5 Inspirational Earth Day Videos

On April 22nd, it will be Earth Day, the global event that celebrates our world and keeping it in good shape for future generations. People from across the world come together to reduce waste, recycle, plant trees, and promote awareness about the environment and what we can do for it. Of course, they’ll be using social media tools like Facebook and YouTube to spread the message.

Earth Day is still a few days away, so you have plenty of time to get inspired, pitch in and make our planet just a little greener. Today, we’ve compiled five of our favorite videos that inspire us to do more for the environment. If you have more inspirational environmental videos to share, be sure to do so in the comments!

1. Learn about Earth Day

This video, by WatchMojo, discusses the history of Earth Day for those of us who want to get in a little Earth Day education. It also helps us understand why we celebrate Earth Day and why awareness is important.

2. Picturing Excess

Although a bit shocking, Chris Jordan, an artist, photographer, and international eco-ambassador for Earth Day, visualizes our consumption of goods (like how many paper cups we use in a day), but at the end of his talk, challenges us with ways that we can do more for our world.

3. How to Regrow a Rainforest

In this video, biologist Willie Smits explains how his team found a way to regrow a rainforest in Borneo. It shows how, with science, we can repair even the most devastated parts of our planet.

4. Corneille Ewango: A Hero of the Congo Forest

Protecting the environment isn’t an easy task – just ask Corneille Ewango, a botanist at the okapi Wildlife Reserve. He had to face down poachers and soldiers to protect the Congo forests.

5. Trailer: Earth

This video is the trailer for a movie coming out on Earth Day, called Earth. It follows three different animal families (polar bears, elephants, and whales) on their journeys across the planet. It reminds us of how precious life on our planet really is.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, thumb

Tags: earth day, environment

94 Percent of CNN’s Audience Doesn’t Use Twitter

While today might be a huge day in Twitter world with CEO Evan Williams set to appear on Oprah alongside Twitter’s first million follower man, Ashton Kutcher, CNN’s audience apparently still largely has no idea what the service is all about.

Today’s poll on the main page of CNN.com asks “Do you use Twitter?” With better than 80,000 votes cast, only 6 percent of users say “Yes,” while 64 percent say “No,” and 30 percent say “What’s Twitter?” At first glance, these numbers are surprisingly low given the air time the network has devoted to the service, especially in recent days with the Ashton vs CNN battle to reach one million followers.

Of course, for an organization on the mainstream scale of CNN, 6 percent actually translates into a fairly significant number of people – with over 30 million visitors to its site in March according to Compete, 6 percent is around 1.8 million people.

How will the Oprah moment change these numbers? It would be interesting if CNN asks the same question next week.

Tags: ashton kutcher, cnn, evan williams, oprah, twitter