Today is Earth Day, April 22.
Earth Day started 41 years ago to raise awareness of “environmental challenges that abound as our daily actions pollute and degrade the fragile environment that humans and wildlife depend on to survive.”
HuffPost Green, Google and Ontario (Canada) are celebrating Earth Day 2011 with you as follows.
HuffPost Green – What are you doing this Earth Day?
HuffPost Green celebrates Earth Day 2011 by blogging about the various ways we can live a green lifestyle.
You can view their slideshow of great green activities and practices that will improve the environment, your health and the well-being of generations to come.
Also, HuffPost Green invites you to add your activity to the slideshow below their blog, or tweet it to them using the hashtag #EarthDayFun.
Have Earth-Day Fun!
Google Doodle
Google celebrates Earth Day’s 41 st anniversary in a Google doodle.
This Google doodle is built around the search giant’s logo to celebrate Earth Day 2011.
You and Google can celebrate together as this doodle is interactive.
To interact with Google’s Earth Day doodle:
- Please click here to go to Google’s homepage.
- Move your cursor on Google’s doodle to find nine interactive scenes.
- Can you find all nine scenes? The answers are posted below this blog – No Peeking!
Have Earth-Day Fun!
Ontario Canada
Ontario’s green deed for Earth Day is planting the eight-millionth tree during Earth Week, just two days before Earth Day!
Kudos and Bravo Ontario! Cheers to Green Ontario!!
Ontario deserves our applause because Ontario planted the eight-millionth tree on April 20 as part of a commitment to plant 50 million new trees to help fight climate change and grow a greener, cleaner province.
The green benefits for Ontarians to enjoy are:
- Trees help clean the air our children and grandchildren breathe.
- They also help increase wildlife habitat, provide shade and help prevent flooding.
- These eight million trees will absorb enough carbon dioxide to clean the air of the emissions made by approximately 8,000 cars annually.
How big was Ontario’s treasure of trees?
- Ontario has approximately 85 billion trees
- 66.0% of Ontario is forest (71.1 million ha)
- 80.8% of Ontario’s forests are on Crown forest (public forest lands) (57.5 million ha)
The fabulous facts of this great green work of Ontario include:
- This program is part of Ontario’s commitment to the global United Nations’ Billion Tree Campaign.
- More than 1,000 landowners have taken part in the 50 Million Tree program to date.
- Trees Ontario, working with its partners, is delivering the program through the largest, not-for-profit tree planting partnership in North America.
- The eight millionth tree was planted on a site in the Oak Ridges Moraine – one of over 93,000 trees to be planted at the site this year.
- Ontario is also phasing out dirty coal-fired power generation – currently down 90 per cent in the first three months of 2011, when compared to the same timeframe in 2003.
- Complete elimination of coal-fired power in Ontario by the end of 2014 will be like taking up to seven million cars off the road.
Please click here to visit the Tree Atlas to find out which trees you should plant where you live.
Ontario, Canada: Newsroom
News Release
Eight-Millionth Tree Planted During Earth Week
April 20, 2011
McGuinty Government Providing Cleaner Air For Children And Grandchildren
Ontario planted the eight-millionth tree today as part of a commitment to plant 50 million new trees to help fight climate change and grow a greener, cleaner province.Trees help clean the air our children and grandchildren breathe. They also help increase wildlife habitat, provide shade and help prevent flooding. These eight million trees will absorb enough carbon dioxide to clean the air of the emissions made by approximately 8,000 cars annually.
Working with Trees Ontario and its partners, Ontario is supporting large-scale tree planting by landowners – and encouraging Ontarians to plant more trees.
Protecting Ontario’s environment is part of the government’s Open Ontario Plan to build a stronger economy, clean up our air and create jobs, while protecting our families.
QUOTES
“Trees help fight climate change and clean the air our children and grandchildren breathe. They also providing places for birds to live and help provide shade for our homes. The 50 million trees we’re planting will make our province a better place for generations to come. ”
– Linda Jeffrey
Minister of Natural Resources
“I applaud everyone who is making an effort to fight climate change. Individual actions – whether it is taking public transit more often, fixing a dripping faucet or planting a tree – really do make a difference.”
– John Wilkinson
Minister of Environment
“Trees Ontario is thrilled to continue being the lead delivery agent for the Ontario government’s 50 Million Tree Program. As an organization, and on behalf of our partners, we are proud to be recognizing the planting of eight million trees under this program since its inception in 2007. We look forward to continue growing tree-planting levels province-wide in coming years and to planting 50 million trees by 2020 under this program.”
– Robert H. Keen
CEO, Trees Ontario
QUICK FACTS
- This program is part of Ontario’s commitment to the global United Nations’ Billion Tree Campaign.
- More than 1,000 landowners have taken part in the 50 Million Tree program to date.
- Trees Ontario, working with its partners, is delivering the program through the largest, not-for-profit tree planting partnership in North America.
- The eight millionth tree was planted on a site in the Oak Ridges Moraine – one of over 93,000 trees to be planted at the site this year.
- Ontario is also phasing out dirty coal-fired power generation – currently down 90 per cent in the first three months of 2011, when compared to the same timeframe in 2003.
- Complete elimination of coal-fired power in Ontario by the end of 2014 will be like taking up to seven million cars off the road.
LEARN MORE
Ministry of Natural Resources
ontario.ca/natural-resources
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Happy Earth Day!
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Celebration Events of Earth Day Canada
Nine interactive scenes of the Google doodle for Earth Day are (going clockwise starting at the top)
- A penquin jumping and diving into the water.
- A koala bear going down and up a tree (it looks like there are some green leaves in its mouth), as well as waving its arm before going up the tree.
- A brown butterfly flying upwards from a tree with flowers.
- A frog hopping out of a bush towards the river.
- The same frog makes a second hop this time into the river.
- An orange fish jumps out of the river towards the waterfall, swims up the waterfall to the top and into the mouth of a brown bear.
- A lion roars and flicks its tail.
- A panda bear’s sneeze causes the other panda bear to fall on its back.
- A red bird flies into the sky.
Did you find all nine scenes? And were you able to see the Google lettering in the doodle?
See this hilarious panda video about a mother panda bear being startled by her baby panda bear’s sneeze: