This year’s World Earth Day, commemorated last Saturday, April 22, was a special one. The vivid colours shone the brightest from London. Humans dressed up to look like animals and plants. You see them in all hues – toads, trees, teddies and termites. Families hold hands and walk among the mobile camouflage. Children chuckle and chime, asking their parents for answers as they see their favourite TV stars brandish banners of eco-protest. One of them by the popular British actor, Pedro Pascal, which says “The planet is getting hotter than Pedro!” which is just a play on words showing that climate change is impacting the world more than he is influencing his crowd.
They christened it “The Big One.” Protesters converged on London from all corners of the UK last Saturday on Earth Day, bringing the plight of their local environments and species with them. But the most intriguing part of the story is that the Big One was organised by the Extinction Rebellion, a movement known for disruptive protests and law-breaking antics. This time round, they turn 180 degrees, emphasising peaceful protest, unity and inclusion with a universal theme “Unite to Survive.” The tactic paid off. The XR estimated that the total number of people who attended over the four days’ protests is more than 60,000, making it the biggest joint environmental protest in the UK after the 2019 climate strike.
The Big One had two key demands. First, an end to the fossil fuel era– led by the government ceasing all new licences, approvals, and funding for fossil fuel projects. Second, the creation of emergency citizens’ assemblies to facilitate fair, long-term solutions to the nation’s most urgent issues. Greenpeace UK, War on Want and Global Justice Now were among dozens of signatories. This can only mean that the XR’s new resolve to prioritise “attendance over arrest” and “relationships over roadblocks” has paid off. Therefore, one now expects that the government reciprocates accordingly at least to provide the table for discussions while giving the citizens a listening ear.
Perhaps, our leaders may be reminded that we live in an age of protest. On our schools and public squares, on streets and social media, protesters around the world are challenging the status quo. As people become uncomfortable with goings on around them, they seek answers from those leaders who naturally would want them to keep mute. Protest can thrust issues onto the national or global agenda. It can force out authoritarian leaders; it can usher in moderates. It can mobilise the angry citizens; and it can activate people who have long been on the sidelines of civil life.
As a matter of fact, the World Earth Day began as a protest, 53 years ago in the United States. It was launched in 1970 when millions of Americans marched out in their millions to protest for environmental reform. Twenty million Americans – 10 per cent of the US population at the time — took to the streets, college campuses, and hundreds of cities on April 22, 1970, to protest what they believed was environmental ignorance leading to smog, pollution, biodiversity loss and sundry eco-discomforts. The brainchild of US Senator Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day was founded in the aftermath of the 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara, California, and led to the creation of landmark environmental laws and the Environmental Protection Agency. It was launched as a way to teach environmentalism and protest against the negative aspects of industrialisation, and have since gained massive global interest and adherence.
Soon after the first Earth Day, the US passed the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. More than a billion people worldwide now take part in marches, petitions and clean-ups to protect the environment – making it the largest civic observance in the world. People around the world are encouraged to do things to benefit the environment, from recycling and planting trees to reducing their carbon footprints. In 2016, the United Nations chose Earth Day as the day when the historic Paris Agreement on climate change was signed into force. This year’s theme is “Invest in our Planet,” which emphasises saving our planet far and wide through making efforts.
To me, another great way to invest in our planet today is by protesting against wars and conflicts and those who profit from these dehumanising occurrences. As has been established by global authorities, wars and conflicts leave tremendous damages on the ecosystem from which it never really recovers. Today it is Sudan and Ukraine; people are dying while the environment is degraded from the use of various ordinances. Tomorrow it may be the entire globe from the wrath of nuclear arsenals. Do we keep quiet? No. We need to speak up against wars because they are as dangerous as climate change.
Environmentalists are sometimes called “tree huggers.” Let us hug the trees, not only to show how they are needed for earth to survive; but also how we need them not to be destroyed by wars and conflicts. Even before the Earth Day, we had a sneak peek from the most unlikely of places. Although it was not clear the intentions of the “tree huggers” in question, but it seemed they were actually trying to cuddle up with the environment.
About two weeks ago, a woman was reportedly detained by police in Bali after posing naked by a sacred tree. The news broke when a local activist shared the photos of the woman baring all next to the sacred Kayu Putih tree, also known as the Bayan Ancient Tree, on social media. This was not the first time. In March this year, a Russian man apologised after posing semi-naked on a sacred site in Bali. Also in 2022, a Russian Instagram influencer was reported for taking naked photos beside a sacred 700-year-old tree in Bali.
The island is symbolic. Sea level rise has led to a serious impact on the coastal tourist resorts of Bali and the island has been a symbolic rallying point for the world to discuss ecological concerns, especially the climate emergency faced by all earth citizens. Last year, the G20 summit was hosted there, where the Indonesian environment minister Siti Bakar, warned the world’s leading economies that they must act together to combat a warming planet or risk plunging it into “uncharted territory.”
Recall that the Climate Change Conference in Bali in 2007, UNFCCC COP 13, gave the world “The Bali Roadmap,” which set a timetable for negotiations for a new international agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol and include all countries, not only the developed ones.
There is yet another group that shocked its way into the consciousness of the world. The Moscow-based feminist punk band known as Pussy Riot, staged unauthorised, provocative guerrilla gigs in public places – sometimes in churches – and filmed the music videos and posted them on the internet. I first read about them in 2013 when two of the band members were granted amnesty by the Russian government side by side with 30 Greenpeace protesters arrested for demonstrating against Arctic oil drilling. Pussy Riot became an eco-voice when they took corporate polluters to task. Titled, “Black Snow,” the group’s Nadya Tolokonnikova and Mara 37 scream of the literal black snow and red rain that plagues parts of Russia as a result of commercial mining activities. “Red water flows in Russian rivers/Dust sticks to my eyelids, I’m hanging on a thread,” they sing.
