Green Cities
Earth Day Network Announces 13 Commitments to Audience of 250,000 on the National Mall
April 23, 2015
April 18th at the Global Citizen 2015 Earth Day rally at the National Mall, world leaders, corporate innovators, and other dignitaries announced critical commitments on stage more than a quarter of a million people to solve climate change.
Thirteen notable commitments announced by Earth Day Network and its partners are outlined below:
EDUCATION
- In partnership with President Clinton and the Clinton Global Initiative, the Hult Prize has invested $25 million dollars in the next generation and mobilized hundreds of thousands of youth to solve our planet’s most crippling challenges through new and innovative business approaches that are both profitable and sustainable.
- Earth Day Network has released The Story of Climate Change, the first-ever iTextbook on climate change aimed at middle school students. This freeonline resource is aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards and Climate Literacy Standards. This interactive digital textbook allows students to witness our changing climate through animation, science videos, photographs and field expedition stories.
- The NAACP Voter Fund, Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP), League of Conservation Voters (LCV) and Earth Day Network (EDN) committed to registering one million new climate voters for the 2016 election.
- Over 80% of marine debris is plastic. Worldwide, we throw away 50 billion plastic bottles every year and 80% of them still end up in landfills and then our oceans where they take over 450 years to degrade.
- Rovio Entertainment, whose Angry Birds game has been downloaded 2.8 billion times, in cooperation with the Earth Day Network, announced Angry Birds’ “Champions for Earth.”
- 40 million young people – boys and girls – from 223 countries and territories around the globe are Scouts. By learning to live with nature, Scouts are on the front line taking action to protect it.
- The Boy Scouts of America announced a new Earth Day Award program. Every year leading up to the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in 2020, a new commemorative patch will be earned by Scouts who complete individual acts of service in celebration of Earth Day.
- The Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Soldberg committed to rainforest preservation in key areas such as Brazil to help reduce the impacts of climate change with $500 million in donations per year to continue through 2020 for a total of $2.5 billion.
- The World Bank will launch a new Pollution Management and Environmental Health Trust Fund (PMEH) to promote more systematic and effective responses to deadly and costly pollution.
- UNEP and EPA announce goals of the Global Alliance to Eliminate Lead Paint, a partnership established to prevent children’s exposure to lead paint and to minimize occupational exposures to lead paint.
- William McDonough and FEMSA commit to reuse recycled materials such as PET through the WonderShade project, which will create and donate shade structures for children’s sports fields in Central American communities. The project is a prototype that moves towards a world with zero waste, with the goal of using formerly wasted materials to create free or low cost housing for up to a billion people.
- Toyota announced its commitment to hydrogen fuel cell technology and the introduction of vehicles whose only emission is water. Toyota has also released over 5,000 patents to open the door to widespread development of a hydrogen fuel cell economy.
- Interfaith Power & Light is calling on congregations and individuals across the US to commit to reducing their carbon pollution 50 percent by 2030 and going carbon neutral by 2050. To date, over 65 congregations and 1100 individuals representing different faith traditions have made this commitment, allowing IPL to commit to 100,000 tons of reduced carbon output in time for the Paris climate talks in December.
