Earth Day 2025: Our Power, Our Planet

The image above was taken by NASA’s Voyager 1 at a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers), beyond even Neptune's orbit. On it, we can see the Earth — or as Carl Sagan described it, the "Pale Blue Dot" which contains all of humanity's history.

After millions of years of relative balance, our home has started to change because of that history, and it's changing too fast. Like a mirror held back to us, the change we've brought about will force us into profound hardships for centuries to come if we don't stop it now.

Every year on April 22nd, in an attempt to fight back the causes of that unwanted change, over a billion people around this pale blue dot come together to celebrate Earth Day — a global moment of reflection, action, and hope for a healthier planet.

What began as a grassroots environmental movement in the United States has grown into an international phenomenon in 1990, uniting voices across borders in defense of the Earth.

But Earth Day is more than just a celebration. It's a call to action — a reminder that the climate crisis demands systemic change. Each year, Earth Day is built around a theme that reflects a major environmental issue.

In 2025, the focus is on renewable energy, and for good reason: we’re running out of time to shift away from fossil fuels and towards clean, sustainable energy sources. How to power the world is the question of the century — and while we know the answer, we haven't implemented it yet.

What is Earth Day?

Earth Day was born out of crisis. In the late 1960s, the United States was grappling with rampant pollution, oil spills, toxic waste, and growing public awareness about the health and ecological consequences of industrial development.

The tipping point came in 1969, when a massive oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, poured more than 3 million gallons of crude oil into the Pacific Ocean, devastating marine life and washing black tar onto once-pristine beaches.

Inspired by the energy of the anti-war and civil rights movements, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed a day of environmental education and activism.

The first Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970, and it drew over 20 million Americans into rallies, teach-ins, and demonstrations — a staggering turnout that helped spark the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and landmark environmental laws like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act.

Since then, Earth Day has become the largest secular observance in the world, with over 190 countries participating. Schools, nonprofits, corporations, and governments now use the day to launch campaigns, host clean-up events, promote green technologies, and engage communities in environmental action.

The day is coordinated by the global nonprofit EarthDay.org, which sets the annual theme and provides resources and campaigns to support it.

This year’s theme — Renewable Energy for a Sustainable Future — emphasises not only the importance of clean energy, but also the urgency of moving away from fossil fuels before climate impacts become irreversible.

Earth Day 2025 isn’t just about raising awareness — it’s about building momentum for deep, lasting energy transformation on a global scale.

Why Renewable Energy Is Essential

The shift to renewable energy isn’t just a matter of innovation or economic growth — it’s a planetary necessity. Burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas is the primary driver of climate change, accounting for over 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

These emissions trap heat in the atmosphere, disrupting weather patterns, raising sea levels, and triggering more extreme events like wildfires, droughts, floods, and storms, which affect livelihoods and the economy globally.

This is why fossil fuels need to be phased out. To achieve this, they need substitutes - that's where renewable energy comes in.

Wind farms and solar panels, heat pumps and electric vehicles can all replace combustion-based energy production, respectively in electricity generation (moving away from coal & gas to wind and solar energy), heat generation (moving away from gas to solar and ambient heat) and motion generation (moving away from oil to renewably generated electricity).

Unlike fossil fuels, renewables generate energy without emitting greenhouse gases. They’re becoming cheaper and more accessible every year, with solar and wind now the lowest-cost sources of new power generation in many regions.

Beyond environmental benefits, renewables offer energy security and economic resilience. They reduce dependence on volatile fossil fuel markets, create millions of jobs in clean tech, and empower communities with local, distributed energy systems.

The transition to renewables is one of the most effective tools we have to limit global warming, protect public health, and build a more sustainable and just future.

But to be truly effective, this transition can’t happen in isolation. It must go hand-in-hand with a managed, global-scale phase-out of fossil fuels — and that’s where the challenge gets much harder.

We Need To Replace Fossil Fuels With Renewable Energy

Renewable energy is growing fast — but not fast enough. And more importantly, it’s not yet replacing fossil fuels at the scale needed. In many parts of the world, renewables are being added on top of existing energy systems, rather than substituting the fossil fuels driving climate change.

