Great Global Clean Up, Citizen Science, Advocacy, Education, and Art.
Can the world learn to live within it’s limits ?
Earth Day 2020 is the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day. Celebrations will include activities such as the Great Global Clean Up, Citizen Science, Advocacy, Education, and Art.
Nature is suffering. A huge basket of issues: urban air pollution, oil spills, recent fires in Australia & the Amazon, extreme weather and the worst locust invasion in Kenya and so on. Now this COVID19 health pandemic is threatening humanity, raising doubts whether the world would survive the challenge. Mother Earth is urging a call to action.
It was the year 1970 when a large number of Americans (almost 10% of the US population) gathered to sow the seeds for realizing humans’ responsibility to protect mother earth, to help it to continue to protect us. It is ironical that a movement like this was necessary for environmental legislation to be passed by the governments across the world.
Earth Day is a name used for two similar global observances. While some people celebrate Earth Day around the time of the March Equinox, others observe the occasion on April 22 each year.
Environmental challenges of larger dimensions continue to haunt the world. Making things worse, governments are going back on promises made leaving the Paris accord in peril. The world has been notoriously unsuccessful in figuring out ways to address issues.
Give a thought: have you heard about a new river being formed in the recent past? But we keep worrying about the drying up of rivers, excess use of fertilizers pushing the lands to become deserts, groundwater getting depleted, forced to go deep into the sea both in depth and length to get seafood, rains becoming either scarce or too much, raising sea level…. all are there for us to see. It is clearly our inability to balance our requirements and the renewable equilibrium limits of mother earth. The Intelligence of the humans is reflected in the ability to commission space odysseys, travelling to far off planets and whatnot. In the hurry to conquer things, we’ve moved away from keeping balance and equilibrium. Humanity is found wanting in taking steps to protect mother earth.
Earth Day 2020 is the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day. Celebrations will include activities such as the Great Global Clean Up, Citizen Science, Advocacy, Education, and Art. It is a realisation that we need overall development and people involvement.
Celebrations and occasions like these bring people all over the world together to celebrate, contemplate and resolve to take steps to minimise the damage.
The wonders happening by just three weeks of lockdown, be it the peacock dancing in the streets of the city or the animals and birds coming out and rediscovering themselves, gives hope and shows us the direction we need to take. We need to contemplate that to save the mother earth, a more sustainable economy that works for both the people and the planet is the need of the times. Can we hope that the world would learn to live within its limits?
Let’s promote harmony with nature and the Earth.
Toons by Taskeen Bhat
Logs by Kartikay Shukla & Sai Baba
