Valentine's Day is a celebration of Love and Romance. This weekend, while you're canoodling with your boo or smooching a stranger under the stars, spare a thought for the thing we human beings should love the most: our planet. The natural world has given us all the most romantic things we know - roses, moonlight, even Venice! But sadly, with the progression of climate change, more is at stake than we perhaps realise. If we don't take action, our children's and grandchildren's Valentine's Days could look very different to our own. The extinction of bees will wipe out the world's rose population, our increasingly polluted atmosphere will obscure the moon and Venice will be drowned beneath rising sea levels! Pretty grim, eh? And to be honest, roses will be the least of our concerns if we allow the world's bees to die out!
Anyway, let's not dwell on the negatives, because our fate is not yet sealed! Stephen Fry, Dermot O'Leary, Jarvis Cocker and a few other familiar figures have lent their voices and faces to this short video made by Ridley Scott Associates (RSA), in support of The Climate Coalition's "Show The Love" campaign for Valentine's Day. The moving, 101-second piece encourages us to show our love for the planet and the people who populate it, all to the tune of Shakespeare's beautiful Sonnet 18 - "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"
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Check out the Show The Love website and add your voice to the millions of others calling for substantive action against climate change. Join the campaign to have our demands heard and help our leaders make the difficult decisions necessary for real progress on this issue.
In the words of everyone's favourite Stephen Fry, a keen supporter of Oxfam and passionate advocate for a shift in climate change policy: "Climate change is already happening, yet not a lot is going on when it comes to doing something about it. When you think about losing what you love because of climate change, it’s a no-brainer to want to see things change for good."
