Earth Day began as an act of collective belief — a conviction that ordinary people, organized and determined, could force a reckoning with the most powerful industrial interests in the world. That belief was shared, from the very beginning, by the labor movement. The first Earth Day was supported by the United Auto Workers, an expression of the belief that the fate of working people and the fate of the planet are intertwined.

As Executive Director of the BlueGreen Alliance, Jason Walsh leads the only national organization dedicated to uniting the labor and environmental movements — a coalition that collectively represents roughly 50 million members. Under his leadership, BGA played a central role in getting the Inflation Reduction Act passed, the largest investment in clean energy and domestic manufacturing in American history. Additionally, he served as the Director of the Office of Strategic Programs in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and as a Senior Policy Advisor in the White House Domestic Policy Council during the Obama administration. Named one of Washington D.C.’s 500 Most Influential People by the Washingtonian, Walsh brings more than 25 years of experience in climate, clean energy, and workforce policy. 

EARTHDAY.ORG President Kathleen Rogers sat down with Walsh to talk about the origins of the BlueGreen Alliance, what a just transition actually looks like for workers on the ground, and what’s at stake as rollbacks to the Inflation Reduction Act threaten the clean energy economy of the future.

Jason Walsh is the Executive Director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a national coalition uniting labor and environmental organizations representing roughly 50 million members. He has spent more than 25 years working at the intersection of climate, clean energy, and workers’ rights, previously serving in the Obama administration and playing a central role in getting the Inflation Reduction Act passed.

Earth Day 2026 and its theme, Our Power, Our Planet, highlights how people everywhere — from classrooms and local neighborhoods to national institutions — can drive environmental progress through education, advocacy, and community engagement.

Q: Jason, welcome. To start, can you tell us a bit about your background — what brought you into this work, and what keeps you committed to it today?

I’ll go back to the summer of 1990, when I was living in Seattle, Washington, and just starting to cut my teeth as an activist. In the Pacific Northwest at the time — this was the time of the Timber Wars, which are still ongoing but were really hot in 1990 — environmental activists were trying to protect the remaining old growth forests, using laws like the Endangered Species Act and other tactics, from being cut down.

One of those forests was on the coast of northern California in Humboldt County, where a Houston-based corporation had gained ownership through a hostile takeover of a family-run lumber company. They were planning to clearcut these redwoods to make some quick cash — one of the last, biggest remaining stands of old growth redwoods on private lands. A group of activists organized something they called Redwood Summer — named deliberately to evoke Freedom Summer from the civil rights movement — to defend the forest using direct action tactics. They put out a call for people outside of California to come join them, and I was one of the people who responded.

I hitchhiked down to Fort Bragg, California, where a big demonstration and rally was literally just starting as I was dropped off by my final ride, which, of course, was an old Volkswagen bus. What I walked into was a rally in the middle of a small logging town: the townspeople, most of whom were loggers and logging families, on one side of the street, and activists on the other side, separated by a line of riot cops yelling at each other. On the one hand, this was exciting to me because I wanted to be in the middle of the action and I just got dropped right into it. But even at the time, I was thinking that there was something was just wrong about the fact that these two groups of people were yelling at each other when the decision makers behind the whole situation were sitting in Houston, Texas.

After that demonstration, I hooked up with a small affinity group that was planning an action. To make a longer story shorter, I ended up a few days later chained to a logging road gate. By happenstance, I was the only person the cops couldn’t quickly cut off, and I was directly in the way of a line of trucks carrying workers to the logging site. All the loggers driving to work basically had to drive around me. I shouted to one of them something like, “We’re not protesting you brother,” because I was already trying to fix the dynamic I had noticed just a couple of days earlier. And this logger leaned out of his truck cab and said, and I still remember this word for word: “I’m not your brother, mothereffer.”

That interaction stayed with me — kind of haunted me, actually — because it crystallized all of the reservations I had about the strategy and tactics of Redwood Summer, in which working people and environmentalists were squaring off against each other in defense of something they each valued for legitimate reasons, while a small group of people far away were getting very rich.

I went back to Seattle after that summer and got into the University of Washington. I got involved in some antiwar activism — this was the time of the Persian Gulf War — and once that awful dress rehearsal for the Iraq and now Iran wars was done, I got involved in local organizing in opposition to a free trade agreement being negotiated between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, which became the North American Free Trade Agreement. I went to meetings at a labor temple in downtown Seattle where labor activists and environmentalists sat at the same table, talking with and learning from each other why, from their very different backgrounds, they opposed a trade regime that exploited both workers and the environment.

Fast-forwarding roughly two decades: I’ve had the opportunity to work on public policy at the intersection of environmental, climate, jobs, and justice issues. I’ve spent most of that time on the non-governmental advocacy side, but I had the privilege of working for five years in the Obama administration at the Department of Energy and in the White House. What brought me to this work, and what keeps me in it, is a belief that in some ways was first formed in that experience from my young adulthood: that working people and environmentalists should work together to create an economy and society in which good jobs and a clean environment go hand in hand. I’ve had the good fortune of leading the BlueGreen Alliance since 2019, an organization that places that vision at the center of everything we do.

Q: Labor and environmental movements have had moments of alignment going back to the first Earth Day. What brought them together in a lasting way with the BlueGreen Alliance launch in 2006? And what did the response to that first Good Jobs, Green Jobs Conference in 2008 tell you about the appetite for that kind of coalition?

The early history matters here. The United Auto Workers (UAW) were the biggest financial backer of the first Earth Day, which started life as a mass student walkout. UAW president Walter Reuther — one of the great unsung heroes of American history and a critical early backer of the civil rights movement — was famously quoted as saying that the fight against pollution is a fight for the survival of the human race. That represented the lived experience of industrial unions like the UAW and the United Steelworkers, whose own members and communities bore the brunt of industrial pollution because that’s where they worked and lived. These unions were some of the earliest and most important backers of environmental laws. In fact, both were instrumental in passing the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970.

That history certainly mattered in the formation of the BlueGreen Alliance, particularly the throughline to the steel workers. But the later spark for our creation in 2006 was lit in the 1990s, when unions and environmental groups found common cause in opposition to NAFTA and the World Trade Organization. Workers and their unions were watching manufacturing jobs go overseas to countries with little to no environmental protections. Environmental organizations and their activists were learning that the environmental protections in those same countries were minimal or unenforced. Both movements shared a growing sense of injustice over the course of that decade, rooted in a shared analysis that the new global trade regime enriched multinational corporations at the expense of people and the planet. In many ways, the culmination was the Battle of Seattle in 1999.

Fast forward to 2006, when two of the folks who were in the streets of Seattle in 1999 — Leo Gerard, a hard rock miner from Canada and president of the Steelworkers, the nation’s largest industrial union, and Carl Pope, an environmental lawyer from San Francisco who was executive director of the Sierra Club — decided that if they could find common ground around trade, there were other issues they could unify around. In particular, the climate crisis — which at that time was Al Gore, an inconvenient truth — was starting to hit as a real and urgent concern, clean technologies were emerging, and attacks on workers’ rights were ongoing. They signed a joint resolution establishing the BlueGreen Alliance, premised on the shared belief that we don’t have to choose between good jobs and a clean environment — that we can and must have both.

BGA held its first Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference in 2008. A lot of energy, a lot of turnout, which was certainly an affirmation of that founding vision. Over the last 20 years, through thick and thin, through good times and bad, we have grown into a coalition of labor and environmental organizations that collectively represent roughly 50 million members.

Q: The BlueGreen Alliance began with a simple but powerful goal: bridging the perceived divide between good jobs and environmental protection. How has that mission evolved since 2006 as the climate and economic landscapes have changed? 

The climate crisis has worsened since 2006, as has the crisis of economic inequality. BGA’s mission has evolved with those deepening crises, reflecting our belief that we need to advance policy solutions to both that are as intersecting and mutually reinforcing as their causes.

The other change to acknowledge is that we have gone from what was a very aspirational energy transition 20 years ago to a very real one in 2026, which has caused both enormous economic opportunity and enormous economic disruption. Our mission and our work has changed in response to how that has played out, particularly for working people and the communities they live in.

Q: The phrase “just transition” is used a lot by both labor and environmental groups. From your perspective, what does a just transition actually look like in practice for workers on the ground?

The term “just transition” was first coined by Tony Misaki, president of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union, back in the 1980s before his union merged with the Steelworkers. At the time, because some manufacturing was leaving or manufacturing jobs were being lost — this was also a decade of a lot of environmental litigation — he and his union were calling for something they called a superfund for workers. It was premised on the idea that: there’s going to be a lot of economic change as we move from really polluting technologies to more sustainable ones, and the workers need to be kept whole.

