JNF GoNeutral: Your Source For All Things Green

KKL-JNF POSITION PAPER ON THE AGENDA OF THE UNITED NATIONS CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE

2009-12-16T12:20:00.000-08:00

Read About It Here.

And here:

Advanced Environmental Technologies - by the KKL-JNF Delegation in Copenhagen.

COP 15 Update

2009-11-24T12:13:00.000-08:00

KKL-JNF at the United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen

This coming December, KKL-JNF will participate in 'COP 15' - the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties, which is the periodic gathering of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This year, it will convene in Copenhagen, Denmark and by its finish, it is expected that the Copenhagen Protocol will be signed, a follow-up to the agreements of the Kyoto Protocol, which will terminate in 2012. The purpose is to bring about a reduction in global hothouse gas emissions, in order to address the climate crisis that threatens the world. [Read More]

Bostonian Brings Recycling To Negev

2009-07-01T07:14:00.000-07:00

Click here to print article from The Jewish Advocate.

Cap And Trade? Global Warming? Climate Change?

2009-07-01T07:10:00.000-07:00

Click here to read an informative article from the other side.

JNF GoNeutral Featured On GreenProphet.com

2009-06-29T06:48:00.000-07:00

The Jewish National Fund Meets An Inconvenient Truth

Everyone and their mother is doing it. Talking about global warming, that is. Stumbling around the net, we bumped into this YouTube video sponsored by the Jewish National Fund, which links nicely to our last post on tree planting in Israel. If you’re hip to what’s happening in the environment and the world, the video on its new GoNeutral project will seem a bit arcane, but stick with it – it gets into practical tips of reducing your carbon footprint that are good to share. [READ MORE]

Giant NYC billboard shows carbon counter

2009-06-19T12:57:00.000-07:00

Giant NYC billboard shows carbon counter

(AP) - How are those greenhouse gases doing?

New York City residents and visitors will be able to monitor the situation, thanks to a new giant billboard in Manhattan that features a carbon counter. Digital numbers help viewers track the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The 70-foot-high billboard is outside Madison Square Garden and Pennsylvania Station, not far from the Empire State Building. A widget also will be provided to Web sites and blogs around the world. [Read More]

The Body Of Evidence Against Global Warming / Climate Change

2009-06-19T12:37:00.000-07:00

Click here to read an informative article by George Abramson. It presents a different perspective about global warming and climate change. Thanks to Mr. Abramson for putting this together!

Greenhouse gas predictions may be too modest

2009-06-17T08:43:00.000-07:00

Greenhouse gas predictions may be too modest
Israel 21c

Al Gore may have given us a frightening picture of climate change and our future, but now new research suggests that even his predictions could be too modest, after an Israeli scientist discovered that cracks in the earth are emitting unrecorded greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

This is the first time this phenomenon has been observed, and since gases from these cracks have never been included in previous measurements, the new findings could change the model of how science calculates the impact of greenhouse gases on climate change.

The discovery was made by hydrologist and soil physicist, Dr. Noam Weisbrod from Ben Gurion University. While he was studying fractures in the earth in the Negev Desert, he encountered an unusual phenomenon occurring on a daily basis - an unexpectedly quick accumulation of salt within fractures between flood events. The phenomenon was even more pronounced in winter. [READ MORE]

Empire State Building to Become a Model of Energy Efficiency

2009-04-06T11:43:00.000-07:00

Empire State Building to Become a Model of Energy Efficiency

OAKLAND, Calif. -- The Empire State Building Company, efficiency solutions giant Johnson Controls Inc., commercial real estate services leader Jones Lang LaSalle and titans in the battle against global warming, the Clinton Climate Initiative and the Rocky Mountain Institute, are teaming up to transform the New York City icon into a model of energy efficiency.

