Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that Earth Day celebration is about expressing gratitude to “Mother Earth” for her kindness and reiterating one’s commitment to care for the planet, a report in the Hindustan Times, says.
Earth Day is observed on April 22 every year to raise awareness about the need to protect the environment. This year’s theme is ‘Invest in Our Planet’ – a move to seek businesses to shift to a greener, cleaner and sustainable practice.
#EarthDay is about expressing gratitude to Mother Earth for her kindness and reiterating our commitment to care for our planet. pic.twitter.com/wVeQ6qmLm2
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 22, 2022
Modi also posted a clip of his past remarks about India’s traditional regard for the environment. In the clip, he said it is the responsibility of every generation to conserve the environment.
Google celebrates World Earth Day 2022
On the occasion of World Earth Day 2022, Google highlighted the issue of climate change with a time-lapse doodle on its homepage.
The time-lapse shows the changes wrought by climate change over a few decades on four different locations on the planet.
The doodle, which is in the form of a gif, was assembled through real-time lapse imagery from Google Earth and photographs from The Ocean Agency.
One time-lapse shows deforestation in the Harz Forests in Elend, Germany, from 1995 to 2020, caused by bark beetle infestation due to increasing temperatures and severe drought.
Another tackles the visible bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef and its corals near Lizard Island, Australia over a few months in 2016.
Two portray glacial melting, albeit in two different locations. One shows the retreat of glaciers at the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro, Tanzania from 1986 to 2020, while the other shows reduced ice coverage and melted glaciers in Sermersooq, Greenland from 2000 to 2020.
“These shifts may be natural, but since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels (like coal, oil, and gas), which produces heat-trapping gases,” the description reads.
UNAct Now also lists ways individuals can take steps to better the planet and tackle climate change, urging people to save energy at home, walk, cycle, or take public transport, eat more vegetables, reconsider travel options, reduce food waste, reduce, repair and recycle items, and switch to electric vehicles.