
Earth Day 2019 just passed, but planning has already begun for Earth Day 2020, and it's going to be a big deal.
The Earth Day Network announced on this year's Earth Day that the next year's celebration, which coincides with the day's 50th anniversary, will focus on climate action.
"Climate change represents the biggest challenge to humanity's future and the systems that make our world habitable," Earth Day Network President Kathleen Rogers said in a press release. "2020 has to be the year of transformative change that seizes the positive action underway and makes it bigger and bolder worldwide."
Warming since the first #EarthDay (March, since April 2019 isn’t finished yet. https://t.co/uK6ykO78y7) https://t.co/rgKNrDqK96— Gavin Schmidt (@Gavin Schmidt)1555941743.0
A major report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released last year found that greenhouse gas emissions needed to fall to 45 percent of 2010 levels in order for the world to meet the Paris agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. That means world leaders now have 11 years to make changes that the IPCC said had "no documented historic precedent."
Ahead of its 50th anniversary, the Earth Day Network seeks to encourage change through a series of initiatives.
1. Vote Earth: In 2019 and 2020, there will be more than 60 major national elections around the world. This initiative encourages voters to engage with candidates on climate and vote for the would-be leaders with the best environmental policies. It also seeks to register one million voters around Earth Day 2020.
2. Earth Challenge 2020: This initiative seeks to organize the largest ever citizen scientist initiative to report on environmental health. An Earth Challenge 2020 app will be launched at the start of the year.
3. Billion Acts of Green: The network will update its landmark Billion Acts of Green program with a goal of 3.5 billion environmentally-friendly acts completed and logged in 2020.
4. Great Global Cleanup: The Earth Day Network plans to learn from cleanups in U.S. cities this year to scale up towards what it hopes will be the largest environmental volunteer event ever, coordinating people around the world to pick up billions of pieces of trash.
Denis Hayes, the lead organizer of the original Earth Day, told reporters at the National Press Club Monday that he was optimistic about Earth Day 2020, and the planet's overall future.
"2020 will be for climate what 1970 was for other environmental issues," Hayes said, as ThinkProgress reported.
Heyes said he was especially encouraged by the youth activism around climate, such as the school strikes inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg and the Sunrise Movement's push for a Green New Deal in the U.S. Hayes acknowledged that President Donald Trump had "appointed the two worst EPA administrators in history," but thought the tide would turn against his pro-fossil-fuel policies.
"I'm confident that the end is in sight. When conditions are right, people are ready to demand change, and America can turn on a dime," Hayes said, as Voice of America reported.
This was partly born out by Hayes own experience with the original Earth Day, which he helped organize when he was just 25 years old, ThinkProgress reported.
Denis Allen Hayes, an advocate of solar power, left Harvard after being selected by Senator Gaylord Nelson to organ… https://t.co/WHfYrQUb6c— NBC News Archives (@NBC News Archives)1555947248.0
After 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day, "powerful laws that had been unthinkable in 1969 became unstoppable by the end of 1970," he said.
Those laws included the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act.
- Redwoods are the world's tallest trees.
- Now scientists have discovered they are even bigger than we thought.
- Using laser technology they map the 80-meter giants.
- Trees are a key plank in the fight against climate change.
They are among the largest trees in the world, descendants of forests where dinosaurs roamed.
Pixabay / Simi Luft
<p><span>Until recently, measuring these trees meant scaling their 80 meter high trunks with a tape measure. Now, a team of scientists from University College London and the University of Maryland uses advanced laser scanning, to create 3D maps and calculate the total mass.</span></p><p>The results are striking: suggesting the trees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">may be as much as 30% larger than earlier measurements suggested.</a> Part of that could be due to the additional trunks the Redwoods can grow as they age, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a process known as reiteration</a>.</p>New 3D measurements of large redwood trees for biomass and structure. Nature / UCL
<p>Measuring the trees more accurately is important because carbon capture will probably play a key role in the battle against climate change. Forest <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/09/carbon-sequestration-natural-forest-regrowth" target="_blank">growth could absorb billions of tons</a> of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.</p><p>"The importance of big trees is widely-recognised in terms of carbon storage, demographics and impact on their surrounding ecosystems," the authors wrote<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank"> in the journal Nature</a>. "Unfortunately the importance of big trees is in direct proportion to the difficulty of measuring them."</p><p>Redwoods are so long lived because of their ability to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cope with climate change, resist disease and even survive fire damage</a>, the scientists say. Almost a fifth of their volume may be bark, which helps protect them.</p>Carbon Capture Champions
<p><span>Earlier research by scientists at Humboldt University and the University of Washington found that </span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112716302584" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Redwood forests store almost 2,600 tonnes of carbon per hectare</a><span>, their bark alone containing more carbon than any other neighboring species.</span></p><p>While the importance of trees in fighting climate change is widely accepted, not all species enjoy the same protection as California's coastal Redwoods. In 2019 the world lost the equivalent of <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">30 soccer fields of forest cover every minute</a>, due to agricultural expansion, logging and fires, according to The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).</p>Pixabay
<p>Although <a href="https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/1420/files/original/Deforestation_fronts_-_drivers_and_responses_in_a_changing_world_-_full_report_%281%29.pdf?1610810475" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the rate of loss is reported to have slowed in recent years</a>, reforesting the world to help stem climate change is a massive task.</p><p><span>That's why the World Economic Forum launched the Trillion Trees Challenge (</span><a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a><span>) and is engaging organizations and individuals across the globe through its </span><a href="https://uplink.weforum.org/uplink/s/uplink-issue/a002o00000vOf09AAC/trillion-trees" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Uplink innovation crowdsourcing platform</a><span> to support the project.</span></p><p>That's backed up by research led by ETH Zurich/Crowther Lab showing there's potential to restore tree coverage across 2.2 billion acres of degraded land.</p><p>"Forests are critical to the health of the planet," according to <a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a>. "They sequester carbon, regulate global temperatures and freshwater flows, recharge groundwater, anchor fertile soil and act as flood barriers."</p><p><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor">Reposted with permission from the </em><span><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor"><a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/redwoods-store-more-co2-and-are-more-enormous-than-we-thought/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>.</em></span></p>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
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