Representatives of the five partnering organizations announced their $20 million project this morning in New York. Their retrofit of the Empire State Building, where a sweeping renovation has been under way since 2007, is expected to cut energy consumption in the 79-year-old, 103-story building by 38 percent and reduce energy costs by $4.4 million a year. [Read More]

Beer Sheva’s Earth’s Promise Offers an Alternative Spring Break

2009-03-23T12:13:00.000-07:00

Beer Sheva’s Earth’s Promise Offers an Alternative Spring Break

For those of you familiar with the typical American college student spring break, you know that it generally entails transporting an Animal House environment to exotic locations such as Cancun, Fort Lauderdale, the Bahamas, or the Carribean. However there has been a movement in recent years to offer students an alternative to these stereotypical spring breaks, in equally exotic locations - such as central America, eastern Europe, and yes, even Beer Sheva. [READ MORE]

A GoNeutral Love Story

2009-03-20T06:43:00.000-07:00

Buyer’s remorse we’ve heard of, but dater’s remorse?

Brenda and David Jaffe experienced this phenomenon and it had nothing to do with their feelings for each other. No, the chagrin was over the effect their long-distance courtship was having on the environment. Their answer? Well, for starters they got married. And to address their environmental concerns they turned to Jewish National Fund (JNF) and its GoNeutral program.

The two of them, each in their mid 40s, were both divorced with two children apiece. Brenda lived in Dover, DE; David in Havre de Grace, MD. They met on JDate and took a liking to each other. So much so that between them they were soon driving almost 375 miles weekly just to see each other.

“That’s a lot of carbon let loose in the environment,” said David, a physician. “I try to leave as small a footprint as I can in whatever way I can, so I looked for a way to reduce our impact.”

The couple turned to www.jnf.org/goneutral, where, using a calculator, they were able to determine the approximate amount of carbon their cars had emitted during their three-year relationship, and then plant trees in Israel to help offset those emissions.

Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for photosynthesis, releasing oxygen into the air while sequestering, or storing, carbon. About half of the weight of a mature tree is carbon.

With over 100 years of experience as caretaker of the land of Israel, Jewish National Fund has planted more than 240 million trees, transforming over 250,000 acres of arid land into lush green forests. Because of JNF’s forestry expertise and commitment to environmental protection, Israel is one of two countries to leave the 20th century with more trees than it had at the start. The trees already planted by JNF have absorbed an estimated 110 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

“I am a supporter of the State of Israel, environmentally concerned, and Jewishly involved, so this was a nice way to do it all,” said David. The gift was announced at his son Micah’s bar mitzvah last year.

Now happily married and living in one place (Havre de Grace), the couple is indebted to JDate for helping them find each other, and to JNF “for making the courtship easier on the planet,” said Brenda.

Wear Green, Drink Greenly

2009-03-17T11:22:00.000-07:00

Is it greener to drink from cans or bottles? The answer depends on how far you live from the place that produces your drink of choice. We figured this might be appropriate since there is a certain Irish holiday being celebrated today. [Read more]

Tip Of The Week: Buy Used Products

2009-03-12T07:19:00.000-07:00

Buying used items on sites like eBay and Craigslist can help you reduce the emissions associated with manufacturing and decrease the need for new raw materials. Check out this New York Times article below:

As Earth Day Nears, eBay Shows Its Green Side

In a new program centered on Earth Day, eBay is becoming the latest company to promote its green credentials.

EBay is now a green company?

Yes, said Alan Marks, senior vice president for global communications at eBay. Its business model encourages reselling old items rather than throwing them out, and buying used merchandise rather than making new stuff reduces carbon emissions that go along with production.

“We never set out to be a green business,” Mr. Marks said. “We realized it’s intrinsic.” [read more]

Turn Off The Lights

2009-03-05T13:01:00.000-08:00

Earth Hour - an annual event led by World Wildlife Fund, asks cities, business and individuals to turn off their lights for 60 minutes March 28, 2009 at 8:30 PM in a unified call for action on climate change.

You can learn more here: http://www.earthhourus.org/

2nd Annual JNF GoNeutral Shabbat Weekend

2009-02-27T09:12:00.000-08:00

We invite you to participate in the

2nd Annual JNF GoNeutral Shabbat Weekend

March 27-29, 2009

Join synagogues, schools and communities across the country by celebrating Shabbat in an eco-friendly way and studying the connection between Judaism, Israel and the environment.

You will receive a complete JNF GoNeutral Kit, including a re-usable tote-bag, JNF Blue Boxes, an environmental DVD, flyers, maps of Israel, downloadable educational resource guides with specific programming for students, families and congregations and much more.

