AppleInsider Staff
As it does every year, Apple is celebrating Earth Day with a number of financial and educational initiatives designed to shine a light on environmental issues.
Apple is placing an emphasis on education for Earth Day 2021. The company is, through its various platforms, offering new environmentally-minded content it hopes will serve as a catalyst for change and inform users about climate issues and other key matters.
"As government and business leaders gather to fight climate change and build a better future for our planet, we're reminded that each of us — in communities around the world — is a part of this work," said Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives. "The resources and community initiatives we're sharing today are all about amplifying voices too often unheard, and giving people the tools to learn, engage, and be part of the solution."
Like past years, Apple Watch users can earn a special Earth Day Award and stickers to be used in Messages by completing a 30-minute workout on April 22. Apple notes that the Guides feature in Maps has been updated with new curated content from the National Park Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, Red Tricycle, Culture Trip, FATMAP, and Lonely Planet.
A third installment of Apple's "Challenge for Change" learning series sees the company partner with social justice advocate Dolores Huerta on "Create a Better World Through Environmental Justice." Similar to past "Challenge for Change" activities, the program features a video challenge and companion workbook that encourages students, teachers and parents to engage in conversation about key topics. Today's release concentrates on creating sustainable environments in local neighborhoods and investigating ways to address inequities in the community.
The Apple TV app and Apple Books feature special Earth Day collections, while Apple Podcasts has been updated with an "Earth Won't Wait" collection of content. Apple Music customers can enjoy "earth-inspired music" on the "Sounds of Nature" and new "Mixtape for Mother Earth" playlists, while a "Restore Our Earth Through Music" space features a "peaceful soundscape of the seven continents" with exclusive motion covers.
The App Store is featuring Earth Day-related apps focused on sustainable shopping, food waste reduction, and helping children get involved in consumer awareness. Finally, Apple Arcade highlights "Alba: A Wildlife Adventure," a game that tells the tale of a young girl determined to save her island and its wildlife. Each download will see Apple partner Ecologi plant one tree as part of a reforestation project in Madagascar.
Apple also references ongoing educational outreach efforts that include a focus on Black and Brown communities, girls and young women, and youth activists. Through its Racial Equity and Justice Initiative, Apple continues to work with historically Black colleges and universities and recently collaborated with Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas, on a new environmental justice degree program.
The tech giant in March partnered with the Redford Center on the organization's second annual Stories Challenge, a program that urges youth filmmakers to share their take on environmentalism by producing a video with Clips. Winners of the challenge were announced today.
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7 Comments
Let’s all attach the word “justice” to everything in a feeble attempt to convince others that we’re actually doing something meaningful while lacking the courage to address real problems in this world. Pathetic.
So alien from the company’s roots. It’s a bit much to take in.
Whatever! Justice this, justice that! Word has no meaning anymore. Just a cliche word for marketing now!
All this virtue signaling form Apple and every other environmentally ‘woke’ SJWs. Let’s do this, let’s do that, let’s cancel anyone who disagrees.
How about talking about the one thing that is too taboo to talk about? Talk about the subject science avoids like the plague. Talk about the real problem which is that there are too many humans on this planet. Environmentalists want to eliminate animal protein from our diets, ban the use of pesticides and herbicides, stop the development of GMOs, go completely organic. I mean it’s a big deal in this stupid culture of ours to be ‘organic’. Well, you can’t feed the almost 8 billion humans on this planet by regressing back to 18th century farming methods. You need all things all the woke activists want to ban if you don’t want global starvation, which is already happening.
Today is Earth Day. We must save the earth! The earth doesn’t need saving. It has been around for four billion years and isn’t going anywhere. The earth has experienced at least four major mass extinction events in its history. The earth doesn’t care if we humans go bye bye in a fifth mass extinction. The earth will survive and recover. Only we will be gone. We need to save ourselves if we are going to survive and there are too many humans to do that.
Half of all adult Americans seem to spend much of their time suckling at the teat of the Republican party. So they regurgitate right-wing talking points like “virtue signalling” and “woke.” If you are so sure that there are too many people on earth. Why don’t you do something about it? Starting with yourself. No? Well, you are one of the over-populated. Just as anyone else is. So, I think that you might was well start with yourself.
The truth is that we have been destroying our natural world and and eco-systems and plummeting many species to the brink of extinction a century ago, half a century ago. When the population of earth was half or quarter what it is now. There is never enough to go around, no matter what the population. We currently ‘suffer’ an abundance of food and resources because there is hunger and deprivation everywhere. That is where the principle of ‘justice’ comes in. Land and resources are being taken from indigenous people everywhere. In South and Central America defenders of the rights of indigenous tribes and poor farmers are murdered on a daily basis. With environmental destruction following in their wake. The poor work their fingers to the bone and still go hungry. That’s a question of access to resources and ‘justice.’
GMOs and pesticides have had plenty of time to feed everyone. But, they never seem to. Why not? They are business models, operating within capitalism, crafted by crafty businessmen who build a monopoly to crush all opposition. They ultimately aim to own the intellectual property of the food that we eat. GM corn and the pesticide together work like this: You buy their corn, and use their pesticide (that kills almost every living thing except their corn which was engineered to more-or-less survive the poison) and you make x % profit. If you keep aside the seeds to plant next season, they sue you. If you keep aside non-GM corn they sue you, just in case (true story). They sold us the idea that the market will be free to buy or refuse GM produce, as we wish. Then they bribe politicians to remove the requirement to label GM food. Which means that even if you don’t want to eat the stuff, you can’t tell by reading the package.