It’s great if today has us bonding over caring about the state of our planet. Or is Earth Day mostly taken up with virtue-signalling brands hopping on the bandwagon? Fifty-four years after the inaugural Earth Day, it seems to have become a Speaker’s Corner of greenwashing. It feels as if companies’ green endeavours comprise 0.2 per cent of their activity, yet make up 98.8 per cent of their storytelling. A quick recap: a coal-powered start to the UK’s first Industrial Revolution in the 1760s started the emissions party. A second Industrial Revolution, powered by electricity and petrol, motored us into the 20th century.