Click here to learn more or contact us at education@jnf.org or at 212-879-9305 ext 263.

Book Swaps

2009-02-19T07:40:00.001-08:00

Swapping books or visiting the library is the best way to read, while minimizing your toll on the environment. Learn more about book swapping here.

Cellphone Makers Start Offering ‘Green’ Models

2009-02-17T13:19:00.000-08:00

The New York Times reports that cellphones are becoming environmentally friendly:

Another way manufacturers are promoting their environmental credentials is through the applications their phones can run. The Nokia 5630 Xpress Music released last week has a preloaded application called “we:offset” that lets users measure their carbon emissions. There is also a link to a payment form for people who want to pay to offset the pollution they create. [Read More]

How to erase carbon footprints in Israel

2009-02-09T06:35:00.000-08:00

TEL AVIV (JTA) -- Out of a towering mountain of waste near Ben Gurion Airport, methane gas is being captured to create thermal energy for a nearby factory.

In the Negev Desert, solar panels are on loan to Bedouin villages that don’t have electricity, allowing the residents to run refrigerators needed to store medicine for ill children.

These are two of a small but growing wave of Israeli projects to help reduce the country's carbon footprint by curbing carbon dioxide emissions -- part of the global battle to arrest climate change.

Along the way, the projects are helping bolster Israel's energy independence by promoting energy efficiency and homegrown clean technologies. [READ MORE]

JTA's Eco-Jews

2009-02-05T08:23:00.000-08:00

The arrival of Tu B’Shevat, Judaism’s annual ode to the trees, is the perfect time to examine the most significant players and trends in Jewish environmentalism—and offer some hands-on advice for marking the holiday and greening your communities.

Visit http://jta.org/eco-jews/ for more info!

Check Out Our Sponsors Of The Month!

2009-02-04T07:53:00.000-08:00

In April 2007, Jeffery Press launched a new line of eco-friendly “Go-Neutral” papers. In six short months, they have helped 75+ clients convert to a 100% post consumer waste sheet at no additional cost to their fine quality writing grade sheets. Internally, they have rebranded all of their packaging materials to reduce shipping waste by 30%, introduced a variety of green products such as a biodegradable window envelope made from corn, have begun printing with soy inks and are buying 25% of their envelopes converted from wind power.

They offer a variety of specialized production embellishments that help clients make a positive impression with every use. Foil stamping, embossing, laser-engraving (a cost-effective alternative to steel die engraving) and short run custom watermarks (embedded into the page) differentiate their clients from the competition and serve as a reflection of how their clients go about conducting their business. Jeffery Press invests up to 3 hours with all new clients to review existing layouts and to prepare files for our presses. Once a client, they maintain all corporate brands absolutely free with 100% consistency guaranteed and are able to expand those brands with new items on an as requested basis.

Designed to address the needs of a growing population of environmentally-conscious shoppers around the country, BuyGreen.com delivers a wide variety of environmentally-friendly products through its website to provide consumers with ease-of-shopping, broad selection, good prices, and great service. For businesses that wish to employ an Environmental Preferred Purchasing program, BuyGreen.com offers a broad, growing selection of products to meet their needs also. In addition to providing green products for purchase, BuyGreen.com also serves as a resource to help consumers understand why a particular item is ‘green’ and to what extent it is ‘eco-friendly.’

“Given the choice between purchasing and using a traditional product versus an environmentally friendly product, I believe that most people would choose the environmentally friendly product,” stated Allison Huke, President of BuyGreen.com. “However, until now, the ability to find and purchase green products has proven to be challenging for consumers who have not had a one-stop shop for their household needs. Our objective is to not only provide easy and affordable access to the broadest variety of green and ecofriendly products, but to also educate consumers and businesses on the importance of and benefits of going green to both the end users and the environment. For instance, taking the simple step of using a reusable bottle for your beverages eliminates a huge part of our waste stream, reduces potential toxins and can save consumers a lot of money.”

