Google is telling its 5.4 billion users, that nature is warning us. Don’t let it fall on deaf ears.
Today’s Google doodle is a grim reminder of the climate crisis with time-lapse Google Earth images of glacial melt, coral reef bleaching, deforestation, and glacial retreat.
In partnership with The Ocean Agency, Google’s 2022 Earth Day doodle shows four pairs of satellite imagery and images not unlike those haunting photos in the 2006 documentary The Inconvenient Truth.
One of which shows the continuing coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia between March 2016 and October 2017.
According to climate counselor Lesley Hughes from the Macquarie University in Sydney, the reef is such a major natural icon that its slow death should show that “there’s absolutely no time to waste.”
Google also showed the glacial retreat at the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro between December 1986 and 2020 and the glacial melt in Greenland, between December 2000 and 2020.
Specialists have been warning the public that the ancient glaciers are thinning. In 2021, a new study showed that an Antarctic glacier larger than the UK may soon break or melt away earlier than expected.
In May 2021, a centuries-old barracks in northern Italy was discovered after the glaciers around it have melted away.
Google isn’t the only one calling for immediate climate action on Earth Day. Earlier this month, several scientists made headlines for holding protests in government properties and in private companies.
In America, scientists from NASA chained themselves to an office building of Chase Bank, which is known to have invested more money in fossil fuels than any other bank.
Others chained themselves to a White House fence. In Spain, protesters threw fake blood on the steps of the Spanish Parliament in Madrid.
German scientists demonstrated outside the Ministry of Economy and Climate Protection and many more protested outside the Shell PLC headquarters in England.
Scientists in Mexico also risk arrest by pasting documents on government buildings, while scientists in Italy occupied an oil and gas company’s headquarters.
The demonstrations were initiated by a climate movement “Scientist Rebellion.” According to the group, around 1,000 scientists in 25 countries participated in the global protest.
“Scientists have spent decades writing papers, advising government, briefing the press: all have failed,” the group writes. “Now is the time for us to take action so that we show how seriously we take our warnings.”
The recent release of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said it's “now or never” for the world to take sharp action to cut greenhouse gas emissions enough.
Otherwise, the world will pass the 1.5-degree threshold where most of the coral-reefs die, more super typhoons like Odette will hit, extreme heatwaves occur more often, and melting ice floods more land areas becoming uninhabitable.
Tags: #environment, #google, #earthday2022, #climateaction, #climatechange