Get In Bed with Kofi Annan

Remember when that bald dude from Midnight Oil got ya hot with "Beds Are Burning"? The fact that it's about giving the native Australian lands back to the Aborigines didn't keep the sexy-sounding song from becoming their biggest U.S. hit, and it's not stopping Kofi Annan from making it a climate change anthem.

Annan, the former U.N. Secretary-General, is now the President of the Global Humanitarian Forum, and he is using the song (see video below) to launch a digital petition to push for climate justice at December's U.N. Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen. The Nobel Peace Prize winner was joined by 'Inglorious Bastards" star Melanie Laurent and Havas Worldwide honcho David Jones last week to debut a new version of "Beds Are Burning" produced by The:Hours and featuring over 60 different music stars and celebrities. The song is available for free on all major music download platforms, including Time For Climate Justice, and each download will count as a digital signature that will be taken to Denmark.

Contributing artists include Lily Allen, Fergie, Duran Duran, Jet Li, Brazilian Girls, the Scorpions, Paul Shaeffer, Mark Ronson, the All American Rejects and many others.

"Climate change is the greatest humanitarian challenge facing mankind today," said Kofi Annan. "And it is a challenge that has a grave injustice at its heart. It is the major developed economies of the world which contribute the overwhelming majority of global greenhouse emissions. But it is the poorer and least developed nations that are hit hardest by its impact. By downloading 'Beds Are Burning' for free from major music download platforms on the internet, people from around the world will be adding their names to this growing global petition -- joining the campaign for climate justice and becoming a climate ally. This will be the first time ever that a musical petition has been created to demand decisive action from our world leaders. I believe it can become the Band Aid for the internet generation."

"The next Kyoto agreement is hugely important to get right because the last one got it so wrong," added Laurent. "The single greatest contribution to the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is not the burning of fossil fuels by the transport sector, nor is it industrial pollution, it is deforestation. I'm supporting Kofi Annan's initiative and hope this song will be heard by as many people as possible in the world before Copenhagen. This campaign will help secure a better future for our planet and upcoming generations. The time has come."

Images by Time for Climate Justice courtesy of Flickr.