It's only 4 degrees
The climate crisis is real
Welcome to new subscribers and regular readers! Thank you for joining me for today’s song, “4 Degrees” by Anohni. If you’d like to hear the song before you read about it, I’ve included a YouTube video below the article.
Below, you’ll find my interpretation of the lyrics which are written in italics. For Japanese students, vocabulary words in bold are provided in Japanese below. TOEIC (PBT) 450+, Eiken 2, CEFR B1.
(390) words)
The song was released in 2015. The songwriter, Anohni, got the idea for the song from a scientific article she read in 2013. The report said that if we don’t cut CO2, the earth’s temperature will increase by 4 degrees C.
She wrote the song to reminder herself that she is also responsible, as each of us is, for making changes to our lifestyles.
I made the edit when we had flash flooding in Edinburgh (Scotland) while there were wildfires in the other places on Earth. Exactly what the scientists say about the consequences of Climate Change - droughts mixed with flash flooding, killing life on this planet.
It’s only four degrees
I wanna see this world
I wanna see it boil
It’s only four degrees
Maybe Anohni is being ironic. We can’t imagine that she would want the earth to die.
I wanna hear the dogs crying for water
I wanna see fish go belly-up in the sea
All those lemurs and all those tiny creatures
I wanna see them burn
It’s only four degrees
Maybe she is thinking that most people don’t really care. After all, it’s only 4 degrees.
And all those rhinos and al those big mammals
I wanna see them lying, crying in the fields
I wanna see them burn
It’s only four degrees
If we do nothing to change the way we live, work, and play, I think she’s saying it’s the same thing as wanting the animals to die.
I wanna burn them
We know that the climate crisis is real. We see it in the wildfires that burned Los Angeles, areas in Japan and South Korea during the winter of 2025. We’ve seen fire destruction in Australia and the many, many animals who suffered as a result. There are also terrible floods because rain patterns are changing. This creates stronger typhoons and storms. More and more people have to leave their homes or are killed in the disasters. All of this costs billions of dollars worth of damage to farms, homes, and businesses.
I wanna burn the sky
I wanna burn the breeze
I wanna see the animals die in the trees
Most people think it’s someone else’s problem. “I’m not doing that much to create global warming,” we think.
Oh, let’s go, let’s go
It’s only four degrees
I wanna burn them
What has to happen for people, companies, and governments to do more to stop us from our own destruction?
Vocabulary
flooding 洪水
wildfire 山火事
drought 干ばつ
boil 沸騰
ironic 皮肉
belly-up 腹を上にした
lemurs キツネザル
rhino サイ
destruction 破壊
disaster 災害
Sources
Davies, R. Germany – thousands evacuate floods in Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg. FloodList. (1970, June 3). https://floodlist.com/ . Accessed 1 April 2025.
Mikhaila Friel, H. A. Flash floods are a worsening scourge worldwide - here’s why. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/flash-floods-spain-increasing-globally-experts-infrastructure-change-2024-10 . Accessed 1 April 2025.
All photos from Wikimedia Commons, public domain
I believe that education should be free.
All of the articles about the songs will remain free for students to use. (We are all students, are we not?) However, if you find these articles useful and are in a position to make a small (or large) donation, I would be deeply grateful.
buymeacoffee.com/socialissuesinsong
View a directory of all the songs covered in Social Issues in Song:
What has to happen for people, companies, and governments to do more to stop us from our own destruction?
Cat pondered on this for some time. Words of poet, name of Robert Bly came to mind. Bly write about denial. He write: "Denial begins with the refusal to admit that we die. Breaking through the wall of denial helps us get rid of self-pity, and replaces self-pity with awe at the complicated misery of all living things." Cat think this is very interesting choice of words, this "complicated misery of all things".
Cat thinks Bly is correct in some ways, about how living in culture that refuse to even think about death. Maybe if culture accepts finitude in all things, culture can begin to approach death of planet in new and innovative ways. Big questions, always.