Environment

Inspired by a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California—the first Earth Day was held in 1970. Flash-forward 49 years, Earth Day is now celebrated by more than a billion people worldwide, bringing social awareness to some of our most urgent and complex environmental issues, such as climate change.

Bloomberg began investigating renewable energy projects in 2008; our first project, a 1.8 megawatt (MW) solar installation in New Jersey, began providing us with energy in 2012. In 2018, we obtained energy from six on- and off-site solar and wind sites. Our newest installation, a 20MW wind farm in Arkwright, New York, started providing us with energy in October 2018.

PayPal CEO Dan Schulman sat down with Jaxon Love, Global Lead of Environmental Sustainability, to talk about the company's focus on minimizing environmental impact.

It’s Earth Week and we’re very excited for the progress we’re making toward our Ambition 2030 goals. Enabling and inspiring positive impact while creating value for the 5 billion people we touch every day.

Today, Michael R. Bloomberg, the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Climate Action, announced that for the second year in a row he will make up the funding gap left by the United States federal government and provide $5.5 million to the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat to ensure it can continue its critical work empowering countries to meet the goals outlined in the Paris Agreement. Today’s announcement, along with the $4.5 million he contributed last year for the same purpose, brings his support for the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat to a total of $10 million in the past two years.

Alliance Data recognizes that our natural environment is under increasing strain. Climate change and threatened ecosystems and wildlife are creating growing uncertainty for not only businesses, but also society and economies.

When I was thinking about what to write about for Earth Day, my mind was flooded with so many topics. I thought about how sustainability is becoming more and more mainstream, but at the same time the focus is being diverted to so many marginal issues.

50 years ago, the EPA did not exist, which meant there was no Clean Air Act, no Clean Water Act, and no legal regulatory mechanism to protect our environment. This all changed in April 1970 when Senator Gaylord Nelson created Earth Day as a way to force this issue onto the national agenda. Twenty million Americans demonstrated in different U.S. cities, and it worked! In December 1970, Congress authorized the creation of a new federal agency to tackle environmental issues, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Now, each year on April 22, people all around the world come together on Earth Day to celebrate the planet's environment and raise public awareness about pollution.

In celebration of Earth Month, today Green Mountain Energy announced its customers prevented more than 9.9 billion pounds of carbon dioxide in 2018 by choosing cleaner electricity and carbon offset products – 1.3 billion more pounds than in 2017. For perspective, that’s like removing nearly one million cars from roadways or turning lights off in 10.5 million households for a year.