For Earth Day 2020, Have a Free eBook and Participate in my Q&A!

Tomorrow, April 22, 2020 is the 50^th Anniversary of Earth Day, and the anniversary of signing of the Paris Agreement.  If you have a minute (and if you’re home self-isolating, I know you do), follow this link to read about “Why Earth Day is More Important Than Ever,”:  https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/why-earth-day-more-important-ever

For those of you whose Fortnite game is the only reality you’re interested in, or those who can’t spare the time because they’ve got to finish Schitt’s Creek before being sent back to work, I’ll try to sum it up for you.

2020 is turning out to be big year for us humans.  One that our progeny may look back upon in another fifty years, and say, that’s when my grandparents fought for our species and the planet and saved us, or that’s when everything went south and kept going south until the planet became scorched and barely habitable.  As noted on the UN Environment website: By the end of 2020, global CO2 emissions need to have dropped by 7.6% and continue to fall by 7.6% each year for us to have keep global heating under 1.5oC, according to the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP)Emission Gap Report 2019.

The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says Covid-19 and our refusal to take the actions necessary to preserve our planet are tied together. “Had we been further advanced in meeting the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, we could better face this challenge.”

We’ve all seen Greta Thunberg and her young compatriots take to the streets to protest governments’ failure to take action to alleviate climate damage, but did you know that in 1970 when Earth Day was first established by founder U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, millions of people protested oil spills, smog, and polluted rivers? Their success at pressuring politicians is evident in the number of environment laws passed and environmental government agencies established during that time period.

You can help make Earth Day 2020 a day of significance and action. Even though we cannot congregate together and storm the castle demanding action, we can each take simple actions on our own that together can have a great impact.  Here are some of the suggestions made across the Internet:

1. Get your calendar out, and schedule to join a local group in a cleanup day sometime this summer. Help clean up a park, a river, or an urban green space.
2. Plant a tree in your own backyard.  You can order them online, from nurseries and even Amazon;
3. Donate to an organization that plants trees.  My favorite is the Lebanese Reforestation Initiative, http://www.lri-lb.org which plants trees in the mountains of Lebanon. Others are Plant for the Planet, which lets you pick between projects, and The Billion Tree Campaign;
4. Cut back on your use of plastics, buy reusable food storage containers and put those reusable grocery bags you’ve been collecting in your car so you won’t forget them when you go to the grocery;
5. Next time your light bulbs go out, replace them with cost efficient long-lasting bulbs;
6. Restrict your meat consumption to one meal a day.

There are more of course, these are just a few. For myself, I’ll be cutting back on my plastics, limiting my meat consumption, and concentrating on planting trees and supporting the people who plant them.

Another way you can support the planet is to ditch your paperback book habit and switch to an eReader. To support you in this, I’ve made Ranger Nader & The Sunstruck Phantom eBook free tomorrow and for the rest of the week. Here’s the links and pertinent information:

• Title:  Ranger Nader & The Sunstruck Phantom
• Author: T. K. Read writing as Kam Karem
• Length: 251 pages
• Genre: Syfy-fantasy, with mythological elements a/k/a Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson
• Amazon link:  https://amzn.to/2yMX15A
• Google books link:  https://tinyurl.com/sw6ta3z
• Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TheGuardianChronicles1/
• Goodreads link: https://tinyurl.com/t52fvko 
• Kobo link: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/ranger-nader-the-sunstruck-phantom
• Barnes and Nobles link: https://tinyurl.com/qrlybbt
• Apple ibooks link: https://apple.co/2ywkWtm
• Short Author bio: TK Read works by day as a lawyer and helps people navigate the tricky pathways of our legal system. She has three children, two cats, and one husband. In her spare time she runs, hikes, and reads–a lot. She writes The Guardian Chronicles series under the pen “Kam Karem” in honor of her great-grandmother, Kamila Karem. 
• Book Blurb:  Ranger thinks he’s an ordinary 9th grader. Then he inherits a magic axe, learns he’s the new Guardian of the Forest, and, even more of a stunner, a demigod in training. Eons ago, another demigod, Gilgamesh–yes, THE Gilgamesh from The Epic of Gilgamesh–used the axe to clear the Forest, causing a Great Flood. Now, the evil king has returned to finish what he started. With the help of his sister, his cousins, and the axe of course, Ranger has to stop him. 
• REVIEWS: If Harry Potter were a Lebanese-American teen in the future, descended from Ancient Phoenicians, the plot for “Ranger Nader” would be the perfect blend of these stories. By: BookLifePrize;
• Five Stars! A superbly plotted magical adventure, stylishly and flamboyantly written. The Wishing Shelf
• AWARDS: In 2019-2020, Ranger Nader was Long-Listed by The Green Earth Book Awards AND was a Finalist in NIEA, IAN and Wishing Shelf Book Awards. 

I’ve also signed up the eBook give-away and a Q&A about the book, its origins, themes, plot, and characters as an official Earth Day 2020 event.  If you have a question or two you’d like me to answer, just post it here sometime this week and I be sure and answer it!

For more reading on Earth Day 2020 and all the digital events planned, go here:

www.earthday.org.