OP ED OPINION-EDITORIAL: Earth Day – ON DOOMS DAYS?
Make each day an Earth Day
Today is Earth Day and our country is one with the world in calling attention to the planet’s plight on multiple fronts. If the earth is a hospital patient, the prognosis is deadly. No less than António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) made the assessment in his “State of the Planet” address in December 2020, when he said, “To put it simply, the state of the planet is broken.”
“Humanity is waging war on nature. This is suicidal. Nature always strikes back – and it is already doing so with growing force and fury. Biodiversity is collapsing. One million species are at risk of extinction. Ecosystems are disappearing before our eyes. Deserts are spreading. Wetlands are being lost. Every year, we lose 10 million hectares of forests,” Guterres said. And this is only just the beginning.
He added that “oceans are overfished – and choking with plastic waste. The carbon dioxide they absorb is acidifying the seas. Coral reefs are bleached and dying. Air and water pollution are killing nine million people annually. And with people and livestock encroaching further into animal habitats and disrupting wild spaces, we could see more viruses and other disease-causing agents jump from animals to humans.”
What was alarming in Guterres’ statement is that two new authoritative reports from the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme spell out how close we are to climate catastrophe.
Amid this seemingly endless list of bad prognoses is a “cure” – “Let’s be clear: human activities are at the root of our descent towards chaos. But that means human action can help solve it. Making peace with nature is the defining task of the 21st century. It must be the top priority for everyone, everywhere.”
The people of this world have destroyed this planet, so it would also take all of us collectively to heal the planet and make sure that it is still habitable for the future generations.
This is the impetus behind Earth Day 2022, when the global organizer Earthday.Org announced its theme “Invest in Our Planet.” Earth Day 2022 is “focused on accelerating solutions to combat our greatest threat, climate change, and to activate everyone – governments, citizens, and businesses – to do their part. Everyone accounted for, and everyone accountable.”
Today, the organizers hope to make the citizens of the world recognize that in order to help this planet, countries have to accelerate the transition to an equitable, green economy, and leave behind the dirty fossil fuel economy.
Earthday.Org also reminds all of us that we have a voice in the fight for our planet: “As Individual citizens – voters, as watchdogs, and as consumers – we have the simple yet effective power to make our voices heard. What each of us does, and how we do it, has a huge ripple effect on our ecosystems, and on the pace of corporate and government action. We are responsible for holding business, governments, and others accountable and to support their efforts when they get it right.”
The first Earth Day was held in April of 1970. Fifty two years later, we are still in this fight and it seems that in each passing time, the planet slides to a worse state than before. Unless governments, institutions, businesses, and individuals act now, climate change will continue to deeply damage the planet and make the future bleaker than ever before.
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