That was before the time of the 1980s and BGA, but the policy issues — again, there’s this throughline through the steelworkers and other industrial unions — involved in just transition have been among BGA’s highest priorities. We have a whole policy platform. We actually don’t call it just transition. We call it simply a policy. Fairness for workers and communities, straight up. I want to emphasize three kinds of threads or points that come out of that platform and that really animate our work.

Number one, a transition that is truly fair or just for workers is not going to happen organically. It will only result from deliberate policy choices that directly support workers who are impacted. Every major economic shift in the last 50-plus years in the U.S. has been manifestly unjust for American workers, because policymakers have not crafted a response that is fair and effective.

The second point is very much related to the first. In the U.S., we don’t have policies and programs in place that adequately support workers who lose their jobs, in any sector. In the energy sector, this has created a lot of economic hardship among workers who have experienced layoffs from the energy transition, which has been ongoing now, pretty intensively, for the last, say, 15 years. These are coal miners, workers in coal-fired power plants, oil refinery workers. What these workers have in common is that their jobs were often the best-paying blue collar and union jobs in the communities where they lived and worked.

The third and final point for the energy transition to be just for workers is that we need to create and support those dislocated workers, as well as enact policies that ensure that the new jobs that are created in clean energy sectors are high quality, family-sustaining, and ones where workers have the ability for form unions without being harassed, intimidated, or fired. And we need policies that target public investment, in particular to the communities that have been most reliant on fossil fuel economies — the places that have largely suffered and experienced more economic pain than economic gain from this transition.

We were starting to make progress on all of those fronts during the Biden administration, and in particular with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. But then 2024 happened.

Q: Manufacturing has long been the backbone of the American middle class, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) aimed to strengthen that through clean energy investment. With recent rollbacks and funding cuts, where do things stand now?

Manufacturing is still the backbone of the blue collar middle class in this country, and it is central to U.S. competitiveness, economic security, and our innovation ecosystem. BGA and our labor and environmental partners did a ton of work with the Biden administration, particularly with the 117th Congress, to include substantial investments in clean manufacturing in the Inflation Reduction Act. We wanted to ensure, from an equity standpoint, that manufacturing workers and the communities they live in would share in the economic benefits of the clean energy transition. Federal policymaking was mostly focused on deployment of those technologies and not on producing them, building domestic supply chains, and decarbonizing our existing manufacturing base. We got a lot of those investments into the IRA. 

I think it’s important, for the historical record and as we think to the future, that these policies, these investments, were working right after the enactment of the IRA. U.S. investments in the manufacturing of batteries, fueling equipment, and critical minerals processing each grew about 45% relative to the pre-IRA period. 2022/2023 saw the greatest acceleration of manufacturing facility construction in a generation in this country, with hundreds of thousands of jobs already being created or committed to. The IRA was not only the biggest investment in clean energy in history anywhere in the world, but it was also an industrial policy that targeted sectors critical to the economic future of this country and the fate of the planet. Those investments were bearing fruit and then Donald Trump got elected.

One of the most painful ironies of the Trump presidency, among many, is that this guy who claims to be a champion of American manufacturing, to love American manufacturing, has led a whole-of-government assault on clean energy and clean manufacturing — through legislation, permitting illegal systems, executive action, and canceled grants and loans, including a loan program office that Jigar used to run. Through those actions, they have killed thousands of jobs and put thousands more at risk, many of them union jobs. They have literally tried to stop construction of offshore wind turbines that were 80 to 90% complete, barely even pretending to justify it. They’ve thrown all of these industries into a state of uncertainty, or they have literally arm-twisted individual companies, like the French-based company Total Energy who had to abandon offshore wind that they had already sunk so much money into. They are making a series of investments in fossil fuels in an attempt to embed the U.S. as this petrostate. And then they started a war with the only country that actually has the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil and gas prices skyrocketing.

All of that is effectively surrendering the production of technologies that are the future of the global economy — probably the most important economic race of this century to China and other countries.

Q: We’ve seen some tension lately — around tariffs, EV adoption, and broader shifts in the green economy. What are the main friction points today between unions and environmental advocates? And are we still seeing some of those political divides that surfaced during the last election?

Dealing with friction and tensions between unions and environmental groups is part of BGA’s reason for being. We have always dealt with it, we always will. We have hard conversations. But we and our partners always come back to a recognition that there is far more that unites us than divides us. One of the things that united us was the IRA — defending it and holding this administration accountable. We didn’t lose everything, so that’s home for some optimism that is a part of what we’re doing right now.

But also what unites us is a president who is trying to gut every federal program protecting workers and the environment. He is already the biggest union buster in American history, stripping roughly a million federal workers of their collective bargaining rights. At the same time, he’s a climate denier trying to kill virtually every form of climate action. That’s very unifying for our coalition, but it won’t be sufficient for our partners and our movements to be united only in defense. We also need to be united on offense. We work not only at the federal level but in nine states across the country where the political landscape is different and where we’re moving the ball forward. And ahead of the 2028 elections, BGA is committed to developing and releasing a new consensus platform of policy recommendations, supported by all of our partners, to build the worker- and community-centered clean economy that is our mission. We will present it to every policymaker and candidate who is interested in learning what our priorities are. That has yet to be written, but I already have a sense of what some of the things that’ll be in it are, and it will be very forward looking — because this is still the direction we’re headed in, and this country and our workers and our communities will either take center stage or they’ll be off stage.

Q: Finally, what’s the BlueGreen Alliance’s top priority for the next five years to ensure that the clean economy we build also strengthens union jobs and protects workers’ health and safety? 

One of our very top priorities as an organization over the next few years is to really deepen our coalition work and lean into our unique role as a unifier of the labor and environmental movements. We’re the only national organization that does that anywhere in the world. That unifier role has always been central to our theory of change, but we think it’s more important than ever now in response to an authoritarian president who is always looking for ways to divide people and social movements.

We know from research, scholarship, and examples from around the world that the most effective resistance to authoritarians is broad-based, big-tent coalitions of people and stakeholders coming together — linking arms to defend democracy and work toward a better world for everyone, in defiance of men who only care about their power, privilege, and the enrichment of themselves and their cronies. BGA has always been that kind of organization, and we are doubling down on that role now and in the years ahead.

In this Earth Week, it’s worth reminding ourselves that Earth Day was created by leaders who believed in the power of people and social movements to make a better world. That vision is more important this week, this year, than it probably ever has been since the inception of Earth Day.

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In 1950, the world produced just 2 million tons of plastic; in 2024, it produced around 360 million metric tons. In the last 20 years, plastic production has doubled, and without drastic policy changes, global plastic production is projected to almost triple by 2060 — half of which will end up in landfills and less than fifth ever recycled.

Against this backdrop, recycling has never come close to delivering the solution the public was promised. A 2025 study in the academic journal Nature found that the global plastics recycling rate has remained stagnant at 9%, against soaring production. The rest is burned, buried, or left to leach into rivers, soils, and oceans. Without management, scientists predict that 121 million metric tons of plastic waste filling in our landfills and polluting the environment will exist by 2050, weighing the equivalent of more than 36,000 Empire State Buildings.

The climate cost of the plastic crisis is enormous. Over 98% of plastics are made from fossil carbons, such as oil and gas, which are the largest contributors to and primary drivers of climate change. Specifically, plastic production and disposal accounts for roughly 3% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. As plastic production continues to soar, so too will its share of global emissions, a cost the planet simply cannot afford.

Big Oil’s Plastic Love

The daylight between what plastic recycling actually delivers and what the public believes is not an accident. It is the result of a deliberate and decades-long effort by the fossil fuel industry to shift responsibility away from producers and onto the public.

Big Oil is the name attributed to the West’s largest oil companies, who maintain a vested interest in plastics. Plastic is a way for oil companies to maintain profitability, particularly as the shift toward renewable energy threatens their traditional business model. Since 2010, fossil fuel companies have invested more than $180 billion into plastic plants in the U.S.

To defend its profitability, Big Oil has engaged in decades of deception. In the late 1950s, in response to Vermont’s ban of single-use bottles, food, drink, cigarette, and packaging companies formed Keep America Beautiful, an anti-litter organization that spent heavily on public campaigns promoting responsible disposable. Rather than addressing overproduction, these campaigns placed the burden squarely on the individual, framing plastic pollution as a litter problem. The message was simple: the problem was not the plastic itself, but individuals failing to throw it away correctly.

