Since the first Earth Day was held in 1970 in the United States, it has grown into an internationally celebrated event in more than 200 countries across the globe. It’s the perfect time to remember to appreciate Earth and commit to making big and small changes to protect it. The DA Global Environment and Climate Council has a few suggestions of things you can do to make a difference.

Tools for Taking Action

Here are tools, resources, and suggestions on what you can do to make a difference. Click the links below for more information.

A mostly molten iron core, a solid outer mantle, and literally millions of tons of water (332.5 million cubic miles, of which 321 million are the oceans, according to the U.S. Geological Survey) keep body and soul together. What’s missing? The icing on the top of the planet is topped by layers of snow and ice at the North Pole, South Pole, and mountain summits around the world, and the pace of change in these frozen environments is outstripping all past developments.

Consider our snow-capped mountains: Sperry Glacier in Glacier National Park, for example, has shrunk from more than 800 acres (320 ha) in 1901 to less than 250 acres (100 ha) today; the snows of Kilimanjaro have melted more than 80% since 1912; glaciers in the central and eastern Himalaya are melting so fast that researchers believe that most of them could disappear by 2035; Greenland’s ice sheet is shrinking; and on it goes. As the glaciers and snow caps melt, more freshwater flows into the seas, and the ocean water warms up and expands, causing sea levels to rise. Thawing of the permafrost has caused subsidence, vegetative changes, and pent-up methane (a powerful greenhouse gas) explosions from Alaska to Siberia. And subsidence and rising sea levels are affecting island nations and coastal areas from Louisiana (where the coasts are sinking by about three feet a century) to Florida and beyond.

As a result of human-induced climate change, areas throughout the world are experiencing longer and more intense heat waves. A “heatwave” is when the ambient temperature reaches a certain threshold for two or more days.

Heatwaves affect many areas of the world, but they are most dangerous in places where the people and infrastructure are not accustomed to or prepared for them. In parts of Europe, for example, intense heat waves in 2022 drastically affected individuals, businesses, and society. European countries are particularly vulnerable because buildings and homes often lack cooling technology, the population is generally older and thus more susceptible to heat-related illness, and crops grown in the region have difficulty withstanding such high temperatures.

Increased heat and humidity don’t affect all people equally. Older people, pregnant people, and children are more susceptible to heat-related illnesses because of their physiology. These groups have higher sweating thresholds, making it more difficult for their bodies to cool down quickly. People with chronic conditions, those who work outside, and athletes are also more susceptible. Living environment and socioeconomic status play a role in vulnerability. Poorer people, minorities, and people living in urban areas are disproportionately affected by hotter temperatures.

Our goal for many years now has been to stop the accumulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere, especially the most abundant one, carbon dioxide (CO2), from destroying our climate’s equilibrium. Decarbonization is the word of the day. Every industry is seeking ways to achieve its ends without emitting CO2. Yet, in our efforts to eliminate it, we often forget that carbon is essential to life and essential to the planet’s energy balance. The question, therefore, is not simply to decarbonize but to manage carbon, to keep it where it ought to be.

Managing carbon entails understanding its role in both the natural and industrial worlds. Carbon cycles through many parts of these worlds by coupling and decoupling with other elements. In the natural world, plants absorb carbon dioxide from the air, and through photosynthesis, they transform it into plant matter. From there, it cycles through the soil or is eaten by animals, etc. There is an enormous potential to absorb carbon into soils and vegetation, through appropriate “carbon farming” practices and by planting forests. Peatlands are great stores of carbon, and we can leave them undisturbed. Helping ocean kelp forests survive allows them to continue to store carbon as well.

In the industrial world, people have dug up and drilled up hydrocarbons such as coal, oil, and natural gas and burned it, releasing now over 37 billion tons of CO2 every year. The first task for carbon management is to defossilize industry, and to leave the carbon in the ground. Carbon reduction includes all the ways we stop using these hydrocarbons, such as substituting renewable energy for conventional power plants, substituting electric vehicles for internal combustion engine vehicles, or substituting heat pumps for gas or fuel boilers. The accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere and in the ocean, however, is such that it will not be sufficient to replace the burning of hydrocarbons with renewable energy. Still, we need to remove carbon dioxide as well.

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) uses negative emissions technologies (NETs) to take CO2 out of the atmosphere and stash it away for long periods of time. It can be pumped into depleted oil wells or salt caverns indefinitely. This is what is meant by carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) entails pumping carbon dioxide into oil wells to squeeze out much more oil. The oil and gas industry now pumps 70 to 80 million tons yearly for this purpose, part of which remains underground.

