OBLIQUE ANGLE : Earth Day: Let’s protect our planet

Yesterday, the world marked ‘Earth Day’. For its part, the Earth Day Network is running a campaign of environmental and climate literacy.

The Network argues (on its website and I quote a bit extensively) that education is the foundation for progress. We need to build a global citizenry fluent in the concepts of climate change and aware of its unprecedented threat to our planet. We need to empower everyone with the knowledge to inspire action in defence of environmental protection.

Environmental and climate literacy is the engine not only for creating green voters and advancing environmental and climate laws and policies but also for accelerating green technologies and jobs.

Our planet is currently losing over 15 billion trees each year—that’s 56 acres of forest every minute. We (Earth Day Network) are working hard to reverse that trend by supporting global reforestation projects. Earth Day Network’s Reforestation Campaign benefits local communities, increases habitat for species, and combats climate change. Every tree counts! (End of quotation).

Yes, indeed every tree counts. That tree you plant (or support so that it is planted), and that tree that you help protect from being cut or burnt down is very important for your very dear life.

Let’s reflect on life—that condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.

Scientists have explained why and how life is ‘possible’ on planet Earth. Here are some of the answers (quoting extensively).

Planet Earth is just the right distance away from our Sun. It is not the only planet known to have conditions favourable to life.

The key ingredients of life include water (an important solvent without which life is not possible), energy (sunlight drives photosynthesis in plants thus supporting the bulk of life on Earth directly or indirectly), time (our host star, the sun, can live several billion years to allow life to evolve), recycling (plate tectonics movement is essential in recycling molecules life needs, e.g. carbon dioxide helps trap heat from the sun to keep Earth warm), and, bonus features (little variation in our sun’s radiation, existence of magnetic field that protects us from storms of charged particles from the sun). End of quotations.

The above information should suffice to convince us that protection of the environment is equivalent to protecting our own lives. Protecting nature is equal to conserving the right conditions favourable to dear life (be it yours, of a plant, of an animal or that of an insect).

So, we must all act and protect the environment. Each one of us can make a difference. If we cannot plant and protect trees directly, then let’s do it through those who are in the field.

Play your part. Plant a tree. Protect a tree.