In the late 1980s, a growing percentage of the general public believed that plastics were harmful to the environment and public health. Faced with this widespread concern, Big Oil poured hundreds of millions of dollars into convincing the public that plastic was, in fact, largely recyclable. It was the beginning of a coordinated disinformation campaign, including the construction of recycling facilities. Many of these plants shut their doors within five years.

The construction of a recyclable future has proven far more appealing to Big Oil than actually building one. Adding to its sustained effort, the oil and plastic industry launched The Alliance to End Plastic Waste in 2019, a $1.5 billion campaign that promotes plastic recycling and clean up efforts, instead of calling for a limit on plastic production.

Alongside these disinformation campaigns was the creation of Resin Identification Codes, the numbers 1 through 7 imprinted on the bottom of plastic products to indicate their material composition. Created by the plastic industry, RICs give the illusion of a vast and viable recycling industry. In reality, only 30 percent of number 1 and 2 plastics are recycled, numbers 3 through 7 are much more difficult to recycle, and numbers 6 and 7 are not financially feasible to recycle.

The familiar three arrows recycling symbol, inspired by the Möbius strip, was originally conceived to promote genuine recycling. However, because it was never trademarked, the fossil fuel industry was free to co-opt it, transforming the symbol into a deceptive instrument that continues to mislead the public into believing that plastic recycling is achievable.

Big Oil’s tactics have led to California’s lawsuit against ExxonMobil, alleging that the company promoted recycling as a viable option while knowing for decades that it is both technically and economically unfeasible. In doing so, the company encouraged the excessive use of plastic while allowing the enormous volume of plastic waste in the environment to grow.

The Plastics Industry and Global Treaty Talks

The fossil fuel industry deploys lobbyists that resist proposed plastic bans at the federal, state, and local levels. More than 1,500 lobbyists in the U.S. serve both fossil fuel companies and cities, universities, and environmental groups who are fighting the fossil fuel industry that is causing climate change. Operating in a largely unregulated sector with few disclosure requirements, these lobbyists are under no legal obligation to declare such conflicts of interest, leaving environmental advocates unknowingly sharing counsel with Big Oil.

The influence of fossil fuel lobbying is also present at global efforts to address the plastic crisis. Since 2022, negotiations have been underway to negotiate a legally binding treaty on plastic pollution. Lobbyists for the plastics, fossil fuel, and chemical industries have flooded key negotiating sessions in an attempt to weaken or derail the agreement.

At the December 2024 talks in Busan, South Korea, 220 fossil fuel and chemical industry representatives were present, making the plastics lobby larger than the delegation of any single country or regional bloc, including the European Union. Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, led a group of oil-rich nations, including Russia and Iran, that successfully blocked efforts to include binding limits on plastic production.

Stop Plastic Production

The fossil fuel industry has had decades to address the plastic crisis, and it has chosen profit instead. In reality, the plastic crisis cannot be recycled away, which is why EARTHDAY.ORG is calling for a 60% reduction in plastic production by 2040. Sign the Global Plastics Treaty to call on global leaders to create a brighter future, one without plastic pollution.

This article is available for republishing on your website, newsletter, magazine, newspaper, or blog. The accompanying imagery is cleared for use with attribution. Please ensure that the author’s name and their affiliation with EARTHDAY.ORG are credited. Kindly inform us if you republish so we can acknowledge, tag, or repost your content. You may notify us via email at woods@earthday.org. Want more articles? Follow us on substack.

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The power of education is profound, breaking barriers to economic opportunity and upward mobility while disrupting cycles of disadvantage, such as poverty, unemployment, and lack of opportunity. Without education, these cycles can persist across generations and communities. Simply put, education transforms lives. For example, every additional year of education a person acquires increases their future earnings by 10%, allowing them to secure stable housing, afford adequate nutrition, and invest in savings.

Education equips individuals with knowledge, skills, and confidence to navigate their social environments, solve problems, and contribute meaningfully to their communities. Whether through formal schooling, vocational training, or experiential learning, education opens pathways that might otherwise remain closed, offering tools for self-determination and the possibility of a better future.

In prisons, education is no less significant. In 2016, research organization RAND found that incarcerated individuals who participate in any type of educational program are up to 43% less likely to reoffend and return to prison. Prisons with college programs have fewer violent incidents, creating safer conditions for both incarcerated individuals and staff. Additionally, every dollar spent on prison education programs saves four to five dollars on the costs of incarceration, such as paying personnel and staffing, providing inmate healthcare, and carrying out facility operations and inmate services.

Among the approaches to prison education are environmental programs that harness the positive connection between humans and nature. Exposure to the natural environment reduces stress, alleviates depression, and enhances cognitive functioning. In correctional facilities, this exposure can take the form of interactions with plants and animals, exercising in yards with grass and trees, or even experiencing indirect contact through nature imagery or viewing nature through a window.

Environmental education programs mobilize the human-nature connection by providing contact with plants, soil, and outdoor environments that strengthen their sense of being part of the living world. In prisons, mental health challenges are prevalent; 43% of people in state prisons have been diagnosed with a mental disorder, such as major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, personality disorder, and/or post-traumatic stress disorder. Furthermore, 66% of people in federal prisons have reported not receiving any mental health care while incarcerated.

In light of this, environmental education programs are bringing green spaces, conservation work, and ecological learning into prisons, addressing both the mental health crisis behind bars and the pressing challenge of recidivism.

Programs That Heal People and the Planet

Environmental education initiatives have been found to empower participants, the institutions and organizations that serve them, and their local areas at the individual, organizational, and community levels. Programs across the U.S. are putting this principle into practice, bringing nature-based learning into correctional facilities with promising results.

For Jamala, his healing after 31 years behind bars (half of them spent in solitary confinement, an environment of sensory deprivation) came from an Insight Garden Program. Jamala attributes his reintroduction to nature through this weekly, two-hour class to be the foundation of his ability to address core issues in his life, such as addiction, anger, and gangs. This program taught him how to feel again after he lost the ability to connect with other human beings due to his time in solitary confinement. 

The Sustainability in Prisons Project, a partnership between The Evergreen State College and Washington State Department of Corrections, seeks to empower sustainable change by bringing nature, science, and environmental education into prisons. Through this project, correction centers have implemented programs ranging from beekeeping to turtle rehabilitation to prairie conservation. Additionally, since 2024, the project has awarded 1,326 college credits to 237 students through classes such as Foundations in Gardening, Foundations in Composting, and Environmental Workshops.

Prison-based environmental programs can reduce recidivism by addressing the psychological benefits of nature exposure and the employment opportunities created through green job training. For example, at Snake River Correctional Institute in Oregon, the Nature Imagery in Prisons Project found that inmates placed in solitary confinement who viewed nature films committed 26% fewer violent infractions than those without.

Additionally, environmental programs can create tangible pathways to employment and successful community reintegration. Through San Quentin State Prison’s Insight Prison Garden Program, inmates receive master gardener training from partner organization Planting Justice and are then offered relevant jobs, such as those in landscaping, upon release. These programs can also empower formerly incarcerated individuals through showing them how to address food insecurity in their communities by donating produce to food pantries and shelters. Participants in these programs also create productive green spaces by transforming vacant lots and neglected areas into thriving gardens and urban farms.

PULLQUOTE: [“I had a job to go to at Planting Justice when I came out; I’ve been able to totally transform my life because of the garden program.”] — Anthony Forrest, former participant in San Quentin’s Prison’s Insight Prison Garden Program

The impact of these programs also extends to daily prison operations. Prisons consume significant amounts of energy and resources, as well as produce considerable waste. For example, prisons typically use twice as much energy as office buildings and schools. Additionally, the average inmate uses between 120 and 149 gallons of water per day, and between 0.5 and 1.2 pounds of food waste are generated per inmate per day.

Environmentally focused practices such as reducing waste through composting and recycling programs, conserving energy through efficiency upgrades, and supporting sustainable food production through prisons gardens and horticulture training have been found to improve incarcerated persons’ health and reduce violence within facilities. 

Environmental education in prisons is not limited to the U.S. In Europe, Innovative Prison Systems promotes environmental-related skills, knowledge, and attitudes, as well as formal education and pathways to employment. In the U.K., the Greener Prisons Initiative at Her Majesty’s Prison Bristol aims to enhance ecological literacy, reduce food waste, and reconnect incarcerated individuals with the natural world through horticultural and educational programs. These programs reflect a shared recognition that connecting people with nature benefits individuals and societies everywhere.

