In years past, Google celebrated Earth Day with cute animations. On April 22, 2022, the search engine’s homepage is more serious and addresses climate change.
Google has accustomed us to cute cartoons in its doodles, which some days replace the search engine logo, to celebrate a personality or an event. But, this Friday April 22, 2022, on the occasion of Earth Day, Google has made another choice: a more serious and serious doodle, which does not lead to the search “Earth Day” when clicked on, but towards “climate change” research.
The homepage of the search engine presents during this day a series of 4 doodles, showing different places of the planet seen on Google Earth:
- The Kiliimanjaro, a mountain located in Tanzania, whose ice cap risks disappearing entirely by 2030-2050;
- The Columbia Glacier, in Alaska, which is experiencing a process of retreat (in 30 years, the part of the glacier that advances in a valley has retreated by more than 20 kilometers);
The images aim to show the impact of climate change in different places on the planet. Each of these scenes must remain for several hours in a row on the Google homepage. Around 11 am, it is the one on the Columbia Glacier that is visible.
In 2022, no cute bee animation in Earth Day doodle
The atmosphere of this doodle is very different from the choices made in previous years. In 2021, Google highlighted a cute cartoon, showing trees planted in their natural habitat. The year before, we could see an animation on bees and pollination. Most of the time, the interactive animations offered by Google for Earth Day highlight the planet and its ecosystems, with a cheerful tone.
The serious shift made by Google in 2022 is part of a broader context. On February 28, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published the second part of its sixth report. The conclusion is implacable: for the IPCC, it is “now or never” for the climate, but “never” is in 3 years. This blunt conclusion clearly signifies the urgency of acting to reduce emissions in all sectors, in order to limit global warming to 1.5°C.