Today is Earth Day

Earth Day (April 22^nd) was initiated in 1970 after a huge oil spill in California prompted 20 million Americans (10% of the population at the time) to take to the streets in a mass protest demanding more environmental awareness. It has been held on April 22 ever since, which makes this year its 50^th anniversary. With climate change now getting rapidly out of control it has never been more relevant.

We started Lent studying the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book, “Saying Yes to Life”. If you stopped reading it when our meetings were curtailed due to Covid19, I urge you to finish reading it now and look up some of the many internet references it provides, particularly those relating to A Rocha.

Also look up www.earthday.org and learn more about Earth Day.

The good news coming from the Covid 19 pandemic is that pollution has been greatly reduced. Almost all flights have been grounded, offices closed and cars taken off the roads. Estimates put the potential drop in CO2 emissions (over 2019 figures) at 5.5% globally (7.5% in the US.).  In Delhi, Bangkok and São Paulo residents have expressed disbelief at the unusually clean air in cities usually choked with pollution. But this reduction in emissions is still way off what we’d need to prevent 1.5 degrees Celsius of global heating. To hit this, global emissions would need to fall by 7.6 per cent every year this decade.

See:  www.wired.co.uk/article/coronavirus-climate-change for more details.

The coronavirus outbreak gives us a chance to refocus our priorities in a concerted effort to reach net zero by 2050.