JNF: Brand New Environmental Video On Water

2009-01-04T09:05:00.000-08:00

Check out our brand new WATER video which highlights all of the great environmental work were doing in Israel -- from buiding reservoirs and drip irrigation to water conversation projects and education programs.

Check Out Our Sponsors Of The Month!

2009-01-02T12:08:00.000-08:00

Recycled Office Products - A Full Line Office Supplies Company with 48 Distribution Points in the U.S.A. It includes eco-friendly products at the lowest price.

From the company: Recycling is one of the easiest ways we can help slow climate change and global warming. By recycling at home, we help significantly lower carbon emissions associated with extracting virgin materials and manufacturing those materials into products. Making goods from recycled materials requires less energy and generates less water pollution than manufacturing from virgin materials, and it reduces damage to forests, wetlands, rivers and other places essential to wildlife.

Buygreen.com - A market leader in the sales and distribution of green and eco-friendly products, BuyGreen.com is a website that serves as an educational resource created to inform and educate the population regarding the importance of living in an environmentally and socially responsible manner, and how to transition to a more environmentally-friendly lifestyle. Designed to address the needs of a growing population of environmentally-conscious shoppers around thecountry, BuyGreen.com delivers a wide variety of environmentally-friendly products through its website to provide consumers with ease-of-shopping, broad selection, good prices, and great service.

JNF helps combat desertification - JPost Article

2008-12-29T13:38:00.000-08:00

Many countries view Israel as a professional authority on central ecological issues, of which the primary ones are combating desertification and forest development. One only has to listen to the experts who gathered in Israel for an international seminar on combating desertification and Afforestation in arid zones to comprehend the degree of success Israel has had in this field and the true needs of the numerous countries that are struggling with desertification. [read more]

Israel presents eucalyptus researchers with tree-saving solution

2008-12-09T07:26:00.000-08:00

Israel presents eucalyptus researchers with tree-saving solution

Love them or hate them, since they were brought to the West in 1770, eucalyptus trees have played an important part in modern forestation. On the plus side, they grow quickly, give plenty of shade and dry the swamps; on the minus side, they're water-suckers that uproot paths and sidewalks. Nonetheless, the hardy camaldulensis "Red Gum" strain of eucalyptus is a staple component not just in landscaping and forestry but also industry, where it is a reliable, inexpensive source of wood, cellulose for paper, and oils used to produce cleaning and deodorizing products, food supplements; (such as cough drops), even mosquito repellant.

This resource has been threatened in recent years by a tiny 1mm long parasite, the gall wasp or cynipidae, whose reproductive process invades plants, causing them to form a variety of strangely shaped, colored "galls" that make the leaves drop off and leave trees ravaged and bare.

China, India, Thailand, Brazil, Central and South Africa, and the Mediterranean basin including Israel have all been infested by gall wasps. And the plague is spreading: just last month, at a course on how Israel is fighting the pest - and winning - word came in that cynipidae were identified in Florida and are likely to reach California shortly.

The course, jointly organized by the KKL-JNF Forestry and Development Department and the Department of Entomology of the Agricultural Research Organization (ARO, also known as the Volcani Institute), was held in response to requests from several countries for information to save their commercial eucalyptus groves.

Finding a natural enemy

Eucalyptus researchers and commercial growers from around the world attended a training course on eucalyptus forestry and agro-forestry with an emphasis on two invasive gall wasps and their natural enemies.

"There are 15,000 hectares of eucalyptus in Israel," says conference co-organizer David Brand, head of the JNF Department of Forestry and Development. "For the sake of comparison, in China there are hundreds of millions of hectares which are used to supply the paper industry. Thailand plants 100 million saplings every year, China plants half a billion every year, in Africa eucalyptus is used by local farmers for fuel. And we weren't aware of it but in India, eucalyptus is a source of income for hundreds of thousands of private farmers whose livelihood is the paper industry. Yet despite our small size, they told us, 'You in Israel are rescuing us.'"

Israel entered the gall wasp fray seven years ago after massive damage was caused to Israel's eucalyptus trees. "JNF and ARO identified the problem early and initiated an international project to find a natural enemy of these wasps," Brand tells ISRAEL21c.