That’s a critical distinction. Global energy demand continues to rise, driven by population growth, expanding economies, and increasing access to electricity in developing regions. As a result, even though renewable energy capacity is growing, fossil fuel consumption remains stubbornly high. In fact, in some years, global coal and oil use has increased alongside renewable expansion — effectively cancelling out the climate benefits.

This points to a hard truth: scaling up renewable energy without simultaneously phasing out fossil fuels won’t get us to net zero emissions. We can’t solve the climate crisis by merely growing the energy pie — we need to reshape it.

Adding clean energy is a crucial first step, but the planet needs a full transition, not a partial addition. That means governments and industries must make intentional choices to wind down fossil fuel infrastructure, end new oil and gas exploration, and redirect subsidies away from dirty energy and toward sustainable alternatives.

Without a clear plan to reduce fossil fuel use, renewable energy risks becoming a green illusion — a veneer on top of an unsustainable system. To stay within safe climate limits, the clean energy revolution must come with an expiration date for fossil fuels.

What Will It Take?

Phasing out fossil fuels and replacing them with renewables sounds simple in theory — but the scale of what’s needed is massive. To have a 50% chance to stay within the 1.5°C global warming limit outlined in the Paris Agreement, the world must rapidly cut emissions — by around 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, and to net zero by 2050. That goal becomes even more urgent if we want to have a high (83% or more) probability of success.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 will require nearly tripling the current annual investment in clean energy — from around $1.8 trillion to over $4 trillion per year by 2030.

Solar and wind capacity must grow 15-fold by mid-century, and fossil fuel use must fall (e.g. oil must fall by more than 75%). The energy sector, which is responsible for three-quarters of global emissions, must be almost entirely decarbonized.

In practical terms, this means adding over 1 terawatt of solar and wind capacity every year through 2050, equivalent to 1,000 large power stations built every year.

It also means rapidly expanding supporting infrastructure — like battery storage, smart grids, and transmission lines — to handle the variable nature of renewable energy.

Electrifying transport, heating, and industry is also critical, all while improving energy efficiency to reduce overall demand.

To meet the 1.5°C target with an 83% chance of success, global emissions must stay within a strict carbon budget — estimated at just 100 gigatonnes of CO₂ in 2023. At a rate of 50 gigatonnes emitted each year, in 2025 there's a fair chance we've burnt through that budget already.

So can it be done? Technically, yes. The technologies already exist. But politically and economically, the challenges are steep. Fossil fuel interests remain deeply embedded in our infrastructure, factories, vehicles, food, and every other area of economic activity, and many governments have yet to commit to the scale of transformation required.

Without bold action, we risk locking in catastrophic climate impacts. The window for a just and livable energy future is still open, but it’s closing rapidly.

Are We on Track?

In short: not yet.

Despite record growth in solar, wind, and electric vehicles, the global energy transition is still far off pace. Fossil fuels — coal, oil, and gas — still supply around 80% of the world’s energy needs. In 2024 alone, global CO₂ emissions hit another record high, driven by continued fossil fuel use in power generation, industry, and transport.

Some countries are leading the charge — think Denmark, which plans to run entirely on renewables by 2030, or Chile, which is aggressively phasing out coal. But many others, including major emitters like China, the U.S., and India, are still expanding fossil fuel infrastructure even as they invest in clean energy.

Why the disconnect? Deeply entrenched fossil fuel interests, political short-termism, and a lack of binding global enforcement mechanisms. The tools to succeed are here, but the willpower so far isn’t.

If we continue on the current trajectory, limiting warming to 1.5°C will slip out of reach. It’s time to change course, 20 years ago.

Earth Day: A Prompt To Act and A Mission To Embrace

With more than a billion people participating worldwide, Earth Day serves as a global moment of pause. It’s a chance to raise awareness, start conversations, and inspire action —but what truly matters is what we do the other 364 days of the year.

This year’s theme, renewable energy, hits at the heart of what’s needed. But slogans and events won’t get us to net zero. We need real policy, rapid fossil fuel reductions, and sustained public pressure.

The world's thermo-industrial economy has deep roots that have taken centuries to grow. We have a few years at best to cut them and grow a new tree in their place.

Earth Day gives us a reason to stop and ask: what’s next, and how will we contribute?

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