Pearl Jam Retrograde Music Video Showcases Climate Activist Greta Thunberg

JAKARTA - Pearl Jam's latest music video Retrograde features Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg as a fortune teller. In this video, he reveals the consequences of inaction on climate change.

The video, directed by Australian filmmaker Josh Wakely, shows a man visiting a fortune teller shop to gaze at a crystal ball. He witnessed a series of catastrophic climate changes in sketch form, inundating the major cities of New York and London and burning across the Australian outback.

The fortune teller then unmasks him as Thunberg, while Pearl Jam appears as themselves on the tarot cards.

The video was originally intended as a live action, however, production began in mid-March just days after the COVID-19 pandemic put the world on lockdown.

As a result, Wakely told Variety, Friday, May 15, the video turned into a mixture of animation and motion capture.

Thunberg also didn't provide the original footage for the video, as Wakely combines the existing video of the young climate activist with the body of another actress in motion capture.

“He gave me the emotion I needed. "It's thrilling to see an email in my inbox from him saying that he likes it," she told Variety.

Pearl Jam's tracks aren't Thunberg's first involvement in the rock scene. Last year, he appeared on 1975's self-titled single Notes on a Conditional Form. He gave an emotional speech on 'civil disobedience' in response to inaction on climate change.