Earth Day 2021: a day that’s increasingly ours

Earth Day is the largest environmental event on the planet, the only time when all the citizens of the world come together to celebrate the Earth and promote its protection.

For us “Millenials”, children of the 80s, the WWF campaigns, the ecological battles and the large Greenpeace rallies have served as backdrops to our childhood and youth. Personally, I can say that my sensitivity towards environmental issues has grown alongside my conscious growth as a man, only really maturing after the age of 30 and, now, can be seen visibly flowing in my music as well as my edutainment projects. With this diary page I would like to remind us all of how important Earth Day is, and highlight at least 3 moments in my career that have a very specific environmental meaning.

Earth Day was born on April 22, 1970 as a university movement, which later turned into the educational and informative event we all know.

From scientists, to industries, to simple “terrestrials”, the constant challenge is to quickly devise and apply solutions that allow the negative effects of human activities to be eliminated; the recycling of materials, the conservation of natural resources, the ban on the use of harmful chemicals, the end to the destruction of key habitats such as wet-forests/rain-forests and the protection of endangered species.

As a lover of space adventures (and science fiction), one of my favorite astronauts is Paolo Nespoli, who always reiterates that the Earth is “our spaceship” https://www.instagram.com/astro_paolo/: “We see the earth with our soul. In space, four hundred kilometers away, the earth is a small planet among many in the universe. From the sky, it’s obvious that us humans have an excessive environmental impact on our planet. If us humans continue to affect the environmental conditions that allow us to survive, such as atmosphere and temperature, the earth will return to its original form within merely two to three million years, recreating everything we are depleting today. But, we must ask ourselves: will we still exist?”.

Over the years, international participation in Earth Day has grown to over 1 billion people worldwide: this is the affirmation of the “Green Generation”, which looks to a future that is free from fossil fuel energy and in favor of renewable sources, individual responsibility towards sustainable consumption, the development of a green economy and an educational system inspired by environmental issues.

Are you curious enough to dig a little and see how these issues can be addressed by a performer and entertainer like myself?

1) Riciclazio, a 2014 project in the middle schools of Lazio, to sensitize children on how to separate and recycle waste https://www.facebook.com/officialandreacasta/photos/a.10150161703508088/10152279957993088/

2) My participation in the Ice Music Festival and the “Heaven” video shot on the 3100-meter mark of the Adamello mountain, on the summit of the Presena glacier: glaciers are witnesses of time and climate change, much of the awareness that the new generations are acquiring comes from their protection https://youtu.be/BXjqIlpEJjk

3) Expo Milano 2015: you may remember that Expo’s theme was “Feeding the planet, energy for life”, and my experience in conducting various kinds of shows in the Japanese pavilion was very significant: 4 years later, my trip in the land of the Rising Sun allowed me reconnect even more with how the environmental protection challenge really concerns everyone, all over the world, especially after seeing how that country perceives it as fundamental for the future of humanity https://www.facebook.com/officialandreacasta/photos/a.10150161703508088/10153609459793088