The 50th anniversary of Earth Day, April 22, will be a global digital mobilization, according to Earth Day Network. This is a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Earth Day Network urges everyone to assess their situation individually and follow advice from the World Health Organization, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local authorities.
“Amid the recent outbreak, we encourage people to rise up but to do so safely and responsibly – in many cases, that means using our voices to drive action online rather than in person,” said Kathleen Rogers, President of Earth Day Network. “Whether it be coronavirus or our global climate crisis, we cannot shut down. Instead, we must shift our energies and efforts to new ways to mobilize the world to action.”
The goal of Earth Day is to unite hundreds of millions of people around the world to pressure world leaders to act on environmental degradation and climate change. This goal will stay the same despite digitalization.
Earth Day’s new digital-first strategy aims to leverage the global power of digital media platforms to engage a collective call for transforming our planet.
#EarthDay2020 and #EARTHRISE can be shared to be part of the global conversation and Earth Day Network (@earthdaynetwork) will be providing live coverage of the digital mobilizations.
“Our current pandemic demonstrates that governments must embrace science early. As we see now, many governments were slow to respond or even indifferent about the science of the coronavirus pandemic,” said Rogers. “But … our society, even at the international level, is capable of mass shifts across all sectors to meet a crisis head-on. We must apply the same scale and urgency of our response to climate change.”
Earth Day Network says there are three ways to take action as Earth Day goes digital:
- Join the global digital surge
- Watch Earth Day live
- Take 24 hours of action
Earth Day Network will be postponing its live 50th anniversary event on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., moving the global event to Oct. 24-25, 2020.