After an exhaustive two-year search, a team of JNF-funded scientists finally found a biological adversary in Northern Australia, another 1mm long wasp called closterocerus. "We brought them to Israel, quarantined them, and after making sure this natural enemy only harmed cynipidae, we let them loose," says Brand.

The Israeli solution has a powerful booster in research partner Dr. John La Salle: head of the Australian National Insect Collection at CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. When the gall wasp reached Florida, he was contacted by the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service, and he advised them to turn to Israel for help.

November's training course familiarized participants with management strategies concerning eucalyptus cultivation and presented the most up-to-date uses of eucalyptus trees: propagation and use of eucalyptus in nurseries for arid land afforestation and management; disposal of wastewater through irrigation of eucalyptus plantations; and eucalyptus biotechnology.

The group was also given a presentation by CBD Technologies, part of Futuragene, an Israel-US bio-engineering firm that has developed high-performing transgenic eucalyptus for the plantation forest industry that is resistant to cynipidae.

Giving the predators free of charge

"They were stunned by our activity here in Israel. We took them to the north and the south, to see our fight against desertification, commercial forestation, water recycling for irrigation and eucalyptus to provide an ongoing supply of nectar and pollen for bees grazing in seasons where there is no fruit tree flowering," says Brand.

There are 700 types of eucalyptus in Israel, he adds, and JNF distributes 200,000 saplings a year free of charge for forestation and bee grazing.

Israel is reproducing parasites to eradicate gall wasp at ARO, offering these to other countries free-of-charge, as well as research support. At the end of the course, scientists from China, India and Italy were entrusted with sealed packages containing eucalyptus branches infested with both cynipidae and eggs of two varieties of closterocerus. More requests for such packages will come, believes Brand.

"There were participants from China, India, Kenya, Uganda, Italy, Brazil, Turkey, Australia and South Africa, where the pests haven't invaded yet, but authorities are convinced they're not long in coming. The same it true for Kenya; they want to be prepared in advance."

Check Out Our Sponsors Of The Month!

2008-11-25T09:26:00.000-08:00

Each month, we'll be brining you information about environmentally friendly businesses that can be found in our Eco-Directory. Please use this as a resouce for finding out about company's that are doing their part to help the planet.

KATAN ADVENTURES

Katan Adventures provides the very best in eco-minded, outdoor adventure travel for Jews and Friends of the Jew in their 20s and 30s to the most exciting destinations worldwide. All Katan Adventures reflect the fundamental value of tikkun olam. As a result, Katan Adventures has committed itself to sustainable travel practices; what it likes to call, "EcoloJEWcal" travel. Furthermore, Katan Adventures is one of the only adventure travel providers to automatically offset all carbon omissions from its participants' ground and air transportation through its partnership with TerraPass. For more information on Katan Adventures' surfing, rafting, hiking, mountain biking and skiing trips around the world as well as its EcoloJEWcal way of traveling, please visit their website.

TIKKUN OLAM, LAC

Tikkun Olam, LAC, is dedicated to creating specialty gift bags that are environmentally responsible. Our company, meaning Repair the World in Hebrew, uses the utmost care when researching, choosing, and creating products to include in our products. Tikkun Olam's goal is to provide our customers with a product that is not only unique and daz zling, but also boasts tree-free, organic, and renewable materials. We collaborate with Fair Trade companies for a number of our custom-made products, thus helping to provide steady wages to skilled workers around the world. Informational inserts, unique to the theme of each gift bag, provide fresh and inventive perspectives on how we can consciously construct more environmentally responsible lives. In addition, a percentage of all sales profits are regularly donated to several charities with whom we are affiliated.

It is the responsibility of us all to protect and preserve our world, a sentiment exemplified by Baal Tashchit from the Book of Deuteronomy. One of Tikkun Olam's ongoing goals is to further reduce our company's carbon footprint. The use of tree-free and recycled products, the installation of solar panels on two of our office locations, and simply giving more than we take, are some of the "steps" we are making to do so. Also the use of recycled products, buying food from local organic farmers and composting our waste. Driving a hybrid car and encouraging my daughter's school to become more "green"

Tikkun Olam offers outstanding and uncommon products that bring joy to recipients while spreading the message of love, awareness, and charity.