Investing in Second Chances and Sustainability

The alignment of ecological responsibility with prisoner education can transform prisons into centers of positive change that benefit the environment, incarcerated persons, and society. The opportunity to expand these programs has never been greater, as growing awareness of both the climate crisis and the need for effective rehabilitation strategies converge. Partnerships between correctional institutions, environmental organizations, educational institutions, and community groups can expand environmental education programs across federal and state prisons, local jails, and youth correctional facilities. These collaborations generate significant benefits such as reduced recidivism rates, improved mental health outcomes, and improved employment skills.

The power of environmental education demonstrates that transformation is always possible and that healing the relationship between people and the planet benefits us all. Investment in these programs represents investments in second chances, healthier communities, restored ecosystems, and a more sustainable world.

Please consider donating to EARTHDAY.ORG to support our global advocacy and education efforts, which work to protect the planet and all who call it home. We recognize the importance of education in our Climate Education Coalition, which calls on countries to include climate education in their Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement. From prisons to classrooms to communities worldwide, environmental education builds the knowledge, skills, and hope needed to create a more just, resilient, and thriving world.

This article is available for republishing on your website, newsletter, magazine, newspaper, or blog. The accompanying imagery is cleared for use with attribution. Please ensure that the author’s name and their affiliation with EARTHDAY.ORG are credited. Kindly inform us if you republish so we can acknowledge, tag, or repost your content. You may notify us via email at woods@earthday.org. Want more articles? Follow us on substack.

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On April Fools’ Day, we expect the unexpected. But the real surprise? Discovering how much of what’s out there about environmentalism simply isn’t true.

There are a lot of salient myths about the environmental movement. Caricatured as aggressive, stubborn, or eccentric, environmentalists are often labelled with negative stereotypes that prevent meaningful engagement with what the movement actually represents. These misconceptions actively obstruct the solutions needed to address climate change, protect public health, and build a sustainable economy.

Let’s separate fact from fiction to see the environmental movement clearly. Turns out, the haze was never from pollution.

Myth 1: Environmentalism is only about “saving trees.”

“Tree hugger” is used negatively to label environmentalists as overly emotional, irrational, and disconnected from real-world concerns, suggesting a person who cares more about trees than people. This stereotype reinforces environmentalism as fringe or unserious rather than a practical movement concerned with human well-being. While conservation is certainly important, environmentalism is also about human health, equity, and justice.

The same dismissive framing appears in climate discourse. Climate change mitigation isn’t merely about “saving the polar bears” — it’s also about preventing humanitarian crises. Rising temperatures and changing weather patterns threaten global food security, placing millions at risk of hunger and disproportionately impacting the poor, women, and smallholder farmers across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.

Additionally, climate change is expanding the seasons and geographic range of disease-carrying insects, increasing the spread of infectious diseases like malaria and dengue fever into previously unaffected regions, such as the United States and Europe. Extreme heat events disproportionately impact low-income and communities of color. Specifically, between 2004 and 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that Indigenous and Black populations had the highest rates of heat-related death in the U.S.

Further, air pollution from fossil fuels causes millions of premature deaths annually. 1 in 5 deaths were attributed to fossil fuel air pollution in 2018, with China, India, the United States, Europe, and Southeast Asia impacted the worst.

Environmental issues are inseparable from questions of justice. Access to clean water, clean air, and safe living conditions are fundamental human rights. When we protect the environment, we’re protecting the health, livelihoods, and futures of people.

Myth 2: Environmentalists are out-of-touch elites.

The stereotype of the wealthy, privileged environmentalist lecturing and patronizing those with fewer resources from their position of comfort is both inaccurate and dismissive of the movement’s diversity. In reality, the environmental movement intersects with broader struggles for social justice, with some of its most powerful voices coming from frontline communities directly impacted by environmental harm.

The environmental justice movement emerged in 1982 in Warren County, North Carolina, when residents of a predominantly Black community protested the construction of a hazardous waste landfill adjacent to their neighborhood. Environmental justice recognizes that pollution, climate impacts, and environmental hazards disproportionately burden communities of color and low-income neighborhoods. 

Today, environmental justice organizers challenge polluting facilities in their neighborhoods, push for equitable climate funding, and work to ensure that climate solutions address inequality instead of reinforcing it. Indigenous nations defend their ancestral lands and traditions while offering traditional ecological knowledge. Farmerworkers organize against pesticide exposure. Faith communities mobilize around environmental stewardship and climate justice.

The diversity of the environmental movement reflects the reality that environmental issues affect everyone, though not equally.

Myth 3: Environmentalists want us to go back to the Stone Age.

Perhaps no myth is more persistent, or more backwards, than the idea that environmentalists want to abandon modern life and return to some romanticized, pre-industrial past. The truth is exactly the opposite. Far from wanting to turn back the clock, environmentalists are pushing humanity forward into an era where our technological capabilities aren’t constrained by finite, polluting resources. 

The environmental movement advocates for green infrastructure that maintains and enhances modern comforts while protecting the natural systems we depend on. For example, environmentalists believe in renewable energy that powers our homes and businesses, electric vehicles that outperform their gas-powered predecessors, and smart grid technologies that minimize costs and enhance resilience. 

The Stone Age didn’t have solar panels, wind turbines, or electric vehicles. Environmentalists champion progress beyond the limitations of fossil fuels.

Myth 4: Environmentalists want to stifle economic growth.

Perhaps the most politically potent myth is that environmental protection and economic prosperity are a zero-sum game. That is, we must choose between a healthy planet and a healthy economy. 

PULLQUOTE: [The clean energy transition “is going to be one of the greatest economic opportunities since the Industrial Revolution.”] — Jason Bordoff, global energy policy expert

Environmentalism, rather than constraining economic growth, redirects it towards more sustainable and profitable sectors. In 2025, global renewable energy generation surpassed coal for the first time, and around 91% of new renewable projects, such as hydropower, solar, wind, and geothermal, were cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives. According to the International Energy Agency, renewables will grow faster than any other energy source in the next decade, making the transition away from fossil fuels “inevitable.”

In 2024, clean energy jobs grew 2.8%, outpacing the rest of U.S. employment more than three times over. Additionally, the number of Americans working in clean energy-related employment today now exceeds the number of jobs in oil, gas, and coal combined by more than three to one.

Meanwhile, the costs of inaction grow more apparent: In 2025, weather-related disasters caused $55 billion in damages worldwide. Climate change is expected to cause hotter temperatures, more severe storms, and increased drought. This pattern of weather disasters and their associated costs will create an increasingly expensive future if we fail to act. The real question isn’t whether we can afford to go green — it’s whether we can afford not to.

Environmental protection and economic growth aren’t mutually exclusive. They’re actually mutually reinforcing when we’re smart about how we build our future economy.

Myth 5: Going green means giving up the things you love.

Environmental action is often associated with sacrifice and discomfort. In actuality, going green is about smarter alternatives that improve our quality of life. 

Do you rely on a personal vehicle for transportation? Over the life of the vehicle, electric vehicles save money compared to gas-powered vehicles while eliminating toxic tailpipe pollutants that cause premature deaths.

Do you want to protect your health? Reusable water bottles, food containers, and shopping bags aren’t just for reducing waste; they also help us avoid microplastics that harm our health.

Do you value a comfortable living space? Energy efficiency measures, such as LED lighting, smart thermostats, and ENERGY STAR appliances, are the single largest measure to avoid energy demand, lowering utility bills and helping cushion the effects of price spikes.

In many cases, green alternatives enhance rather than diminish our experiences. The supposed tradeoff between quality of life and environmental responsibility assumes our current way of doing things is optimal, when in fact it’s often just familiar.

Myth 6: My personal habits don’t make a difference.

It’s easy to feel powerless and discouraged in the face of a crisis as massive as climate change. It’s tempting to think that individual choices, such as reducing energy consumption, conserving water, or limiting AI usage, are too small to matter. This myth ignores how individual actions can create collective change through social tipping points, such as the 25% Revolution.

The concept of the 25% Revolution, drawn from a study published in Science, demonstrates the power of a committed minority to transform majority behavior. Individual actions contribute to this shift through three key mechanisms. First, social proof redefines what’s normal. When your neighbor installs solar panels, it signals that renewable energy is desirable. Second, economic momentum follows social change. As demand for renewable energy grows, markets respond by driving down costs, expanding investments, and creating jobs. Third, political viability emerges when elected officials recognize that a committed quarter of constituents can determine electoral outcomes. Once enough voters care about renewable energy policy, politicians face pressure to deliver to their constituents.

