Every year on April 22, people across the globe unite to celebrate Earth Day. As the name suggests, the day is dedicated to protect the planet and promote ways to preserve the environment. Carrying forward its practice of honouring important personalities and days, Google on Sunday paid tribute to British primatologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall with a doodle on its homepage. Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots programme, Goodall has worked tirelessly on animal welfare issues as well as environmental conservation. The Google doodle also features a short video clip of Goodall narrating her experience as an anthropologist.
Goodall in the video shares how much she loves animals. “My whole childhood really was animals, animals, animals.” She then goes on to describe a moment when she was in the Gombe National Park and it was raining. After the rain stopped, she recollects she could smell the wet hair on the chimpanzees and hear the insects singing loudly. At that moment Goodall says, “I just felt absolutely at one and it was a sense of awe and wonder.” She then goes on to highlight the importance of rainforest and how they teach you that everything is interconnected, and every species, “even though it may seem insignificant has a role to play in this tapestry of life”.
At the end of the video, Goodall shares her message with everybody on. She encourages others to make a “determined effort to live lives in better harmony with nature.” She also gives a parting word of advice — “Every single individual matters, every single individual makes some impact on the planet every single day, and we have a choice as to what kind of difference we are going to make.”
This year, according to Earth Day Network, the day intends to spread awareness about the pollution caused by plastic and the need to eventually end its use. The Earth Day, which was first celebrated in the United States in 1970, went global by the 1990s and now almost 192 countries celebrate it. |