National Clean Up Day Bill Approved - Clean Up Israel 2008

2008-11-10T09:38:00.000-08:00

Click here to see where some of the money collected from GoNeutral is going.

Israel Builds It's First Eco-Friendly Town

2008-10-23T09:41:00.000-07:00

Israel builds its first 'eco-friendly' town

It's one thing to adopt environmentally conscious behavior, such as recycling, taking public transportation, and saving water or electricity. But that's not enough for the future residents of the now developing community of Nurit. They plan to live green.

That's because the Mt. Gilboa town of Nurit is set to be the first planned, eco-friendly community in Israel, with infrastructure and services designed not just to encourage, but to actually enforce environmentally responsible behavior. If you're planning on living in Nurit, says Danny Atar, chairman of the Gilboa Regional Council, you're by definition willing to go out of your way to save water, avoid excess waste, and in general reduce your carbon footprint. "Otherwise, Nurit is not for you," he says.

The idea for Nurit stemmed from discussions conducted by Gilboa Regional Council officials nearly a decade ago, as they were seeking to build tourism in the area, as well as comply with new government requirements to introduce environmentally responsible educational programs and activities.

"We are also considering putting up a new town to attract more residents here from the center of the country, and the whole project just sort of made sense," Atar tells ISRAEL21c. "Thus was Nurit born."

First homes ready in a year

And, after intense study and consultations with environmental experts around the world, the town is ready for prime time; work has begun on infrastructure, and the first 100 homes will be ready next year. By 2012, there will be 400 families living in Nurit, Atar says.

Located on Mt. Gilboa itself, Nurit will take advantage of the mountain's wind and sun to generate power, and will install dozens of wind turbines and photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, enough to provide electricity for all the public buildings in Nurit - and then some.

"We recently got approved for a program by the Israel Electric Company, where residents and public buildings will be able to mount solar PV units on their roofs and sell the electricity to the IEC," says Atar.

"Together with turbines to generate electricity from wind, we expect that the electricity we generate will be enough to light most of the schools, offices, streetlights, and park lights in Nurit - as well as save homeowners money on their energy bill, since they can get credits for the power their roof PV systems generate that they don't use, selling it back to the IEC." Atar says.

The regional council has a program that provides loans for residents to buy and install the PV panel setup, or residents can design the systems into their construction plans, he adds.

Trees as cooling canopy Residents will also be asked to grow tall, leafy trees around their homes, creating a natural "cooling canopy" that will help cut down on the need for artificial cooling and heating systems, "saving electricity and reducing pollutants in the atmosphere," Atar says. And, residents will be asked to build their homes using effective insulation systems, to further reduce the need for air conditioners or heaters. "We hope to be able to limit the use of artificial heating and cooling solutions to the hottest or coldest days of the year," Atar says.

Nurit residents will be required to save water - naturally. "In theory, Israel gets more than enough rainfall, but much of the rain is lost to evaporation or runs off to the sea," Atar says. "We are requiring all residents to build rain collection systems and mini-reservoirs to store rainwater. The water will then be funneled into the town reservoir, allowing us to cut down significantly on our use of water from Mekorot, which is drawn from either the Kinneret or Israel's underground aquifers."

With the Kinneret [the Sea of Galilee] at an all time low, and Israel scrambling to build desalination plants to make up for projected water shortages, Nurit's efforts could serve as a model for other, non eco-friendly communities as well.

Saving rainwater is important, but saving "gray water" is even more important, say many environmentalists - and Nurit is requiring all homeowners to install a gray water collection system, which will store waster water from dishwashing, bathing, and other non-sewage ("black water") sources.

The storage of gray water entails building a separate drainage system, which funnels the water into a tank - and is then used for a variety of purposes, such as watering gardens, decorative fountains, etc. "No one in Nurit will be permitted to use fresh water to water his or her lawn," Atar says. "Residents will use gray water to water their lawns and run watering systems for plants or orchards."

Unfortunately, Nurit won't be able to encourage its residents to trade in their cars for commuting by train, because there is no Israel Railways line in the area, at least for now. But the town will have a complete complement of local and inter-city bus service for those who need to travel. Actually, it is expected that most of Nurit's residents will work in the area, either at home businesses, in tourist-oriented services such as bed and breakfasts or restaurants, or at one of the industrial zones in the area.

