(CNN) Earth Day turns 48 this year and millions of people in roughly 200 countries will unite Sunday to find ways to protect and celebrate the planet.
In the past year, we've had environmental victories as well as defeats, all of which will have effects on the planet in some way. Here are five significant events that happened since the last Earth Day:
We lost one rhino subspecies
The world's last male northern white rhino died last month , leaving the future of the subspecies in doubt.
At 45, Sudan was fraught with age-related issues and multiple infections. He lived in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya surrounded by armed guards who protected him 24 hours a day.
Rhinos are targeted by poachers, fueled by the belief in Asia that their horns cure various ailments. Experts say the rhino horn is becoming more lucrative than drugs.
When Sudan died, he left behind his daughter Najin, 28, and granddaughter, Fatu, 17. The future of the rhinos remains uncertain as scientists look into multiple alternatives to sustain the subspecies, including artificially inseminating one of the two females left.
We are saying goodbye to plastics
A woman sorts plastic bags after washing them for re-use in a river in Nairobi, Kenya.
Plastic-free supermarkets, a deposit on plastic bottles and jail time for using plastic bags. These are just some of the efforts leaders are making to curb the world's plastic addiction.
In February, the very first plastic-free supermarket aisle was unveiled in Amsterdam. Shoppers there are buying their groceries in "new compostable bio-materials as well as traditional materials" such as glass, metal and cardboard.
Plastic straws, drink stirrers and cotton swabs could be banned in England as part of the government's plan to eliminate all avoidable plastic waste by 2042. The UK government is also planning to introduce a deposit on plastic bottles, requiring customers to pay an extra tax when buying single-use drink containers that will be refunded once those items are recycled.
We met a punk-rock turtle
The Mary River turtle is native to Queensland, Australia.
The good news is we discovered an Australian river turtle with a distinctive green punk-rock hairstyle, two spikes under its chin and the ability to breathe through its genitals. The bad news is, it may not be around for long because it's on a new list of endangered reptiles.
The Mary River turtle is native to Queensland, Australia. It has the ability to stay underwater for up to three days. Its vibrant green mohawk is the result of algae growing on its head because of the extended time spent submerged.
The turtles were often kept as pets in the 1960s and '70s and by the 1990s, they were already at risk of being endangered, according to Rikki Gumbs, a reptile biologist at Zoological Society London.
Leonardo DiCaprio to the rescue
JUST WATCHED Vaquita: The Business of Extinction Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Vaquita: The Business of Extinction 24:59
There are only 30 vaquita porpoises left on Earth, and Leonardo DiCaprio wants to save them.
The vaquita, which looks very similar to a dolphin, calls the Gulf of California home. The species has become endangered due to illegal fishing.
The actor and activist used Twitter and Instagram to get his millions of followers to sign a petition asking Mexico's President to take immediate action to protect the endangered vaquita porpoise.
And the president was all ears. DiCaprio met with President Enrique Peña Nieto, securing an agreement to work together to protect the vaquita and other marine life.
These nets are designed to catch the giant totoaba fish, whose swim bladder is considered a culinary delicacy in China and sold for more than $4,500 per pound.
US leaves Paris climate accord
JUST WATCHED Trump withdraws US from Paris climate accord Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Trump withdraws US from Paris climate accord 03:11
President Donald Trump put the US at odds with nearly every other nation on Earth when he decided to pull out of the Paris climate accord.
"We're getting out," Trump said of his decision during an event held in the White House's Rose Garden.
At the time, Trump even suggested it was a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese government, despite scientific evidence that contradicted those beliefs.
The Paris Agreement on Climate Change is aimed at cutting emissions and keeping global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. And experts say the departure of the US would make that significantly harder due to the country's climate footprint.
It’s been a difficult 15 months if you care about the environment. Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, he’s made fracking easier on public lands, decimated the Environmental Protection Agency and renounced the Paris climate accord.
These are just a few reasons millions of Americans will pledge their support for the environment on April 22 for Earth Day.
But this year, that is not enough. This year, if you care about the environment, you should spend April 22 and every other day working toward a more important date ― Nov. 6, Election Day. That’s when we can force policymakers to protect our climate and natural resources. Nov. 6 is this year’s Earth Day, and all of us need to show up.
The environmental movement has a turnout problem, but this problem also presents an enormous opportunity.
Unfortunately, we haven’t always shown up in the past. According to Environmental Voter Project research, 69 percent of registered voters cast votes in 2016, but only 50 percent of environmentalists did. In the 2014 midterms, 44 percent of registered voters went to the polls, compared with only 21 percent of environmentalists.
Simply put, the environmental movement has a turnout problem, but this problem also presents an enormous opportunity. By some estimates, over 20 million registered voters list climate change and the environment among their top priorities. This could be a powerful constituency on Election Day, particularly in midterm elections where barely 80 million people vote. Nonvoters are the low-hanging fruit of the climate movement. They are already-persuaded environmentalists in a society where it’s increasingly hard to persuade anybody of anything.
Over the past few years, behavioral scientists have come to bemoan the difficulty of political persuasion in a “post-truth” world, and they reference our growing tendency to evaluate information based not on conformity with common societal standards (like evidence or logic), but simply on whether it supports the values of our “tribe” (i.e., what is good for our team equals the truth).
Unfortunately, political persuasion is even more difficult when we discuss climate change. In this context, recent studies have even documented a phenomenon called the “backfire effect,” which reveals that confronting climate-deniers with facts and science often doesn’t persuade them of anything, but rather causes them to cling to their wrong views even more tenaciously than before.
In short, it is extraordinarily hard to persuade people to start caring about climate change, so it’s all the more important for those of us who already care to vote.
If we vote, politicians will follow – we need only look back to the first Earth Day for proof.
The good news is this: We have overwhelming numbers of voters who value environmental issues. And if we vote, politicians will follow ― we need only look back to the first Earth Day for proof.
On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans took to the streets, protesting smog-choked air and toxic water in the largest demonstration in American history.
At the time, this took much of the nation by surprise. Neither Richard Nixon nor Hubert Humphrey had focused on environmental issues in the 1968 presidential campaign. And in May of 1969, only 1 percent of Americans named “pollution/ecology” as one of the country’s most important problems. Yet by 1971, that number had soared to 25 percent.
Even back then, politicians knew how to read polls and respond accordingly.
With astonishing speed, Nixon worked with Congress to form the Environmental Protection Agency, and then enact the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Lead-Based Paint Poisoning Prevention Act, all before a single ballot was cast in the 1972 election.
If we choose to, environmentalists could overwhelm the electorate.
2018 is looking eerily similar to 1970. The effects of climate change are being felt like never before, and millions of registered voters count the environment as a priority. Yet, one thing is strikingly different: Politicians aren’t responding like they did in the 1970s. Climate change wasn’t mentioned once in the State of the Union address, nor in the Democratic response. And no more than a handful of candidates are mentioning environmental issues on the stump.
Why the change? Politicians certainly still care about getting elected, but now they have a secret weapon: Now they know which people are going to vote on Election Day and which people are going to stay home. And, recently, environmentalists have been staying at home, which makes them easy to ignore.
Since the early 2000s, campaigns have been able to search each citizen’s voting history on easy-to-access voter file software from companies like NGP VAN or the GOP Data Center. Don’t worry: Whom you vote for is secret, but which elections you vote in is public information. For obvious reasons, these public voting histories are now the lifeblood of modern campaigns, allowing candidates to focus their limited resources on polling and communicating with only those people who are likely to show up on Election Day.
This means that politicians now only care about the policy priorities of voters, not nonvoters. This shouldn’t surprise us: We wouldn’t expect Starbucks to care about people who don’t drink coffee, so why would campaigns care about people who don’t vote? And, unfortunately, environmentalists aren’t voting.
But this is not a reason for despair; it is a reason for hope. In a world of big, scary problems like climate change, altering our voting habits is actually a pretty easy problem to fix. It takes the average American only 14 minutes to vote, and it can have an enormous effect.
So this Earth Day, circle Nov. 6 on your calendar and pledge to vote. If we choose to, environmentalists could overwhelm the electorate. And, yes, politicians will take notice because nothing motivates a politician more than the prospect of winning ― or losing ― an election.
0 What is Earth Day? 5 things to know
Sunday is Earth Day 2018, and more than one billion people across the globe are expected to celebrate with environmentally friendly events.
But what exactly is Earth Day? Here's what you need to know:
>> Read more trending news
1. When did Earth Day start?
The first Earth Day celebration took place 48 years ago, in 1970, after a devastating oil spill in America brought environmental issues to the forefront of public consciousness. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 22 million people across the country came out in support of environmental reform.
"That day left a permanent impact on the politics of America," Gaylord Nelson wrote in the April 1980 edition of the EPA Journal. "It forcibly thrust the issue of environmental quality and resources conservation into the political dialogue of the nation.
