Earth Day is the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement, which began in 1970. Fifty years later, “Earth Day is widely recognized as the largest secular observance in the world, marked by more than a billion people every year as a day of action to change human behavior and create global, national and local policy changes,” according to EarthDay.org.
Since the inaugural Earth Day, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere has increased from 324 parts per million in 1970, to more than 414 ppm today. Scientists expect 2020 to be the warmest year on record for the planet, and climate-caused natural disasters have placed the climate crisis front and center. Public demonstrations demanding climate action had seemed to be gaining traction over the last year, leaving activists hopeful that 2020 would be a year of positive development. Earth Day 2020 celebrations had planned to be a significant worldwide event—until coronavirus. Many of the shows will still go on, just online.
The GlacierHub staff decided to acknowledge the semicentennial with a personalized video tribute. In each clip you can meet the faces behind the bylines, hear what Earth Day means to each of them, and revisit their favorite stories they’ve researched.
Read GlacierHub staff writer Audrey Ramming’s pick for her favorite GlacierHub story, “Acoustics of Meltwater Drainage in Greenland Glacial Soundscapes.”https://youtu.be/oYJ44i8b-r0
Read GlacierHub staff writer Grennan Milliken’s pick for his favorite GlacierHub story “Tlingit Song Recalls Glacier Bay and Time Gone By.”
Read GlacierHub staff writer Zoë Klobus’ pick for her favorite GlacierHub story “Congressional Hearing Focuses on Earth’s Changing Cryosphere.”
https://youtube.com/watch?v=h4aBKMei2Ks
Read GlacierHub staff writer Elza Bouhassira’s pick for her favorite GlacierHub story “At Glacier’s End: Protecting Glacial Rivers in Iceland.
Read GlacierHub senior editor Peter Deneen’s pick for his favorite GlacierHub story “Massive Impact Crater Discovered Beneath Greenland Glacier.”
Read GlacierHub managing editor Ben Orlove’s pick for his favorite GlacierHub story “An Abundance of Yaks.”
This post was originally published on GlacierHub. GlacierHub is managed by Ben Orlove, an anthropologist at the Earth Institute and the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University.
