Fifty years ago, on April 22, 1970, environmentalists marched worldwide as the first Earth Day shook the nations of the world out of what had become a long, pollution-riddled slumber that took place during the 19th and 20th centuries, and is also known as the ugly by-product of the Industrial Age.
Earth Day was supposed to be a day created for thanking our planet for Motherly Love and for allowing us to enjoy the gifts of life, free of air pollution and global warming events. Instead, with addition of a pandemic caused by virus COVID-19, we are now facing a much larger worldwide environmental existential problem………which leads us to pose the following question: Have 50 years of effort provided by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UNIPCC), the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, plus the efforts and actions of countless environmental activists been for naught?.
Today Earth is at a terribly environmental crossroad.
However, the present situation should not be a reason for not celebrating Earth Day. On the contrary, if we acknowledge that the reason that our planet presently finds itself environmentally at a crossroad, it is because we have wrongly treated her for two centuries. Therefore, I propose that the 50th Earth Day celebration by all climate change activists should consist in making amends for the wrongs caused to our Mother Earth. I feel that we must do that even if the only wrong we might have committed was to enjoy the fruits of wrongdoing.
Scientists from the UNIPCC tell us that by the year 2030 we must make an effort to flatten the Earth’s global warming temperature curve to finally arrive at 1.5 to 2 degree centigrade (34.7 to 35.6 degree Fahrenheit) and possibly to zero degrees by the year 2050. This is a great challenge for ALL. But even if it feels that the world may be crumbling, let us remember that regardless of faith, gender, race, age, nationality, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, climate change activists are part of a generation, a community that must continually tackle the environmental problem. We must take what we’ve been given, and redesign it and build it in a completely new way. When our fight for the future is finally over, our communities of environmental activists will still be here. And Earth for our children and grandchildren will be a beautiful and safe place to live.
To prepare ourselves for the continuation of the struggle to help in the recovery of Mother Earth’s health, I propose that all climate change activists celebrate this Earth Day, by individually or collectively using the Internet, our iPads, and our smart phones, for visiting and reflecting on the contents of the following short TED videos during the quarantine time that has been suggested to us for combating the COVID-19 virus.
Here are the videos:
James Hansen, Climate Scientist: WHY I MUST SPEAK OUT ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE
Al Gore, US Vice-president: WHAT COMES AFTER AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH?
Nicholas Stern: Economist: THE STATE OF THE CLIMATE – AND WHAT WE MIGHT DO ABOUT IT
Bill Gates, Industrialist, Technologist: INNOVATING TO ZERO
Pedro Valverde – Poulsbo, Washington