Kathleen Rogers on how you can get involved in Earth Day 2022

To celebrate Earth Day 2022, Climate Action interviewed Kathleen Rogers, President at EARTHDAY.ORG, to discuss this year's theme and how you can get involved.

What is the theme of this year’s Earth Day, and please can you tell us more about it?

The theme for Earth Day 2022 is “Invest in Our Planet.” Earth Day 2022 is focused on accelerating solutions to combat our greatest threat, climate change, and to activate everyone – governments, citizens, and businesses – to do their part.

Our aim is engaging the more than 1 billion people, governments, institutions, and businesses who participate in Earth Day to recognize our collective responsibility and to help accelerate the transition to an equitable, prosperous green economy for all. The goal of EDO’s campaign is to push aside the barriers erected by the ancient, dirty fossil fuel economy and their co-conspirators – old technologies of centuries past – and redirect attention to creating a 21st century economy that brings back the health of our planet, protects our species, and provides opportunities for all.

How can people take part and make a change?

We are asking people to visit our website EARTHDAY.ORG to learn about this year’s theme and our work in other areas  such as reforestation and climate literacy. On our website you can also get involved by signing up to do a cleanup, create an Earth Day event, or take action by signing one of our petitions or sending a message to your elected officials.

Why is it important for all sectors (Private Sector, Government, Investment Community, NGOs etc.) to get involved in Earth Day?

Earth Day is widely recognized as the largest secular observance in the world, marked by more than a billion people every year as a day of action to change human behaviour and create global, national, and local policy changes. Earth Day provides us with the best platform and opportunity to get engage people on the pressing environmental challenges of our time like plastic pollution and climate change.

What is Earth Day’s goal for 2022 as we look towards COP27 and beyond?

Our goal for 2022 is to activate and mobilize the thousands of people who will become involved in Earth Day this year and take that momentum forward to COP27 where we will continue to pressure world leaders to make substantial commitments towards reducing carbon emissions and finalizing a global plastics treaty.

Find out how you can get involved in Earth Day 2022 here.