Earth Day 2020

April is Earth Month, a time set aside to focus on the importance of a healthy planet and the actions we must take to make it so. To participate as a community, we come together on April 22nd each year to celebrate Earth Day. Earth Day creates awareness about environmental issues and actionable steps to bring about positive change. This year, 2020, we celebrate Earth Day’s 50th birthday!

The first Earth Day in 1970 was a response to the realization that we had created an environmental crisis. Smog was thick at unhealthy levels, oil spills were occurring much too often and with minimal corrective action, and rivers had become so polluted they were on fire. According to EarthDay.org, on April 22, 1970 an unprecedented 10% of America’s citizens at the time—20 million—took to the streets in protest. 

Some say that Earth Day launched the modern environmental movement. In response to citizens’ cry for action, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was founded on December 2, 1970; the Clean Air Act of 1970 was established; and the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972. Throughout the decade, the EPA went on to define Air Pollution Danger Levels, set National Air Quality Standards, and create the Automobile Pollution Control and Auto Maintenance Regulations among many other beneficial oversights. Today, 50 years later, human population growth and industrial impacts on Earth’s resources persist while scientific evidence supports the critical need for global environmental protections policy, personal actions for stewardship, and maintaining or increasing protections already achieved. Fittingly, 2020’s Earth Day theme is Climate Action.

This year, due to the COVID-19 outbreak, Earth Day gatherings have gone digital.

So, while you’re staying safe by staying home, you can still participate in Earth Day’s 50th anniversary. Visit the Earth Day sites below and others for virtual ways to engage and take action. You can stay safe, help heal our priceless Earth and be a Force For Good. For more visit:

https://www.earthday.org/coronavirus-drives-digital-striking-movement/

https://www.earthday.org/earth-day-2020/

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Using solar energy to power your home can be a great way to both help fight climate change and save money by lowering your electric bill.

An energy source for decades, solar panels can be found on residential and commercial rooftops, city and county roadside signs, in stadiums and on spacecrafts. Solar panels work by taking the sun’s energy and changing it into electricity. Comprised of many individual cells typically made from silicon (a semiconductor most commonly known for its use in computers), the silicon cells, when exposed to sunlight, generate electricity in a process known as the “photovoltaic effect.”

We’ve been experimenting with the photovoltaic process for almost two centuries. The photovoltaic effect—first documented by French physicist Edmond Becquerel in 1839—is the generation of voltage and electric current in a material upon exposure to solar radiation. In most photovoltaic usages the radiation is sunlight and the devices are called solar cells. The sun is basically a nuclear reactor. It releases small bits of energy called photons. These photons then travel 93 million miles from the sun to Earth in under 9 minutes. The sun emits enough photons in one hour to generate enough power to meet current global energy requirements for an entire year. I’d say that’s a great resource.

To harness that resource for our home, a collection of solar panels are installed on the roof. The solar cells absorb the energy from the sunlight and electrons begin to flow and generate an electric current. Electrical wires capture the current from each panel and combine it with the current from the other panels. This initial current is DC, direct current. Since all of the appliances, lights and equipment in our home use AC alternating current to operate, a device called a solar inverter is used to convert the DC current to AC current. The wires then take the collected DC current to the inverter and additional wires take the AC current out of the inverter and into our electrical panel to power our home. If our home produces more power than we need, the surplus energy gets sent back to the power grid and we get credit on our bill. This process of giving power back is called Net Metering.

If you’re interested in adding solar power to your home for cleaner energy and financial benefit, it is recommended that you do some research and consider all of your options. Contacting your power company, getting quotes from multiple installers, and talking with you neighbors, especially those who have installed solar panels, are a few of the things you can do. Good luck and keep your sunny side up!

—Leslie Chew, Force For Good Technical Advisor

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