One-third of the world’s plant and animal species could be extinct by 2070 if humans don’t change course. Over the past five years, the big banks have enabled $2 billion per day – that’s $1.4 million per minute – of funding to fossil fuel companies, bringing us ever closer to planetary catastrophe. The message of Earth Day this year is that now is the time to restore our Earth.

Restore our Earth. Thursday 22 April, Earth Day, calls on humanity to change its ways.

This week marks the 51st Earth Day on Thursday 22 April 2021. In The Sustainable Hour, we find there is no better week to listen to and focus on a way of living that has allowed Australia’s indigenous people to thrive on this planet for at least 100,000 years. So in The Tunnel today, we have invited professor Yin Paradies, who teaches race relations and indigenous studies at Deakin University. He gives us all much food for thought, introducing us to ancient wisdom in the First Nations’ approach to life and to each other, lessons and inspiration for us that we – humanity – need more than ever right now as we face face up to the climate and ecological emergency.

In the lead up to Earth Day, this week has also been declared a global Climate Emergency Week by a range of media outlets and scientific journals around the world. You can find links and information about this and the other topics we talked about during the hour in the notes below on this page.

Colin Mockett‘s Global Outlook has zooming all over the world with lots of positive news today. He starts us off in the United States where the huge climate news this week is President Biden’s Virtual Climate Summit which starts tomorrow and goes for two days. Here, leaders from 40 countries will be taking the signs that the time for real action on climate is now. An agreement that the leaders of two of the most powerful countries in the world have signed augers well.

We then zoom to Iceland where young successful women have been voted in to represent their constituents – this continues a trend where countries with the most progressive and realistic responses to the climate emergency are being led by women.

The next positive news is that Apple, one of the biggest companies in the world, has announced ambitious plans that it will invest $200 million to decarbonise its entire supply chain. Finally, yet another grim warning for the world. This time from the World Bank’s CEO Kristalina Georgieva about the huge number of people who will have to relocate in just three regions of the world.

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