"It showed political and opinion leadership of the country that the people cared, that they were ready for political action, that the politicians had better get ready, too. In short, Earth Day launched the environmental decade with a bang."
Since then, celebrations have only grown. This year, organizers estimate more than one billion people in 192 countries will participate in events the world over. The day is celebrated each year on April 22.
2. Is there a theme for Earth Day 2018?
This year, organizers are focusing on curbing plastic pollution.
"Our goals include ending single-use plastics, promoting alternatives to fossil fuel-based materials, promoting 100 percent recycling of plastics, corporate and government accountability and changing human behavior concerning plastics," the Earth Day Network, which partners with tens of thousands of organizations in 192 countries to organize Earth Day events, said on its website.
The organization also said it "will educate millions of people about the health and other risks associated with the use and disposal of plastics, including pollution of our oceans, water, and wildlife, and about the growing body of evidence that decomposing plastics are creating serious global problems."
Read more here.
3. How are people celebrating?
In Tokyo, thousands of people will attend beach cleanups, concerts, art exhibits, classes and other events coordinated by the Green Room Festival, according to the Earth Day Network. In India's Karnataka state, a "no plastic" event will feature workshops led by "organizations that are champions of environmental sustainability in fields including electric vehicles, solar power and zero-waste living," the network said. Cleanups also were scheduled in Palm Beach, Florida; New York; New Jersey and other locations across the United States and worldwide.
Read more here.
4. What are businesses doing?
Google marked Earth Day with a "video doodle" featuring primatologist Jane Goodall.
>> Click here to watch
“It is so important in the world today that we feel hopeful and do our part to protect life on Earth," Goodall said. "I am hopeful that this Earth Day Google Doodle will live as a reminder for people across the globe that there is still so much in the world worth fighting for. So much that is beautiful, so many wonderful people working to reverse the harm, to help protect species and their environments. And there are so, so many young people, like those in JGI’s Roots & Shoots program, dedicated to making this a better world. With all of us working together, I am hopeful that it is not too late to turn things around, if we all do our part for this beautiful planet.”
Read more about the doodle here.
Apple also joined in on the celebrations, announcing on April 19 that "for every device received at Apple stores and apple.com through the Apple GiveBack program from now through April 30, the company will make a donation to the nonprofit Conservation International."
In addition, Apple "debuted Daisy, a robot that can more efficiently disassemble iPhone to recover valuable materials," according to a company press release.
“At Apple, we’re constantly working toward smart solutions to address climate change and conserve our planet’s precious resources,” Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy and social Initiatives, said in a statement. “In recognition of Earth Day, we are making it as simple as possible for our customers to recycle devices and do something good for the planet through Apple GiveBack. We’re also thrilled to introduce Daisy to the world, as she represents what’s possible when innovation and conservation meet.”
Read more here.
5. How can I get involved?
There are multiple ways to get into the Earth Day spirit, from participating in a local event to changing your bills from paper to paperless. Here are some suggestions from the Earth Day Network:
Urge your local elected officials or businesses to make a substantial tree planting commitment by starting a letter-writing campaign or online petition.
Lead a recycling drive to collect as much plastic, metal, and glass as possible.
Pick up trash at a local park or beach.
Set up a screening of an environmentally themed movie. Consider supplementing the screening with a speaker who can lead a Q&A following the film.
© 2018 Cox Media Group.
Earth Day 2018 Highlights: This year’s Earth Day is dedicated to spreading awareness about plastic pollution and the need to tackle it. Earth Day 2018 Highlights: This year’s Earth Day is dedicated to spreading awareness about plastic pollution and the need to tackle it.
On the occasion of Earth Day on Sunday, leaders across India and the world voiced solidarity over protection and preservation of the planet, with emphasis on reduction of plastic use and adopting a sustainable lifestyle. People around the globe also came together to celebrate the Earth Day. First celebrated in the United States in 1970, the idea of commemorating such a day was propounded by Gaylord Nelson, a US senator from Wisconsin. Nelson, who had been a witness to the devastation caused by an enormous oil spill in Santa Barbara, California in 1969, felt the urgency of the matter.
According to Earth Day Network, this year’s Earth Day is dedicated to spreading awareness about the pollution caused by plastic and the need to eventually end its use. The Earth Day went global by the 1990s and is now celebrated by at least 192 countries.
Follow Earth Day 2018 HIGHLIGHTS here:
