Johanna Chao Kreilick
Union of Concerned Scientists Blog
Set in the wider arc of history, Earth Day stands for me as a reminder of the importance of fact-based and community-grounded advocacy for moving the needle on inclusive, just environmental policy and practice.
Our new organization, Third Act, is mobilizing the generation with the most political and economic influence to fight for a working climate and a working democracy.
"By 2030 we will be on our way to a global economy that provides a good life for all on a living planet," states the Declaration of the 2020's. "Or we will be on an irreversible path to global misery through ecological collapse."
A salute to Earth Day and labor, a look back and a look forward. Written originally last year for the 40th Earth Day, it's vision holds even more true today -- Good Clean Jobs for a Living Viable and Clean Earth.
Reader Comments: May Day Actions, Celebrations; Toll on Healthcare and All Essential Workers; Trump and Meat Plants; Back-to-Work and Death; Cuomo Power Grab; Cuban Healthcare Workers; Unequal Burden of Covid-19; Earth Day @50; lots of announcements
April 22 is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, and we’d planned to make it a BIG one. Hundreds of organizations representing millions of people worldwide were planning a massive global strike.
This year, Earth Day will once again serve as a vehicle for mobilization when, in addition to turning out a billion people and celebrating the First Anniversary of the Climate Agreement, the world will march for science.
Capitalism wedded to delusional American manifest destiny–including our fatuous decades-long effort to control of the Middle East and recent militarized pivot to Asia–meets its limits in Nature. Either we heed those limits immediately and aggressively, or we face an ecocide from which not even those who own lifeboats will escape.
In its “Earth statement”, the group said that three-quarters of known fossil fuel reserves must be left in the ground if warming was not to breach a rise of 2C, the “safety limit.” Spelling out what a global deal at the UN climate summit in Paris should include, the group demanded governments adopt a goal of reducing economies’ carbon emissions to zero by mid-century, put a price on carbon and that the richest take the lead with the most aggressive cuts.
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