Your choices today, multiplied over time and across communities, become significant. In activism, as in life, progress beats perfection. In fact, imperfect climate action is better than perfect inaction. Every choice matters, not just for its immediate impact, but for its role in reaching the critical threshold for systemic change.

Choose Facts Over Fictions

The myths surrounding the environmental movement serve a purpose — just not yours. They benefit industries resisting change and politicians avoiding hard choices. For everyone else, these false narratives simply delay the solutions we need.

The truth is that the environmental movement is about building a future where everyone can thrive within the boundaries of what the planet can sustain. It’s about meeting our needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. 
Please consider donating to EARTHDAY.ORG to support our global advocacy and education efforts. Your contribution enables us to counter misinformation and disseminate the truth about environmental action. As Mark Twain argued, truth is the most valuable thing we have.

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Somewhere between “I believe in climate change” and “I’m doing something to address climate change” lies the difference between a movement that stalls and one that transforms society. 

In a 2021 Gallup poll, 41% of Americans identified as “environmentalists,” with 22% identifying as “strong environmentalists.” On the surface, these numbers seem encouraging — nearly half the country aligns with environmental values. But a groundbreaking study from 2018 published in the leading journal Science suggests we may be asking the wrong question.

The issue isn’t how many people identify as environmentalists. It’s how many are willing to act as if it were true and do so consistently, visibly, and persistently enough to shift the norms that shape society. In activism, as in life, quality beats quantity. But what does “quality” actually mean when you’re trying to save the planet?

According to the study in Science, it means reaching a critical threshold of commitment. Researchers found in an online experiment that when only 25% of a group consistently championed a new position, they converted between 72% and 100% of the population, even when there had previously been unanimous agreement. This phenomenon — the power of a committed minority to transform majority behavior — has become known as the “25% Revolution.” The 25% Revolution challenges traditional assumptions about social change that are based on classic economic models, which presume that majorities (or at least 51% of a group) are required to shift collective behavior.

For the environmental movement, this finding is both encouraging and challenging. Encouraging because we may already be approaching that threshold. This is challenging because having 22% of people identify as “strong environmentalists” and having 25% act as catalytic change-makers are fundamentally different.

The Commitment Gap

If we’re at nearly 25%, why does meaningful change still feel out of reach? Why are we still fighting for basic climate policies? Why does sustainable living feel like a fringe choice rather than the norm?

This is the gap the environmental movement must close. Saving the planet is not a participation trophy handed out to everyone who cares; it’s won by the committed minority willing to act. Consider two people who both identify as environmentalists. The first recycles when convenient, supports clean energy in principle, and worries about the future. The second has installed solar panels and encourages her neighbors to do so, advocates for expanded bike lanes, and attends local government meetings to advocate for climate policies.

Both would check “environmentalist” on a survey. Only the second is engaged in norm-shifting. Only the second is creating the kind of social proof that transforms what their community considers normal, practical, and desirable. Only the second represents the kind of committed action required by the 25% Revolution.

The Three Forces of the 25% Revolution

For the environmental movement, the 25% Revolution can manifest through three powerful mechanisms:

Social proof redefines what’s normal. When your coworker brings their lunch in reusable metal containers, when your neighbor parks their electric vehicle on the street every day, when a quarter of students bike to campus instead of driving — these repeated, visible choices signal that sustainable living is normal, practical, and increasingly mainstream. We look to those around us to determine acceptable behavior, driven by the fundamental human desire to belong and fit in with our community. A visible, committed 25% redefines what “normal” looks like.

Economic momentum follows social change. Markets respond when a substantial minority demonstrates consistent demand. Specifically, when 16% of consumers — considered the “critical mass” of innovators and early adopters — consistently adopt a product, the rate of market penetration accelerates dramatically. This dynamic has been demonstrated with organic food, electric vehicles, and renewable energy. These were niche markets until sustained consumer commitment tipped them into the mainstream. Companies that once dismissed sustainability now compete for environmental credentials because a committed minority made it economically rational to do so. When corporations suddenly embrace sustainability, it’s easy to dismiss it as greenwashing — empty marketing without substance. But when driven by genuine consumer behavior, it is the market responding to a changed norm.

Political viability emerges when elected officials recognize that a committed quarter of constituents can determine electoral outcomes. Sustained public mobilization, from climate strikes to farmer protests, has been shown to compel policy action, even on contentious issues. Additionally, when citizens organize to make climate action both visible and politically important, elected officials respond because their political survival depends on it. Thus, environmental policy ceases to be a political risk and becomes a political necessity when a mobilized 25% makes it clear that their votes depend on tangible climate action.

From Concern to Catalyst

The environmental movement’s central challenge is to convert passive concern into active, visible, sustained commitment. This is where organizations like EARTHDAY.ORG are essential.

EARTHDAY.ORG works to mobilize and sustain exactly the kind of committed action the 25% Revolution requires. Through education, advocacy, and community building, we help concerned individuals become catalysts for change. The Earth Day movement has always been about civil society mobilization and ordinary people coming together to demand extraordinary change. 

The environmental movement may already have the numbers needed to win. What we need now is to activate that potential by transforming diffuse concern into concentrated, visible, and persistent commitment. We need to be the 25% who refuse to accept the status quo as inevitable and who, day after day, demonstrate that a different future is possible.

Earth Day 2026 arrives at a critical moment, with our environment under assault. Butwe’vee been here before. In 1970, 20 million Americans walked the streets demanding change. That day transformed everything. This year’s theme, Our Power, Our Planet, recalls the principle that sparked the movement: the power to protect our future rests with us.
Earth Day’s enduring legacy is the power of people rising together. Join us on April 18, April 22, and throughout 2026 to preserve the progress we have made. You can also create and post an event, sign up to receive updates on Earth Day, or become a partner of Earth Day 2026 and add your organization’s logo.

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For centuries, forests have stood as silent sentinels and humanity’s first pharmacy. Generations of herbalists — and today’s scientists — have turned to trees and plants to discover remedies that relieve pain, fight disease, and save lives.

In 2023, around 11 percent of the drugs that the World Health Organization considered “basic” and “essential” originated in flowering plants — and there were many more that originated from those that do not flower. Yet, as deforestation accelerates and biodiversity declines, we risk losing the wisdom hidden in these forests before we even discover them. Here are several tree-based medicines that demonstrate nature’s extraordinary pharmaceutical power.

Aspirin

Long before aspirin became a household name, the willow tree was used by Sumerians in pain management remedies as far as 4000 years ago. White willow bark contains salicin, which metabolizes in the body as salicylic acid. Salicylic acid in the body works by blocking cyclooxygenases, enzymes that produce inflammation, and preventing blood cells from sticking together, which reduces pain and fever.

In the early 19th century, scientists began isolating salicin from willow bark — with Johann Büchner isolating and naming salicin in 1828, Henri Leroux purifying it to treat rheumatism in 1829, and the Heyden Chemical Company launching large-scale production in Germany in the late 1800s. Aspirin as we know it today emerged when Bayer, a former German dye company, pivoted to pharmaceutical production.

Aspirin, acetylsalicylic acid, is on the World Health Organization’s Model List of Essential Medicines. The List includes medicines considered critical for addressing the most pressing global health needs based on their effectiveness, safety, and cost-effectiveness.

The Fever Trees: Antimalarials

Malaria is a life-threatening disease that is mostly found in tropical countries and spread to humans by some types of mosquitoes. Quinine was the first antimalarial drug. It is found in the bark of the cinchona tree, a tree native to the Andes region of South America. French chemists isolated quinine from the cinchona bark in 1820, establishing it as the treatment for intermittent fevers worldwide.

Quinine was strategically important to the Allied powers during World War II. The Japanese capture of the Dutch East Indies in 1942 cut the Allies off from the supply of quinine. This limited and halted Allied military operations in the Indo-Pacific region, as tens of thousands of soldiers were infected with malaria. This forced the military to turn to alternative antimalarials.

The 1960s created a need for the development of new antimalarial drugs, as drug-resistant malaria disabled U.S. military troops in Vietnam — at times, disabling more soldiers than combat. In 1969, Chinese scientist Tu Youyou was assigned to search for a cure in traditional medicine, eventually identifying and extracting artemisinin from sweet wormwood. This breakthrough earned Tu the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015.

