Madrid (EFE) every April 22, and also highlights the already “very evident” effects of the climate crisis, such as drought.
Every Earth Day, environmental organizations and activists from around the world take the opportunity to sound the alarm about the pressing challenges facing the planet, such as climate change or the degradation of ecosystems.
However, since April 22, 1970, when the massive demonstration in the US commemorating this day occurred, the planet has continued to warm beyond its biological potential, establishing a new climatic normality that heralds extreme phenomena and will way to leave a “poisoned legacy” to future generations, denounce environmentalists.
The world is today 1.2 ºC warmer than in the pre-industrial era, while the loss of biodiversity is also accelerating: in the last five centuries man has witnessed the disappearance of 680 species of vertebrates, and one million species of Animals and plants are currently in danger of extinction.
Aires Machado, one of the spokespersons for the Youth for Climate collective -which demands climate action from the beginning of intergenerational justice-, confesses to EFE that, although until now he has been lucky not to suffer too much “eco-anxiety”, he has recently adopted a more pessimistic view.
The effects of climate crises, now “very evident”
The effects of the climate crisis, such as severe droughts or extreme temperatures, are now becoming “very evident”, he explains, and “in recent months too many negative stimuli have come to us”, such as the drought or the initiative to expand irrigation. in Doñana in this context of water stress and despite warnings from the scientific community or European rulings.
“It is becoming clearer and action is increasingly urgent,” he stresses, because even if the battle is lost in the field of the effects of global warming “we can win in mobilization and political pressure.”
“Now is the time for us to choose the path for what will be Earth Day in 2050,” says the activist, who imagines an April 22 in the middle of the century that serves to calibrate, “for better or for worse what we have achieved.”
Thus, that date may be an anniversary to commemorate what we have done in climate activism and celebrate “the world we have built” or it will be “a bitter and melancholic day” to lament what “we could have done.”
Meteorologists with Earth Day
The young people involved in this social movement have convinced meteorologists from all over the country to use their public projection -on networks or on television spaces such as La Sexta, Antena 3, RTVE, TV3, IB3, Canal Extremadura, TPA, RTVC or Canal Sur – and use of graphics known as ‘Climate Stripes’.
This infographic, created by the British climatologist Ed Hawkins, visualizes the variation in the average temperature of the planet in colors in decades, using bluer tones to represent the cold anomalies and others more reddish for the warm ones.
The graphic has reached the front pages of the media, scenarios in meetings such as climate summits or even reports from the IPCC -the UN group of climate experts-, to a point where it is already “very recognizable” within the environmental world. , says Aires Machado.
Now, the idea of the activists is to get out of those circles so that the rest of the population becomes familiar with the image that reveals how humans have altered, in a matter of a few decades, the entire climate of the Earth.
The entry Climate activists warn: Now we choose what Earth Day will be like in 2050 was first published in EFE Noticias.