Every year on April 22, more than one billion people take part in
Earth Day. Across the globe, individuals, communities, organizations,
and governments acknowledge
the amazing planet we call home and take action to
protect it.
Climate change has many faces.
A man in the Maldives worried about relocating his
family as sea levels rise, a farmer in Kansas struggling to make ends
meet as prolonged drought ravages the crops,
a fisherman on the Niger River whose nets often come
up empty, a child in New Jersey who lost her home to a super-storm, a
woman in Bangladesh who can’t get fresh
water due to more frequent flooding and cyclones…
And they’re not only human faces.
They’re the polar bear in the melting arctic, the
tiger in India’s threatened mangrove forests, the right whale in
plankton-poor parts of the warming North Atlantic,
the orangutan in Indonesian forests segmented by more
frequent bushfires and droughts…
These faces of climate change are multiplying every day.
For many, climate change can often seem remote and
hazy – a vague and complex problem far off in the distance that our
grandchildren may have to solve.
But that’s only because they’re still fortunate enough
to be insulated from its mounting consequences. Climate change has very
real effects on people, animals,
and the ecosystems and natural resources on which we
all depend. Left unchecked, they’ll spread like wildfire.
Luckily, other faces of climate change are also multiplying every day.
Every person who does his or her part to fix the
problem is also a Face of Climate Change: the entrepreneurs who see
opportunity in creating
the new green economy, the activists who organize
community action and awareness campaigns, the engineers who design the
clean technology of the future,
the public servants who fight for climate change laws
and for mitigation efforts, the ordinary people who commit to living
sustainably…
