Beyond that, she recently announced her third album, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, to be released May 17, 2024. She spent the days leading up to the announcement building excitement by adding all of her Instagram followers to her “Close Friends” list. Eilish had the most Instagram followers in 48 hours…with her count increasing by 7 million followers total.
While her debut album, when we all fall asleep…where do we go?, was a chart-topper in its own right, it landed Billie every GRAMMY it was nominated for at the ripe age of 18…Eilish has solidified herself as one of the most revered and sought-after popstars in the world.
Eilish recently caught media attention for quietly revealing her sexuality. In an interview with Variety, she states that she’s always liked girls…and assumed people always knew that. In a viral snippet from her new song, LUNCH, she details a love affair with a girl.
But people don’t only adore Billie for her catchy tracks that consistently top the charts. It’s not just her songwriting ability and unique vocals that keep us hooked. People love her because she’s unafraid to speak her mind.
Whether it be complaining about too many influencers being at an awards show, or calling out other artists for using unsustainable practices…Billie does not hold back.
Billie Eilish On Sustainability
Eilish home
rethinkingthefuture.com
The Eilish home is iconic for many reasons: it’s where Billie and Finneas recorded her debut album, countless other songs, and EPs, in an effort to conserve water there’s no grass, and the roof is covered in solar panels. And being environmentally conscious extends beyond the four walls of their home.
When the hottest young talent is discovered at such an early age like Eilish, record labels are chomping at the bit to sign them. It’s like when a D1 athlete is ready to commit to college…you have your pick.
But what Eilish and her mom, Maggie Baird, were looking for wasn’t about money or label-perks…they were seeking a solid sustainability program. And while that may seem like standard practice, most labels didn’t bring up environmental policies during these meetings at all.
After signing to The Darkroom via Interscope Records, the struggle didn’t stop there. Billie Eilish and her family have been consistent contributors to the fight against climate change.
Maggie Baird has since started Support + Feed, which focuses on the climate crisis and food insecurity. Support + Feed helped Eilish’s 2022 Happier Than Ever tour save 8.8 million gallons of water through plant-based meal service for the artist and crew members.
During Billie’s 2023 Lollapalooza performance, she aided the launch and funding of REVERB’s Music Decarbonization Project – which guaranteed all battery systems used during her set were solar powered. The MCD’s overall mission is to lower – and eventually eliminate –the music industry’s carbon emissions.
But more recently, Billie Eilish called out other artists for releasing multiple versions of vinyls in order to boost vinyl sales. In an interview with Billboard, she says,
“We live in this day and age where, for some reason, it’s very important to some artists to make all sorts of different vinyl and packaging … which ups the sales and ups the numbers and gets them more money and gets them more…”
Artists convince fans to buy different versions of their albums by offering exclusive features on each vinyl. Take Taylor Swift, for example, who released five separate vinyl versions of Midnights, each with a different deluxe “Vault” track.
While Billie may not have been trying to shade one artist in particular, the point is that she’s fed up. After being the rare artist in the industry who go out of their way to remain environmentally conscious, Eilish sets the bar high.
How Eilish’s New Album Is Sustainable
Billie for "Hit Me Hard and Soft"
William Drumm
Social media users were quick to claim Eilish was hypocritical by announcing that HIT ME HARD AND SOFT will have eight vinyl variations. However, each vinyl is made from recycled materials – either 100% recycled black vinyl or BioVinyl, which replaces petroleum used during manufacturing with recycled cooking oil.
This just illustrates that Eilish wasn’t directing criticism towards other artists for using vinyl variants to gain album sales…but she does think there are better ways to do it that benefit the environment without hurting their sales.
The Five Things Fueling the World Refugee Crisis
War
For the past century, the Middle East has been a warzone. Following the events of 9/11 the United States entered the region, getting embroiled in conflicts in both Afghanistan and Iraq. For the Afghans, war was nothing new. The country has been in a perpetual state of violence since the Saur revolution in 1978. After the civil war, the USSR invaded Afghanistan to help keep the the communist PDPA in power. The PDPA's ideologies didn't align particularly well with the more religious and rurally-based Afghan population. In true Cold War fashion, the U.S. armed the fundamentalist Mujahideen in their fight against the Soviets. The country has been at war ever since and the fighting has resulted in millions of deaths. As a direct result, Afghanistan has the largest refugee population in all of Asia at 2.6 million people.
Things aren't much better on the other side of Iran. Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the levant became increasingly destabilized, allowing militant groups like ISIS to proliferate throughout the region. This destabilization also poured into Syria, a country already in the midst of civil war that has left over 13 million in need of humanitarian assistance. Other countries currently in the midst of civil wars include Somalia and Yemen, both of which are dealing with an influx of Al Qaeda insurgents.
Religious/Ethnic/Social Persecution
Despite the fact that genocide and crimes against humanity are forbidden by international law, ethnic and religious persecution persists all over the world. For years, the Sudanese government persecuted the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa ethnic groups, systematically killing hundreds of thousands and leaving over one million refugees. Myanmar is dealing with a similar issue, in which the Buddhist majority is attempting to push the Muslim majority out of the country by force. Thousands have been killed, and hundreds of thousands of people have poured over the border into Bangladesh and been forced to stay in overcrowded camps.
Water Shortage
As of right now, the two greatest contributors to the refugee crisis are state sanctioned violence in the form of ethnic persecution and war. 55% of all refugees come from Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Syria. That said, over 1.1 billion people lack access water. Improper sanitation is a problem for 2.4 billion people, exposing them to all kinds of waterborne illnesses. Water scarcity may not play a huge role in today's refugee crisis, but it will almost certainly play a part in the near future. Scarcity, particularly scarcity of essential resources, breeds conflict and civil strife. While the eventual cause of this future refugee crisis will be either war or some sort of persecution, water will have been the catalyst.
Global Warming
As climate change intensifies, many are predicting that it will increase the size and scope of the refugee crisis significantly. The mediterranean region is currently in the midst of its worst drought in over 900 years. On top of this, if global warming continues at the same rate, more than 1 billion people will be living in places where the average temperature is 102˚F. Combine this with the future natural disasters global warming is nearly guaranteed to cause, and a perfect storm is created, leaving millions with no other option but to leave their homes in search of greener pastures. Hurricane Irma and Harvey were just the beginning. As massive ecological disasters become the norm, large swathes of the planet will become uninhabitable.
Famine
Throughout history, famines have caused mass migration and the levels of famine in South Sudan are currently at an unprecedented level. This past January, nearly half the population didn't have enough to eat. Nearby, in Somalia, they are suffering from a similar problem. The thing these two countries have in common is that they're both suffering from droughts, illustrating the ways in which a dwindling water supply can devastate a society's ability to feed itself. Huge amounts of people in the Horn of Africa, Nigeria, and Yemen are currently starving, and they'll probably be clamoring to leave their countries before long.
There are many who would argue that humanity has gotten less violent throughout history, but one look at the headlines and it's easy to prove that this isn't the case. The difference now is that violence doesn't typically occur between powerful nation states–that it's the poorer countries and factions who are left to fight over their limited resources. The death tolls from fighting alone are lower, but regimes are becoming more creative, weaponizing famine and hoarding resources as a means of oppression. These methods have created nearly 70 million refugees so far and when issues like climate change and water shortage come to a head in the next few decades, the refugee crisis is only going to get worse.
Matt Clibanoff is a writer and editor based in New York City who covers music, politics, sports and pop culture. His editorial work can be found in Inked Magazine, Pop Dust, The Liberty Project, and All Things Go. His fiction has been published in Forth Magazine. -- Find Matt at his website and on Twitter: @mattclibanoff
The Food Gap is a Perfect Indictment of The Way We Treat Poverty
The food desert phenomena was originally addressed by the USDA, when in 2010, they reported that 18 million Americans were living in areas that lack access to fresh fruit and vegetables. The suburbs are full of options, but for the urban and rural poor, grocery stores can be few and far between. The definition of a food desert is simple. If an urban community is more than one mile from a supermarket or if a rural community is more than ten, then the members of that community are living in a food desert.
A food desert map
One way to combat this, at least in major cities, is urban farming. Urban farming is a growing trend, and while some people grow crops in their homes as a means of becoming self-sufficient, the most exciting development is vertical farming. Vertical farming, or warehouse farming, is the practice of using LED lights and nutrient-rich water to grow crops indoors. These farms, located mostly in urban areas, are designed to help alleviate some of the shipping costs associated with fresh produce. That said, these farms are still in the development stage, and as a result, their produce is very expensive. Bowery Farms charges $3.99 for a five-ounce package of leafy greens and while this may seem like a bargain to Manhattanites, most people don't have the money to buy spinach for $12 a pound. While vertical farms are a start, they're far from being a cureall. In fact, food deserts themselves may not, as many believe, be at the root of the food gap.
In a recent study conducted by economists at NYU, Stanford, and the University of Chicago, researchers determined that increasing access to supermarkets "reduces nutritional inequality by only 9%, while the remaining 91% is driven by differences in demand." This runs counter to the supply-side argument, that people just need healthy options and they'll make the choice to buy those foods. On top of this, contrary to popular belief, eating a healthy diet isn't all that much more expensive than eating a junk food diet.
For many, fast food is the most available option.
The authors of the study suggest that we invest in educating lower-income people about nutrition, but in an article with The Atlantic Richard Florida expressed concerns with this approach. Florida points out, correctly, that all of our food has nutritional labeling and that information on healthy eating is widely available online. According to Florida, what affluent people have that the lower classes don't, is "more time and resources to devote to their health and well-being." While Florida makes some good initial points regarding the food gap, his position slowly devolves into seemingly random speculation in which he posits that lower-income people dislike avocado toast and kale because they "smack of urban elitism." His position, in the end, is one of hopelessness in which he blames food inequality on the "deeper fault line" of classism in America. In other words, this sucks and we can't do anything about it.
Unfortunately, people suffering from the effects of food inequality can't really afford to take as cavalier an attitude. Poor diets correlate to higher chances of diabetes, cancer, obesity, and heart disease. For many on the wrong side of this issue, it's literally life and death. If class is at the heart of the problem, then the key to fixing it is reducing poverty. While social welfare programs like universal basic income seem light years away, and food stamps clearly aren't enough, there's one American charity whose work has set the bar pretty high. They're called GiveDirectly, and they help poverty-stricken regions in Africa by giving people money, no strings attached. It isn't a crazy amount, just enough to help, but the results have been astounding, and the people being helped by GiveDirectly have been investing their money and using it to buy much needed medical supplies. If we were to implement a similar system, giving money to our most impoverished citizens, we might actually see an improvement in the food gap. Contrary to Florida's belief, the poor aren't opposed to eating kale because it's a symbol of snobbery. They don't buy kale because they associate it with wealth. They're just have an acute understanding of their position on the social ladder. Our obsession with earning money is meretricious, and ultimately destructive. The food gap is a perfect indicator of how we conflate our identities with our bank accounts, and the deep shame associated with being poor in America. The fact of the matter is, eating healthy doesn't cost more; it just looks like it does.