Today, the World Health Organization recommends artemisinin-based combination therapies — a combination of a fast-acting artemisinin derivative with a longer-lasting partner drug — as the first-line treatment for the deadliest strain of malaria. Quinine is no longer a first-line antimalarial, but it is still used today when other treatments cannot be used. 

The Tree Oncologists: Anticancers

According to the World Health Organization, cancer encompasses a broad range of diseases that can occur in any organ or body tissue and are characterized by abnormal cell growth that invades other parts of the body. More than 65 percent of the medications used in cancer treatment originate in plants and their derivatives.

From 1960 to 1981, the National Cancer Institute and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) partnered to screen over 115,000 plant extracts from 15,000 different species, searching for natural compounds that could fight cancer. In 1962, USDA botanist Arthur Barclay collected a sample from the Pacific yew that enabled researchers to isolate paclitaxel, which stops cancer cells from dividing.

Today, paclitaxel is on the World Health Organization’s Model List of Essential Medicines as a drug that kills cancer cells. Paclitaxel is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat breast cancer, ovarian cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, and Kaposi sarcoma. Paclitaxel is one of the most important anticancer drugs.

Paclitaxel is not the only cancer fighting drug that comes from the trees. Camptothecin comes from the Camptotheca acumineta, or the “happy tree,” a deciduous tree native that is native to China. Camptothecin prevents cancer cells from replicating their DNA, killing the cells, and its derivatives include topotecan and irinotecan, which are used in the treatment of breast, ovarian, colon, lung, and colorectal cancer.

The Pharmacy We Cannot Afford to Lose

These four medicines represent just a fraction of what forests have given us. There is a clear connection between human health and forest health. 

More than half of all medications derive from 50,000 known medicinal plants — with up to a fifth of these at risk of extinction due to deforestation. Thus, the loss of forests doesn’t just mean losing trees — it means losing knowledge and losing the medicine cabinet of future generations. 

Forest conservation is healthcare infrastructure. Protecting biodiversity is investing in medical research. When we save forests, we’re not just preserving beauty or fighting climate change — we’re maintaining nature’s laboratory, keeping open the possibility that the next revolutionary medicine is growing silently in a forest somewhere, waiting to be discovered. Please consider donating to our Canopy Tree Project to help us plant trees to combat climate change, protect biodiversity, and support communities worldwide.

This article is available for republishing on your website, newsletter, magazine, newspaper, or blog. The accompanying imagery is cleared for use with attribution. Please ensure that the author’s name and their affiliation with EARTHDAY.ORG are credited. Kindly inform us if you republish so we can acknowledge, tag, or repost your content. You may notify us via email at davies@earthday.org or fielder@earthday.org. Want more articles? Follow us on substack.

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Laughter might not solve climate change, but it can certainly help us talk about it. Environmental issues can feel overwhelming, instilling paralysis rather than motivation to act. These environmental jokes can be shared to evoke laughter and spark conversations about today’s biggest environmental issues.

We haven’t found a solution for climate change yet, but we’re definitely getting warmer.

The world is warming at an unprecedented rate, resulting in changes to weather patterns and disruptions to natural processes.  According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events — record-breaking heat waves on land and in the ocean, prolonged droughts, and severe flooding — are increasing. 

Additionally, climate change causes changes in natural processes such as patterns of precipitation (rain and snow), the length of the frost-free and corresponding growing season, and the timing of peak river and stream flows. Thus, the cascading effects of global warming extend far beyond hotter days, altering the basic environmental conditions that determine where and how life can thrive.

The ice caps are having a liquidation sale — everything must go!

Since the start of satellite-based measurements in the late 1970s, the amount of sea ice that survives the Arctic summer has declined by 12.1 percent per decade relative to the 1981 to 2010 average sea ice loss. According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, since 2002, Antarctica has been losing ice mass at an average of 135 billion tons per year, while Greenland has been losing about 266 billion tons of ice mass per year. 

Additionally, thawing permafrost in the Arctic region releases carbon dioxide and methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that has a warming impact 86 times stronger than carbon dioxide per unit of mass over a 20 year period.

Albedo describes the ability of surfaces to reflect sunlight. Light-colored surfaces — such as ice- and snow-covered areas — have high albedo, reflecting solar radiation. The melting of these surfaces causes more heat to be absorbed by oceans and land areas, causing an increase in the temperature of Earth’s surfaces. This creates a dangerous feedback loop where warming causes ice loss, which in turn accelerates more warming. Unlike retail discounts, these losses are expected to be permanent and irreversible on human timescales.

How many climate change deniers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? 

What are you talking about? The bulb is fine.

As early as the 1950s, the oil industry has been aware of the connection between burning fossil fuels and climate change, responding to this scientific fact by disseminating climate change denial and disinformation in order to avoid government regulation. 

This has involved advertisements with headlines ranging from “Who told you the earth was warming … Chicken Little?” to “Lies they tell our children” that attempt to ridicule and discredit climate concerns. This climate misinformation and disinformation causes confusion and skepticism about climate science, as well as undermines public trust in climate science.

However, the scientific consensus is clear, with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading scientific authority, concluding in their most recent assessment: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.” 

As the U.S enjoys Thanksgiving, please take a beat to read “6 Arguments to Refute Your Climate-Denying Relatives This Holiday.”

Did you hear about the power plant that was bad for the environment? He got coal for Christmas.

Climate change is primarily driven by the burning of fossil fuels. According to the United Nations, fossil fuels — coal, oil, and gas — account for around 68 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions. These greenhouse gas emissions trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, driving the global increase in Earth’s temperature.  

This is why we must transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy and it is why EARTHDAY.ORG designated 2025’s Earth Day theme as Our Power, Our Planet  We are calling for renewable energy generation, globally, to be tripled by 2030. 

What is a tree’s least favorite month?

Sep-timber!

Deforestation is the intentional clearing of forested land. Globally, an average of 10 million hectares, nearly 25 million acres, of forest are lost each year. Deforestation is primarily driven by agriculture — clearing forests to grow crops, raise livestock, and produce products such as paper. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that 23 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions from 2007 to 2016 came from agriculture and land-use change — approximately half of which is due to deforestation.

On average, forests absorbed more than twice as much carbon dioxide as they emitted between 2001 and 2019. When trees are cut down or burned, the carbon that they have stored is released into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change. Deforestation also causes biodiversity loss, soil degradation and erosion, and disruption to the water cycle.

Please consider donating to our Canopy Tree Project to help us plant trees to combat climate change, protect biodiversity, and support communities worldwide.

Want to learn more? Please watch our free, brand new content series, Underreported Earth: “Tree Tales”, produced with the Pulitzer Center. The series features three in-depth filmed interviews with investigative journalists working to expose deforestation stories, hosted by Tracy McVeigh (Global Development Desk & Editor of Foundations/Philanthropic Projects at The Guardian). Episode 1: Elisângela Mendonça on the collagen industry and deforestation in Brazil, on X, YouTube; Episode 2: Josephine Moulds on how fossil fuel drilling threatens Congo Basin rainforest, on X, YouTube, Facebook; and Episode 3: Ana Bottalo on Brazil’s mangroves, on X, YouTube, Facebook.

How can you tell if the ocean is friendly?

It waves.

Ocean acidification occurs as the ocean absorbs excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, chemically converting it into carbonic acid and lowering the ocean’s pH level. Ocean acidification threatens shellfish like lobsters, mussels, and oysters, as well as plankton, by reducing the carbonate ions they need to build protective shells and exoskeletons, weakening their structures, slowing their growth rates, and increasing their vulnerability to predation. 

Around 90 percent of the excess heat from global warming has been absorbed by the ocean, causing the ocean’s temperature to rise. Increase in ocean temperatures causes mass bleaching events in coral reefs.

If I ride my bike twice, does that count as re-cycling?

While individual consumers should do what they can to reduce plastic consumption, corporate responsibility for the plastics crisis must be front and center in any solution. In 2021, researchers discovered that 20 companies alone — including oil and gas giants and chemical companies — are responsible for producing more than half of the world’s plastic waste.

Additionally, fossil fuel companies have spent millions on a decades-long disinformation campaign to perpetuate the myth that recycling can solve the plastics crisis, despite there being no economically viable way to recycle most plastics. The reality is that the only way to end the plastics crisis is to reduce plastics production, which is why EARTHDAY.ORG is calling for a reduction in plastic production of 60 percent by 2040.

What do wind turbines think of renewable energy? 

They’re big fans.

