STEAM
EARTH DAY
By Annabel Wigginton
April 22nd is known as the ‘greenest’ day of the year, with Earth Day being commemorated worldwide. Now that the day has passed, will Mother Earth have to wait another year to be appreciated? Or will the celebrations have a more lasting impact?
For some, Earth Day was an incentive to immerse themselves in nature for the day, taking a moment to feel at one with the Earth, and perhaps taking a #EarthDay selfie along the way. For others, it was a gentle nudge reminding them to remember their reusable Tote shopping bag more often.
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Many even went a step further, using this day as a chance to influence others to make BIG changes in their lives, ones that, if we all made, would have a BIG positive effect on the environment.
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The Earth Day message was spread loud and clear throughout central London, with exhibitions, educational demonstrations and general celebrations taking place.
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So what happened?
What else was happening?
Elsewhere, groups of environmentalists and animal welfare activists participated in peaceful demonstrations in Leicester Square. One protest urged people to go vegan for environmental reasons. Protestors asked the public to watch a four-minute video about how the meat and dairy industry negatively affects the environment, with vegan cupcakes used as bribes to entice onlookers to watch the full clip. Cupcakes, not carrot sticks!
“Lots of people who took the time to watch the video were genuinely shocked by what they saw and weren’t aware of and said they were going to go vegan there and then,” said event organiser and famous animal rights activist, Ed Winters.
Leaflets were also handed out, describing some pretty shocking realities, such as how “farmed animals and their by-products account for 32 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year” and how “every second, 1-2 acres of rainforest are being cleared to provide land for these animals and to grow their food”. Also stated was how “around 3.5 billion humans could live off the food currently fed to livestock”.
What next?
Earth Day has now been and gone - as has your opportunity to get a free cupcake, unfortunately. But you can still choose to treat every day as Earth Day, and incorporate as many small or big changes that you can.
Oh, and please take part in our Earth Day poll! http://vote.pollcode.com/52673492
If you visited Somerset House you were sure to see John Gerrard’s ‘Western Flag’; a huge digital simulation which resembled the world’s first major oil find in Spindletop, Texas in 1901.
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After just moments of entering the courtyard, visitors were struck by this vast computer generated exhibition. Although the craftmanship behind it was undoubtedly highly intricate, the motion image itself was simple; a real-time display of what is now the barren and exhausted oil site. Central to the bleak scene was a flagpole bearing a flag made of continuous streams of black smoke.
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Behind the display were words from the creator himself, explaining to onlookers exactly what the image was symbolising. “One of the greatest legacies of the 20th century is not just the population explosion or better living standards but vastly raised carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. A new flag attempts to give this invisible gas, this international risk, an image, a way to represent itself,” it read.
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“It transfixes you to stop and stare at the continuous black smoke being produced. It’s an amazing display but it’s almost depressing and after finding out what it was about it is all the more depressing, but in a good way, if that’s possible. It makes me hate what we have done and are still doing,” said Thomas Lennon, a support worker from Devon, aged 33, who was visiting London for the weekend.
The motion image was commissioned by Channel 4 and was broadcasted, as you may have seen, as short-burst television interruptions over a 24-hour period from 9pm on Earth Day.
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If you missed it you can watch an excerpt here: