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Everyone can combat climate change

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Today is Earth Day. This is a day when, around the world, more than a billion people take part in events aimed at changing human behaviour, and national and international policies to combat pollution, environmental degradation and climate change so as to protect and conserve the planet they live in. Earth Day began some 50 years ago in the United States to infuse in young people an awareness of the air and water pollution wrought by industrialisation that was harming people's health. It was also to galvanise the energy of the young to push for change. That first Earth Day in 1970 spawned the US agency for environmental protection and a slew of environmental laws that did much to protect Americans from disease and death caused by pollution, and to protect many species of flora and fauna from extinction.

In the decades since then, industrial and agricultural development worldwide has benefited billions of people, allowing them to grow and produce enough food to feed ever-growing populations and build material wealth so they could live in relative comfort. But this human economic development has come at a price. The past 50 years have seen what has been described as a "catastrophic" decline in the earth's ecosystems and natural environments. A 2018 World Wildlife Fund for Nature report showed at least 32,300ha of forest vanished every day and that the size of wildlife populations dropped by 60 per cent on average from 1970 to 2014. What is more, this decline affected the quality of life of humans.

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