Earth Day 2024 is a special event to celebrate our shared environment . So, what is Earth Day & what is its theme to reinforce and sustain the awareness around environmental action at a personal and collective civic level.
This article looks at the celebration of the Earth Day 2024 and helps to explain what Earth Day is & what is its theme for the year, 2024.
The first Earth Day in 1970 mobilized millions of Americans from all walks of life, giving birth to a broad new movement to protect the planet. It was founded by Senator Gaylord Nelson, the junior senator from Wisconsin, had long been concerned about the deteriorating environment in the United States & Denis Hayes, a young activist recruited by the Senator, to organize the campus teach-ins and to scale the idea to a broader public, and they choose 22 April, a weekday falling between Spring Break and Final Exams, to maximize the greatest student participation.
On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans (10% of the U.S. population) at the time took to streets, college campuses and hundreds of cities to protest environmental ignorance and demand a new way forward. The first Earth Day is credited with launching the modern environmental movement.
Indeed, it is, often, recognised that the first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of other first-of-their-kind environmental laws, including the National Environmental Education Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Clean Air Act. Two years later congress passed the Clean Water Act.
Earth Day is, now, recognized as the planet’s largest civic event coordinated by EarthDay.org, which continues to build upon the work and legacy of its founders and is held on 22 April each year with strong support in the United States, Mexico, Italy, India, Australia and across South America, the Middle East, North Africa & South-East Asia.
The theme for Earth Day 2024 is Planet v Plastics, where earthday.org is making a commitment to end plastics for the sake of human and planetary health, demanding a 60% reduction in the production of all plastics by 2040.
In order to achieve the commitment to achieve a 60% reduction of all plastics by 2040, EarthDay.org has four goals:
- Promoting widespread public awareness of the damage done by plastic to human, animal, and all biodiversity’s health and demanding more research be conducted on its health implications, including the release of any and all information regarding its effects to the public
- Rapidly phasing out all single use plastics by 2030 and achieving this phase out commitment in the United Nations Treaty on Plastic Pollution in 2024
- Demanding policies ending the scourge of fast fashion and the vast amount of plastic it produces and uses; and,
- Investing in innovative technologies and materials to build a plastic-free world.
It should be noted that the United Nations has established an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), which began its work in 2022, with the ambition of completing a draft global legally binding agreement by the end of 2024. It is expected to present a legally binding instrument, which would reflect diverse alternatives to address the full lifecycle of plastics, the design of reusable and recyclable products and materials, and the need for enhanced international collaboration to facilitate access to technology, capacity building and scientific and technical cooperation.
So, to summarise:
There are many opportunities to celebrate our shared environment especially on Earth Day this year on 22 April 2024 & a rich resource of information available from the EarthDay.org website.
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