The alternative to fossil fuels is embracing renewable energy. According to the United Nations, solar is now 41 percent, and offshore wind is now 53 percent, cheaper than fossil fuels. Renewable energy reduces air pollution, creates jobs, and makes economic sense. 
This is why EARTHDAY.ORG is calling for renewable energy generation, globally, to be tripled by 2030. Sign our renewable energy petition to call on global leaders to commit to harnessing renewable energy to build a healthy, sustainable, equitable, and prosperous future for all.

This article is available for republishing on your website, newsletter, magazine, newspaper, or blog. The accompanying imagery is cleared for use with attribution. Please ensure that the author’s name and their affiliation with EARTHDAY.ORG are credited. Kindly inform us if you republish so we can acknowledge, tag, or repost your content. You may notify us via email at davies@earthday.org or fielder@earthday.org. Want more articles? Follow us on substack.

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Environmental activism is often associated with protests, grassroots efforts, or policy advocacy. Yet some of the most effective environmental work can happen in spaces we might overlook — such as public libraries. 

These community institutions, dedicated to education and public service, are emerging as important allies to the environmental movement. By disseminating knowledge, creating spaces for community engagement, and sharing resources, libraries are helping to build the informed and connected communities that environmental progress requires. As environmental problems intensify, it’s worth examining how libraries contribute to environmental activism and why their role in this movement matters more than ever.

The Unique Role of Libraries 

Public libraries occupy a distinctive place in communities around the world. According to the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), in 2023, there were around 2.8 million libraries worldwide. Public libraries account for 410,000 of these locations. Notable public libraries include the New York Public Library in New York, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, UK, and the Boston Public Library in Massachusetts.

Libraries are community leaders and change agents, serving as nonpartisan spaces where neighbors can gather, where diverse perspectives can be shared, and where civic participation flourishes. Libraries defend intellectual freedom, provide access to materials and resources, and promote literacy.

PULL QUOTE: “Bad libraries build collections, good libraries build services, great libraries build communities.” R. David Lankes, (Professor and Director of the School of Library & Information Science at the University of South Carolina)

Catalysts for Climate Action

Libraries are uniquely positioned to act as catalysts for climate action by fostering social cohesion, an important factor in effectively responding to climate change impacts. Through diverse programming — such as workshops that bring community members together, services that connect individuals with vital resources, and welcoming spaces that encourage interaction across social divides — libraries cultivate the collaboration and collective energy essential to turning climate action plans into reality. Their presence generates the trust, buy-in, and partnerships necessary to drive meaningful environmental change.

Catalysts for Climate Action

Libraries are uniquely positioned to act as catalysts for climate action by fostering social cohesion, an important factor in effectively responding to climate change impacts. Through diverse programming — such as workshops that bring community members together, services that connect individuals with vital resources, and welcoming spaces that encourage interaction across social divides — libraries cultivate the collaboration and collective energy essential to turning climate action plans into reality. Their presence generates the trust, buy-in, and partnerships necessary to drive meaningful environmental change.

The American Library Association (ALA) recognizes the important role libraries play in promoting community awareness about resilience, climate change, and a sustainable future. In 2019, the ALA adopted sustainability as one of the core values of librarianship. 

The Sustainable Libraries Initiative (SLI) supports libraries in designing institutions and communities through its certification program. Together with the American Library Association (ALA), SLI uses a “triple bottom line” framework to define sustainability as encompassing environmental soundness, social equity, and economic feasibility. The ALA and SLI have identified four characteristics of “sustainable libraries”: they embody their values through action; actively reduce their carbon footprint to mitigate climate change; foster civic engagement by bringing communities together; and build resilience to climate impacts within their communities.

Information Hubs Rooted in Truth

At their core, libraries serve as information hubs, defending the right to intellectual freedom — by making access information easy. The proliferation of false and misleading information online has become one of the biggest challenges of our time. The World Economic Forum identifies misinformation and disinformation as the biggest short-term global risk of 2024. According to the United Nations, libraries play an essential role in providing access to trusted, fact-based knowledge, information, and data.

Plus, libraries can make access to climate education that empower individuals to learn about environmental problems and solutions easier to find and navigate. Because librarians are information professionals, well positioned to combat misinformation and disinformation, they can empower people by teaching them the skills to analyze the credibility of online sources. 

Our Libraries Are Green Role Models

By lending books and other materials, libraries reduce the need for individual ownership, minimizing consumption and waste. Communities with strong library systems exhibit lower rates of consumption, not just of books but of goods more broadly, and waste generation.

Many libraries have expanded beyond traditional book sharing models and leveraging their outdoor spaces to meet local food security goals through community gardens. For example, Northern Onodaga Public Library created “library farms,” Emmaus Public Library implemented edible landscaping, and Greenwich Free Library established a “Farm-2-Library” program. These initiatives foster connection to the land by promoting land stewardship and supporting local food systems. 

Libraries can also implement green building design, renewable energy systems, and sustainable operations, demonstrating climate change mitigation technology. For example: the Hendrick Hudson Free Library boasts a solar array and battery storage, rain garden, and composting; the Chrisney Branch of the Lincoln Heritage Public Library was the first net-zero energy library in the nation; and the Concord Free Public Library created greenhouse gas emission reduction goals and prioritized indoor air quality and ecological restoration. Sustainable libraries can serve as “exemplars, educators, and enablers” to their communities.

Supporting Environmental Justice

Environmental issues do not affect all communities equally, and libraries are working to address these disparities. For example, the Detroit Public Library collaborated with local environmental justice organization Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice to raise awareness about the impact of environmental racism on local BIPOC residents.

Libraries can facilitate dialogue and collaboration, providing neutral spaces where diverse perspectives can be shared. This is especially important for ensuring that marginalized voices are heard in environmental decision-making processes.

The Sustainable Libraries Initiative and American Library Association’s National Climate Action Strategy encourages libraries to advance climate justice through education and community partnerships that connect climate stewardship with human rights.

By connecting community members to reliable information, fostering community bonds, and ensuring equitable access to environmental information, libraries are helping to build the foundation for meaningful climate action. In doing so, they remind us that environmental activism looks different in every community, but always begins with knowledge, connection, and the belief that collective action can create change.

EARTHDAY.ORG’s environmental legacy is a testament to this — that environmental progress depends on informed, connected communities working together. Please consider donating to EARTHDAY.ORG to support our global advocacy and education efforts, protecting the planet and all who call it home.

This article is available for republishing on your website, newsletter, magazine, newspaper, or blog. The accompanying imagery is cleared for use with attribution. Please ensure that the author’s name and their affiliation with EARTHDAY.ORG are credited. Kindly inform us if you republish so we can acknowledge, tag, or repost your content. You may notify us via email at davies@earthday.org or fielder@earthday.org. Want more articles? Follow us on substack.

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As world leaders gather in Belém, for COP30, the United Nations Climate Conference, there is no better time to celebrate the extraordinary natural wonders of Brazil. Brazil isn’t just a backdrop for climate discussions — it is a living laboratory of evolution, a treasure trove of biodiversity, and home to some of the most bizarre and beautiful phenomena on Earth. From blushing dolphins to deserts that sprout lagoons with fish, here are eight incredible facts about Brazil that will change the way you see this remarkable country.

1. Dolphins That “Blush”

The Amazon River is home to an enchanting creature: the boto, or endangered pink river dolphin. While these freshwater dolphins are born gray like their oceanic counterparts dolphins, they gradually transform into various shades of pink as they mature. Their exact coloration depends on a mix of factors, including diet, sun exposure, and the layout of their blood vessels. Male dolphins can display more vibrant pink hues because their aggressive playing and fighting creates scar tissue that intensifies their rosy color. Perhaps most charmingly, some of these dolphins can turn brighter pink when excited or apparently embarrassed — just like a blushing human! 

These dolphins also possess unusually flexible necks that allow them to rotate their heads a full 180 degrees, allowing them to navigate the flooded forests and winding tributaries of the Amazon. A local folklore legend claims that the boto transforms into a handsome man at night, seducing unsuspecting women.

2. Desert Lagoons Full of Fish

Lençóis Maranhenses National Park in northeastern Brazil is a Sahara of white sand dunes. Each year, it transforms as turquoise lagoons appear among the dunes — filled with fish!

From January to June, torrential rains fill the valleys between the dunes with thousands of turquoise lagoons, which are prevented from draining by impermeable rock underneath the sandy surface. Remarkably, these temporary pools become full of fish. These traíra, or wolffish, survive the dry season by burrowing into wet layers of mud and entering a dormant state. When the rain returns months later, the wolffish emerge to populate the lagoons once again.

