EarthDay.org the global organizer of Earth Day — officially April 22 but celebrated April 27-28 in Santa Barbara — declared this year’s theme to be Planet vs. Plastics.
In doing this, the organizer said: “This theme is committed to advocating for widespread awareness on the health risks of plastics, rapidly phasing out single-use plastics and pushing for a strong U.N. Treaty on Plastic Pollution by the end of 2024.”
At any other time in history, this would be more than a laudable goal, because unlike other materials plastics are not biodegradable and can take up to 1,000 years to break down.
However, this year it is a missed opportunity to focus the world on the existential threat —climate change — that we are now in the midst of.
This Earth Day is predicted to have more than 1 billion participants in more than 193 countries.
Taking into account media coverage, that means more than 1 billion people could be educated about the imminent threat the Earth is facing because of climate change, and what to do about it.
99% of plastics are made from chemicals sourced from fossil fuels. Their carbon footprint, throughout their life cycle, emits 3.4% of global greenhouse gases.
On the other hand, fossil fuels — oil, gas and coal — produce more than 75% of greenhouse gas emissions, and nearly 90% of all carbon dioxide emissions causing global warming.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, in issuing a Code Red for humanity, with already irreversible consequences, said it all.
“The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable,” he said. “We are unequivocally facing a climate emergency.”
On Earth Day 2024, this will no longer be about a hypothetical future. The first three weeks of July were the hottest globally ever, by a lot.
As far back as the 2015, Paris Agreement climate scientists warned that a 1.5C (2.7F) increase in global temperatures would be an irreversible tipping point from which we “could not come back.”
During those three weeks in July, the Earth temporarily went over the 1.5C (2.7 F) tipping point.
“Not come back,” according to climate scientists, means that after the tipping point there will globally be a “new normal” of more severe heat, wildfires, droughts, storms, sea-level rise and flooding.
Species will shift their ranges toward the cooler poles and higher elevations.
Humans, too, will be on the move escaping the heat and droughts. (Studies suggest there will be tens of millions of climate migrants by the end of the 21st century).
And, climate-related deaths will become part of our lives; there were an additional 250,000 climate deaths in 2023.
I realize that Earth Day has historically been a festival for family outings. Indeed, environmental EarthDay festivals routinely included green car shows; opportunities to meet with elected officials; understand bikes don’t emit greenhouse gass; eat sustainable organic foods; learn about the importance of reducing waste, composting and recycling; and have kids corners with eco-activities.
I appreciate the need for families to have a day of fun festive events, and Earth Day 2024 could still have included family fun.
In my view, however, facing an existential threat like climate change, it would have been much more appropriate for this year’s themes to focus on the destruction global warming is doing to our planet; what is a tipping point; how to avoid emitting greenhouse gases in our daily lives; the importance of taking climate change into account when voting for or against elected officials; and showing how we are all one connected world in which what each of us does by emitting fossil fuels impacts the rest of us.
With some creative thought, these themes could be presented so children, the generation that will inherit the impacts of climate change, could understand them.
Perhaps Earth Day 2024 could even feature a video showing Star Trek’s Captain Kirk literally in space looking down at the Earth and saying:
“When someone travels to space and views Earth from orbit, a sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner … There are no borders or boundaries on our planet except those that we create in our minds or through human behaviors.
“All the ideas and concepts that divide us when we are on the surface begin to fade from orbit and the moon. The result is a shift in worldview, and in identity …
“Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna … things that took 5 billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind.”
We and the life forms we share the Earth with are the only known life forms in the universe; a miracle.
Climate change is threatening that miracle by putting Nature out of balance. This, in turn, threatens the kind of world we will be passing on to our children and our children’s children if we don’t stop the overheating of our planet.
Shouldn’t the theme for this Earth Day have been “Stopping Climate Change”?