Inside the Big Issue: Earth Day 2024

The power and potency of Earth Day has waxed and waned since its inception. Originally conceived at the Unesco conference in 1969 as a means of highlighting growing desires for environmental protection, following a serious oil spill in Santa Barbara, it was launched in 1970.

The global impact of Earth Day and its aim to make us aware of the fragility of what we have around us, and do something about it, reached its zenith in 2015. At the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21), on Earth Day, 175 countries signed a legally binding agreement to limit global warming and to reach net zero on greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of this century.  

In the intervening short period, the idea of doing right for the planet and for the future generations who will inhabit it, has become fodder for the culture wars. It’s easy to marginalise calls that are for renewable energy or within what are categorised as ‘green’ politics as removed from the essential day to day. 

At Big Issue, we see it the other way. Never before has it been so important to push ahead, with renewed intent. It is why our focus this Earth Day is on resources: those we consume, those we’re lacking including, in Britain, essential reservoirs; on energy needs and a need to retrain a workforce to produce them, and on the minerals needed for contemporary living and how we treat the people and nations from which the rest of the world draws them.

It’s broad in scope. We investigate why reservoirs have gone to the dogs; how the quest for valuable resources has led governments and private enterprises to seriously look into mining the moon; the lessons that can be learned from five species of wildlife successfully making a comeback in the UK; the importance of the Climate and Nature Bill; the environmental cost of conflict, and much more. We also meet Aasen Stephenson, the incredible artist who created this week’s cover. Explaining why he uses leaves as his canvas, he says: “leaves are beautiful before I’ve even turned them into art”.

Buy this week’s bumper special edition from your local vendor!

What else is in this week’s issue?

Olly Murs tells us how he was boyband obsessed as a teenager

Olly Murs’ boyband obsession eventually led to the pop stardom he’d long dreamed of. But the reality also exposed fame’s dark side

“My life at 25, it went WHUMP. I would say to my 16-year-old self, hey, being famous is cool, have your wits about you, make sure you have the right people around you, trust your instincts, trust yourself and you’ll be OK,” he said.

What happened when Sadiq Khan answered questions from our vendors and readers

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan says if he saw someone shoplifting baby food or nappies, he’d take out his wallet and pay for the goods.

Visibly moved by the hypothetical scenario, Khan replied. “What upsets me is the tags you have now, on nappies and baby foods because of the issue this is related to. “I’ve not seen somebody, by the way, who’s shoplifted from a supermarket. But in the hypothetical case, I suspect I’d take my wallet out, and I would pay for it.”

How Germany’s more welcoming approach to refugees compares to our own

Though there have been tensions in areas where there’s a large influx of people, Germany remains welcoming to refugees. In fact, it is the third largest refugee-hosting country in the world with 2.5 million (only Iran and Turkey have more), including over 900,000 Ukrainians.