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Undoubtedly, wind turbines are an essential key to our fossil fuel-free future. Nonetheless, there are a number of challenges to solve in achieving their sustainability, making wind turbine blades a unique example of the good, bad, and nerdy. To make solar, wind, and other renewable power sources fully sustainable, you have to consider every phase, from siting to production to end-of-life disposal. About 85% of a modern wind turbine’s component materials (steel, copper wire, electronics, and gearing) are recyclable or reusable. Its blades – usually three 50- to 80-m-long blades made of fiberglass and carbon girders bonded between painted fiberglass shells and protected by an epoxy resin – are the rub. This combination of different materials and the blades’ strength makes their separation for the recovery of workable glass fibers physically and chemically challenging. The blades’ weight and length also make transporting them complicated.

 Why not cut the blades into pieces on-site, you might ask? Although feasible, this doesn’t solve all the transportation and recycling problems and calls for enormous – and expensive – vehicle-mounted wire saws or diamond-wire saws similar to those used in quarries. The vast majority of blades reaching the end of use are consequently either stored in various places or taken to landfills (although they account for only a tiny fraction of U.S. municipal solid waste).

Various companies have taken up the challenge:

The trajectory towards a 100% renewable energy future has been thwarted by the vested interests in the old, entrenched energy and industrial system and veiled in cloaks of climate denialism and technological nihilism. Our progress, therefore, towards achieving a peaceful coexistence with our planet falters. We feel helpless when confronted with the full power of Mother Nature’s revenge as the climate crisis burns, blows, floods, and roasts us with increasing intensity. The cloak of denial and ignorance falls off as more people wake up to the real urgency we are facing. Seven percent emissions reductions every year to avoid the worst is a daunting challenge. Is there any way to buy a little time while we revamp our energy system? Are there any shortcuts or quick reductions we can grasp that are win-win and won’t arouse political backfire from the fossil fuels industries?

Methane emissions reductions may well be that strategy. Methane is our second most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide (CO2). While less abundant, it has a far greater Global Warming Potential (GWP) than CO2, more than eighty times more potent over a twenty-year period. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that half of the 1.0° C net rise in global average temperature since the dawn of the industrial era is due to methane increases. Also, methane is short-lived in the atmosphere, lasting only about ten years. Efforts to stop it from entering the atmosphere, therefore, coupled with its natural degradation, could afford a powerful lever to slow global warming.

The ECCC had a lively discussion on the arts and climate activism in our December Climate Cafe. The most effective way to move our fellow humans is often through art and narrative, not just words and shouting. Let's explore how music, prose, film, graphic art, etc., can expose the human condition and change hearts and actions.

Watch our panel discussion on the multi-award-winning documentary, Youth v Gov, now streaming on Netflix. We welcome filmmaker Christi Cooper, who paints a remarkable portrait of the young Americans suing the government to protect their constitutional rights to a stable climate, Philip Gregory, acting as co-lead counsel on the case, and Nathan Baring, one of the brave youth plaintiffs. YOUTH v GOV is the story of the Juliana v. The United States of America constitutional lawsuit and the 21 American youths, ages 14 to 25, who are taking on the world’s most powerful government. Since 2015, the legal non-profit, Our Children’s Trust, has been representing these youth in their landmark case against the U.S. government for violating their constitutional rights to life, liberty, personal safety, and property through their willful actions in creating the climate crisis they will inherit.

Watch on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/watch/81586492

Submitted by Sam Goodman - A New York voter living in Costa Rica.

This year’s U.N. climate negotiations in Egypt (COP 27) yielded mixed results as nations worked to build on the agreement reached in Glasgow last year. The Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan offered a historic breakthrough on the issue of loss and damage and significant language on reforming the global financial system, but it failed to go beyond last year’s text in terms of phasing out fossil fuels. The uneven result had the conference being dubbed “a tale of two COPs.”

Billed as the “implementation COP” by the Egyptian presidency, the conference was the first to be hosted on African soil since 2016 in Marrakesh. This year’s conference presented a unique set of geopolitical headwinds, leading many to question what progress was actually possible. The war in Ukraine and runaway inflation have led to many nations doubling down on fossil fuels and backsliding on their climate pledges. This year’s host country has an abominable human rights record and threatened to undermine civil society’s presence at the conference. 

The decision to establish a fund for loss and damage broke a 30-year deadlock on the issue, delivering a major victory for frontline communities in the Global South. Loss and damage refer to irreparable damages or irreversible losses from the adverse impacts of climate change. While loss and damage should be considered the third pillar of international climate policy, in addition to mitigation and adaptation, it has not been given equal weight in previous negotiations.