Friday, April 22 marks 2022’s Earth Day. Earth Day is a worldwide reminder to protect and appreciate the environment. Historically, Earth Day has been celebrated by planting trees, cleaning litter, and spreading positive awareness about the Earth. Many people use cute cartoons of the Earth, trees, etc. to show how it is important to keep our environment healthy and clean, but does this create a false narrative about the state of our planet?

Much of the public believes that Earth Day does little to actually help the environment because of the positive, yet false narrative it creates that individuals can do enough to help save the Earth. Communities and even companies use Earth Day as a way to encourage individuals to change the way we treat our planet. While many individuals can plant a few trees and do their part, it is more so to the duty of large corporations to halt deforestation and severe gas emissions to fix the harm humanity has caused on our planet.

Many expect Earth Day to be a positive holiday, but in actuality, the health of the planet is frightfully declining; Google has even shown this issue’s severity. Google Doodles are images on Google Search that are often made for national/international holidays and are often a cute and positive outlook on the holiday being celebrated. However, 2022’s Earth Day’s Google Doodle is quite blunt on the truth about our environment. It depicts the impact of climate change in the arctic in just 20 years. Through its eye-opening contrast, this image puts into perspect

ive the true meaning of Earth Day: something must be done to save the planet.

Many people today believe that the planet is fine as it is and climate change isn’t real. Others even believe that climate change isn’t our issue and we should just leave it to future generations to deal with. This way of thinking blindsides the fact that climate change is, in fact, affecting our generation now. Something must be done to prevent the chronic consequences of humanity’s actions on our planet, but what exactly?

While, yes, it is not the individuals pumping large gas emissions into the atmosphere and destroying our ozone layer, individuals can still help make a difference and promote change by increasing awareness about the increase of climate change, pollution, and deforestation, and even changing the way they treat the Earth.

What will you do, what will TR do to help save the decreasing health of our planet?