, something that is very difficult in an organization as busy, understaffed and overburdened with valuable work as they are.

What was/is it like working with groups such as Greenpeace, Climate Reality, the WWF and more?

Gaiaisi: Once they gave me permission to use their online video libraries it pretty much was all up to me to watch, organize and slice up hours upon hours of footage into the clips you see in the final 5-minute video. I’m still extremely grateful and amazed I got this permission but it was based upon them seeing my previous videos and hearing the song and approving of the lyrics as well.

What can you tell us about this cause?

Gaiaisi: This isn’t about ‘the environment.’ This is about your survival. If the Earth keeps heating up on the trajectory it is right now we’re very soon headed for a world where droughts, floods and extreme weather will cause crop failure on a scale that will empty supermarkets, and you can imagine the way humans or any animal would act when food supplies disappear and our population is as high as it is. Water is already a leading cause of war in the world, the genocide in Darfur being one key example, in a part of Africa where the climate has already changed. As many fighters is this movement say “there is no Planet B” and therefore we have to treat this like the emergency that it is and move as fast as we did, and make sacrifices like we did in the Second World War to make sure there isn’t’t a Third World War being fought very soon over disappearing resources. The solutions are all here, we just need to take individual action and more importantly change our governments to eject the puppets of the fossil fuel industry who are currently speeding us towards a cliff in the name of prosperity and profit.

The video shows a tour of many different places around the world, but not only shows the devastation, also the struggles to save the earth, what was it like making this video?

Gaiaisi: At times a little bit overwhelming and I had this unbelievable itch you can imagine to share it with the world, as I believe there is no topic that is more important! That being said, it was uncountable hours of hard work, and most of a spring, summer and fall spent sitting in a basement editing on a computer when I would have much rather been outside or hanging out with my friends. Small sacrifices compared to the animals dying of thirst as their ecosystems desertify, or polar bears going insane with starvation swimming across the open waters of the melting Arctic Ocean..

The video has already reached over 40,000 views, how does that make you feel?

Gaiaisi: Encouraged for sure, and every single human being matters and I know will be affected by seeing this, but I’m aiming for billions! I’d say at least the English-speaking population of the world but you don’t even need to speak English to get the message from the imagery in the video, and I will be translating the lyrics soon into Spanish and eventually other languages.

Do you plan on doing more to support this cause? How can people help?

Gaiaisi: Absolutely, music is a way of reaching an audience and then comes the practical, real actions to reverse global warming, which in order of importance are:

1) Reducing the amount of animals and animal bodily fluids that we eat – most people think global warming is caused primarily by cars and smokestacks, and that’s a huge part of it, but animal farming has more of a destructive impact on the planet than all of the cars, trucks, ships and airplanes in the world combined because of the amount of forests, in particular the vanishing Tropical Rain forests being destroyed for cattle farming. A vegetarian/vegan lifestyle has 7-10X less of an ecological footprint and will also make you live longer, more energetic, and mean you don’t cause the torture or deaths of any animals that feel pain the same way as our cats, dogs and human family.

2) Revolutionizing our society to shift to renewable energy and eliminate the use of fossil fuels. From using and politically fighting for better public transit to fighting against the use of coal and other fossil fuels for electricity generation we’re going to be simultaneously cooling down the planet and removing mercury and a whole funeral list of toxic substances from the atmosphere and our lungs and bodies. Very much a win-win situation!

3) Getting politically active! From the city level where we need to do everything against vehicle traffic and for public transit and bike-able, walk-able cities to the federal level where the Tar Sands needs to be seen as the cancerous tumor on the face of the Earth that it is, and shut down in favour of thousands of economic alternatives which can generate jobs and allow people to make a living without poisoning themselves and our entire country, and contributing in a pivotal way to the overheating of our lonely planet.

Outside of this song, is there anything else you’d like to tell the readers?

Gaiaisi: Don’t be afraid to really love your life, to really accept how precious it is and the lives of all the people and animals around you. Life may be short and often very difficult but we were blessed and lucky enough to have been born on this beautiful Earth so don’t be overwhelmed by all the sadness and struggles, let your love for your friends and family, for the wild animals and our feline and canine companions motivate you to work faster and harder to fight for all of our well-being. Humans created this mess and we can damn sure fix it, our ancestors have survived five mass extinctions so far and I have no intention of being a part of this sixth one. We can and must turn around this industrial civilization so that it exists in balance with the biosphere that sustains our every breath. The blueprint is already here, so link up with the people who are already fighting (like the groups linked at the end of the video who you can reach through their websites) and do what you can to be the reason humanity is still around in 100 years. At the rate medicine is improving there’s a good chance you’ll personally still be here, so make it a world you want to live in!

Jenna Melanson

I’m Jenna, the founder and editor of Canadian Beats. I have had a strong love for Canadian music, which started many years ago. I have a passion for promoting these talented Canadian bands and artists, and that’s how Canadian Beats came to be.

Canadian Beats has grown to become more than media, and what a journey it’s been.