Activists gather for Earth Day, urge action to avoid 'dystopian' future
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[April 22, 2023]
(Reuters) - Climate change campaigners gathered outside
Britain's parliament building ahead of Earth Day to urge action on
global warming, while volunteers worldwide geared up to plant trees and
clear trash to mark the 54th annual celebration of the environment.
Earth Day this year, officially on Saturday, follows weeks of extreme
weather with temperatures soaring to record highs in Thailand and a
punishing heatwave in India, where at least 13 people died of heatstroke
at a ceremony last weekend.
Average global temperatures could hit all-time highs in 2023 or 2024,
climate scientists have warned.
"Climate impacts are here," Areeba Hamid, co-executive director of
Greenpeace UK, said on Friday as climate change activists walked down
the street outside parliament, some dressed in green costumes and green
paint.
Hamid said when she now visits her hometown of Delhi, it feels like
"putting your head in the oven" and that London's 2022 heatwave was like
"a dystopian film".
"We can't afford that anymore."
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Activists led by the Extinction Rebellion group have gathered in London
to kick off a four-day action, billed "The Big One", to coincide with
Earth Day.
About 30,000 people have signed up for family-friendly rallies and
marches, marking a change in strategy for a group known for its
disruptive tactics, including blocking roads, throwing paint and
smashing windows.
Globally, there has been a flurry of activity in the run-up to Earth
Day, with events being planned in Rome and Boston and major clean-up
campaigns at Lake Dal in India's Srinagar and Florida's hurricane-hit
Cape Coral.
In Peru, shamans on Friday made an offering to the "Pachamama", or
Mother Earth. Holding yellow flowers and rattles, the shamans walked
around a papier-mache globe as they performed a cleansing ritual.
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People take part in the Extinction
Rebellion's 'The Big One' event, in London, Britain, April 21, 2023.
REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
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The ancestral rituals - whose origins lie in the Indigenous cultures
of Peru - are done to thank the Earth and build awareness of the
planet, said Walter Alarcon, the president of the Healing Shamans of
Peru International Organization.
Earlier in the week, U.S. President Joe Biden pledged to increase
funding to help developing countries fight climate change and curb
deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest during a meeting with
top world leaders.
Governments have fallen far short of pledges in the 2015 Paris
Agreement to limit heating of the climate by shifting off fossil
fuels, amid crises including COVID-19, Russia's invasion of Ukraine,
food shortages and strained ties between China and the U.S., the top
two greenhouse gas emitters.
A report by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
says the planet is on track to warm beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius above
pre-industrial times - a key threshold for even more damaging
impacts - between 2030 and 2035.
"There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a
liveable and sustainable future for all," the IPCC has said. "The
choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now
and for thousands of years."
(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Himani Sarkar; Editing by
William Mallard)
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