Today is Earth Day. Mean anything to you? On April 22, 1970, a Wisconsin senator launched it to put environmentalism in the spotlight. But shouldn’t we care about our natural world every day? As news reports show, the climate is in chaos. Global temperatures are the hottest on record. Dubai is flooded. Yet almost two-thirds of the world’s population experiences severe water scarcity, according to Unicef.
It’s great if today has us bonding over caring about the state of our planet. Or is Earth Day mostly taken up with virtue-signalling brands hopping on the bandwagon? Fifty-four years after the inaugural Earth Day, it seems to have become a Speaker’s Corner of greenwashing. It feels as if companies’ green endeavours comprise 0.2 per cent of their activity, yet make up 98.8 per cent of their storytelling. A quick recap: a coal-powered start to the UK’s first Industrial Revolution in the 1760s started the emissions party. A second Industrial Revolution, powered by electricity and petrol, motored us into the 20th century.
