Earth Day 2020 celebrates its 50th Anniversary this year. Celebrations will include activities such as the Great Global Clean-Up, Citizen Science, Advocacy, Education, and Art.
The enormous challenges - but also the vast opportunities - of acting on climate change have distinguished the issue as the most pressing topic for the 50th anniversary. Climate change represents the biggest challenge to the future of humanity and the life-support systems that make the world habitable.
Earth Day was a unified response to an environment in crisis - oil spills, smog, rivers so polluted they literally caught fire.
On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans, 10% of the U.S. population at the time, took to the streets, college campuses and hundreds of cities to protest environmental ignorance and demand a new way forward for the planet.
The first Earth Day is credited with launching the modern environmental movement and is now recognised as the planet’s largest civic event.
At the end of 2020, nations will be expected to increase their national commitments to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. The time is now for citizens to call for global ambition to attend to the climate crisis. Unless every country in the world steps up - and steps up with urgency and ambition - we are consigning current and future generations to a dangerous future.
Earth Day 2020 will be far more than a day. It must be a historic moment when citizens of the world rise up in a united call for the creativity, innovation, ambition, and bravery that is needed to meet the climate crisis and seize the enormous opportunities of a zero-carbon future.
Earth Day Top Events and Things to Do:
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- Organise a group of volunteers to help clean-up and restore a green space. Some suggestions include planting trees and adding waste receptacles.
- Try to go the whole day without creating any garbage, and not to use cars.
- Change the traditional incandescent light bulbs to energy saving LED or CFL light bulbs.
- Watch a documentary or movie that touches on an ecological issue. Favourites are: An Inconvenient Truth (2006), the Burning Season (1993, 2008), Elemental (2012) and The Day after Tomorrow (2004).
- Read one of many books that relate to environmental issues such as, The World Without Us (Alan Weisman), Hell and High Water (Joseph Romm) and Natural Capitalism (Hawken, Lovins and Lovins).
The world needs you - and your actions - for Earth Day 2020.
Earth Day Poster 2020 (1.3 MB)