3. Surfing a Wave in the Amazon

The Pororoca is an extraordinary surfing phenomena. The Pororoca is a tidal bore — a wave that travels up a river, against the current — making its way up to 500 miles upstream of the Amazon River. Brazilian surfing legend Picuruta Salazar made history by riding a single Pororoca wave for 7.8 miles for over 37 minutes.

4. One Tree the Size of a Forest

In northeastern Brazil is the Pirangi cashew tree, a single cashew tree so gigantic that it is estimated to cover between 1.8 and 2.1 acres of land. Its circumference measures 1,600 feet, which is equivalent to 70 standard, adult cashew trees. In addition to its impressive size, the Cashew of Pirangi is estimated to be over 1,000 years old.

5. An Island Ruled by Snakes

Off Brazil’s Atlantic coast lies Ilha da Queimada Grande, ominously known as “Snake Island” — an isle that lives up to its name. This small island is packed with 2,000 – 4,000 golden lancehead pit vipers, a critically endangered species found nowhere else on Earth. 

Local legend abounds with tales of tragic fates — from a fisherman discovered dead in his boat covered in bites after landing in search of bananas, to the last lighthouse keeper and his entire family, who allegedly perished in the 1920s when snakes slithered through their windows. The Brazilian Navy has prohibited public access to protect both the snakes and would-be visitors from each other.

6. Dust Feeds the Amazon

One of nature’s most remarkable long-distance relationships connects two seemingly disparate ecosystems: the Amazon Rainforest and the Sahara Desert. 

In 2015, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, used satellite technology to measure this phenomenon, discovering that wind and weather patterns lift an average of 182 million tons of dust from the Sahara each year and carry it on a 1,600 mile journey across the Atlantic Ocean — with 27.7 million tons settling in the Amazon basin. In 2021, this dust was estimated to deliver approximately 22,000 tons of phosphorus, an essential nutrient for plant growth — roughly the same amount the Amazon rainforest loses every year to rain and flooding.

It is a stunning reminder that Earth’s ecosystems are intimately connected, even across vast distances.

7. Jaguars of the Giant Wetland

The Pantanal in Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay is the world’s largest tropical wetland, covering an area 20 times larger than the Florida Everglades. This seasonally flooded plain harbors the highest density of wild jaguars anywhere on Earth. While jaguars are typically elusive in dense rainforests, the Pantanal’s open wetlands provide the best place on Earth to catch sight of these cats.

8. Earth’s Biodiversity Champion

Brazil is the undisputed champion of global biodiversity. Between 15 to 20 percent of all known species on Earth call Brazil home. This extraordinary diversity of life stems from Brazil’s array of ecosystems — six terrestrial biomes that allow a variety of life to flourish. Brazil’s biodiversity continues to grow, with an average of 700 new animal species discovered each year.

As world leaders gather in Belém, these eight facts serve as a powerful reminder of what’s at stake. Preserving Brazil’s natural heritage isn’t just about preserving remarkable facts for articles — it’s about safeguarding the ecological systems upon which all life, including our own, depends. As we look towards Belém for COP30, let Brazil’s extraordinary nature inspire us to take bold action for our shared planetary home.

Join EARTHDAY.ORG in growing a greener future through our Canopy Tree Project! We are on a mission to plant 60 million trees by our 60th anniversary — and we can’t do it without you. Your support helps restore forests, clean the air, and protest biodiversity around the world. Please consider donating to the project and help keep our planet green!

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Climate finance is funding that supports projects and initiatives aimed at tackling climate change. For example, mitigation finance that supports slowing or stopping the rise in fossil fuel emissions — a primary driver of climate change — through mechanisms such as developing renewable energy infrastructure, supporting energy transition programs, and launching energy-efficient and public transportation projects. In 2023, mitigation finance comprised 94 percent of global climate financing.

Adaptation finance enables countries to respond to and manage the climate impacts they are already experiencing or expect to face — for example, strengthening infrastructure to withstand extreme weather, developing drought-tolerant crops, and improving access to climate information for better management of climate-related risks. 

Together, mitigation and adaptation finance are central to global climate action. Article 9 of the Paris Agreement, outlines the climate finance obligations of developed countries to support developing countries. It set out a $100 billion USD annual commitment that was tripled at last year’s COP. 

COP30, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC), will take place from November 6, 2025 to November 21, 2025 in Belém, Brazil. As world leaders, scientists, non-governmental organizations, and civil society gather in Belém, climate finance will be a central focus. The outcomes of these negotiations will determine whether the gap between climate ambition and climate action can be bridged — positioning COP30 as a defining moment for climate finance and global climate efforts. 

Climate Finance and COP29

Climate finance was a central focus of last year’s COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Held from November 11, 2024 to November 22, 2024, countries reached what was considered by some a breakthrough agreement on climate finance, establishing the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance. 

Under this agreement, countries committed to tripling Paris’ finance commitment of USD 100 billion annually to USD 300 billion annually by 2035. Additionally, countries committed to mobilizing investments from the public and private sectors to USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2035. The New Collective Quantified Goal establishes the creation of the Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3T, which will lay out how to scale up climate finance to developing countries to reach the ambitious goal of USD 1.3 trillion. It will be presented at this year’s COP30.

Climate finance negotiations at previous conferences have also been instrumental in the global effort to fund climate action. COP27 featured the establishment of the historic Loss and Damage Fund. COP28 concluded with a historic agreement to transition away from fossil fuels, triple renewable energy, and increase climate finance for the most vulnerable.

U.S. Withdrawal From Paris

As the world’s largest economy in 2024 by gross domestic product and the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases based on an estimate of emissions between 1751 and 2017, the U.S. has a significant responsibility to provide climate finance. Despite this, on January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed executive order “Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements,” withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and climate finance commitments. Under Article 28 of the Paris Agreement, the withdrawal will not take effect until January 27, 2026.

This withdrawal has profound implications for global climate finance. Under the Paris Agreement, 23 rich, developed countries — understood as Annex II countries and responsible for half of all historical carbon dioxide emissions — are obligated to provide climate finance to developing nations, including the United States. Under the Biden administration, the U.S. had significantly scaled up its climate financing — from USD 1.5 billion in fiscal year 2021 to over USD 11 billion in fiscal year 2024. This made the U.S. the largest bilateral provider of climate finance in the world. However, under President Trump’s recent executive order, much of the U.S.’s climate financing has been canceled or withdrawn — including its commitments to major international programs like the Green Climate Fund and Just Energy Transition Partnerships.

This creates a massive funding gap. The absence of American federal contributions makes climate finance goals significantly harder to achieve. The U.S. withdrawal will directly impact the poorest countries and erode international trust in the climate finance process. 

Breakthroughs in Belém?

With the U.S. funding gap looming over global climate efforts, the work at COP30 in Belém becomes even more crucial as countries push forward key initiatives.  

First, COP30 is set to launch the Tropical Forests Forever Facility. Spearheaded by Brazil, this proposal seeks to compensate countries for preserving their tropical forests. Second, Brazil is proposing the establishment of the Open Coalition for Carbon Market Integration, with the purpose of accelerating decarbonization and encouraging implementation of the Paris Agreement. This initiative works to align standards and connect existing carbon credit markets. 

Finally, Brazil is proposing an international framework that defines the criteria for classifying projects as ‘sustainable’. This mechanism would allow the sustainability of products and economic activities to be comparable across countries through a universal standard.

These initiatives represent critical steps in operationalizing the ambitious climate finance commitments made at COP29. However, these initiatives can only succeed with proper financing. The new roadmap will include how climate finance can be scaled to the USD 1.3 trillion goal by mobilizing funding from private investors and development banks, to address the gap created by the U.S. withdrawal.

The Road Ahead

Despite the U.S.’ withdrawal, the remaining countries are still committed towards achieving their climate goals. But at COP30, we need to see the focus shift decisively from pledges to implementation. The ambitious goals established at COP29 require engagement from all sectors and coordination between governments, multilateral institutions, and private investors. The U.S.’ withdrawal complicates but does not negate the objectives of climate finance — it simply makes the work ahead more challenging and the need for international cooperation more pressing.

At COP30, world leaders must demonstrate that climate finance is not dependent on any single nation, but rather reflects a collective understanding that addressing climate change serves everyone’s interests. The world’s most vulnerable communities are depending on outcomes that match the urgency of their circumstances.

EARTHDAY.ORG has a robust presence at COP30 this year, advocating for climate education around the world. Follow us on LinkedIn to stay up to date on our activities next week.

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