The Nation on Marvin Gaye

"Here's a question whose answer might surprise you: what American songwriter penned the most-listened-to piece of environmental protest music of all time? Somebody with an acoustic guitar? John Denver? The answer, almost certainly, is Marvin Gaye. 'Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology)' appeared on What's Going On, the album he released in May 1971, which went straight to the top of the charts, even though Motown boss Berry Gordy thought it was too political to sell. 'I realized that I had to put my own fantasies behind me if I wanted to write songs that would reach the souls of people. I wanted them to take a look at what was happening in the world,' Gaye said later. The Vietnam War, protested in the album's title song, was part of that story, and so was drug abuse — and so was 'oil wasted on the oceans and upon our seas,' and 'radiation in the ground and in the sky,' and 'fish full of mercury.'
"'Where did all the blue sky go? / Poison is the wind that blows / From the north, east, south and sea'" (Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. and Bill McKibben, "People, Let's Get Our Carbon Down," The Nation, 9/28/09).