"Many of the homes have been zoned for use as businesses as well, so a resident can operate a small business in their backyard," Atar says. "There is an industrial zone three minutes out of town, mostly with light manufacturing or agriculture industry allied services. And tourism in this region is expected to skyrocket when regular horse racing begins at the Afula Hippodrome, only a few minutes from here," he adds.

Nurit is open to anyone willing to live by the town's eco-friendly ethos - and many Israelis are willing, apparently, because there is already a long waiting list for lots.

"We've already got about 700 families who have made a deposit to get into the lottery for a chance to buy a plot, with more signing up all the time," Atar says. "The lots, which will have extensive infrastructure to support the gray water drainage and reservoirs system, cost $120,000 to $150,000 - not particularly high for people coming from the center of the country, where many of the Nurit hopefuls come from, and certainly not expensive, when you consider the cost of the infrastructure."

Most applicants are from big cities - Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and its suburbs. A few people from the kibbutzim in the area have signed up as well, but the majority are new to the lower Galilee. Which already makes Nurit a success, as far as Atar is concerned. "This is a beautiful part of the country to live in, and thanks to Nurit, hundreds of families are going to get the opportunity to find out just how beautiful it really is," Atar says.

Down on the eco-farm: Organic produce is the star of young adult dinner in Petaluma

2008-10-23T09:40:00.000-07:00

Down on the eco-farm: Organic produce is the star of young adult dinner in Petaluma

As David Retsky guided more than 100 people along the perimeter of County Line Harvest, his 28-acre farm in Petaluma, he offered up some simple instructions: Touch and taste anything.

And, of course, they did.

Participants at the Eco-Farm Dinner on Sept. 21 munched on sprigs of cilantro and devoured all kinds of lettuce for some light appetizers before sitting down to a family-style, seven-course vegetarian dinner made from the organic produce they sampled.

"I really wanted everyone to come out and walk the land," Retsky said. "I wanted them to touch and taste, and breathe the air. There is so much more to learn out here than I could ever teach."

The Jewish National Fund, Bay Area Tribe and Birthright Israel sponsored the event to help young adults make the connection between how crops are harvested and how they make their way to the farmers market, the local supermarket and the dinner table.

Sherri Morr, regional director of JNF, thought of the idea for the Eco-Farm Dinner nearly three years ago, about the same time Retsky, her nephew, started farming in Petaluma. She deemed the event a success.

"It was great to spend time on a farm and get out of the city," she said. "This was an opportunity to educate about Israel and create social connections."

While walking around the farm, people shouted out questions, dug their hands into the soil and sloshed in hidden, muddy puddles.

The tour ended with an uphill trek back to dry land where round tables decorated with votive candles and seasonal squash welcomed the group for dinner.

Heaping portions of polenta with Red Russian kale and smoked tomato sauce, roasted Chioggia beets with baby Walla Walla onions and goat cheese, and Panzanella grilled bread salad with baby fennel were served alongside other unique salads. Fresh coffee and grilled pound cake topped with balsamic strawberries and crème fraiche rounded out the menu.

"It's exciting to be a part of the emerging Jewish food movement," said Roni Ben-David, 28, of San Francisco. "It starts with realizing that food tastes better when it's local and seasonal. As Jews, we take pleasure in our food and eat mindfully."

In addition to the farm tour and dinner, two students -- an Israeli woman and a Jordanian man -- from the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Israel discussed with the crowd how the school also promotes dialogue and coexistence.

"When I came to the institute to study the environment, I really wasn't ready to deal with coexistence," said Hadas Kammon, who studied at the Arava Institute as an undergraduate in Israel.

"But we can't ignore this issue. It was a challenging experience, but I learned that I have to recognize another person's story."

After the speakers, guests had the rest of the evening to mingle, taste wine from Israel and drink He'Brew beer before buses brought them back to San Francisco.

"I'd like to see other people come out and support the farm family," Retsky said.

"Come cook meals here and enjoy the land. It's another way of getting involved."

JNF, El Salvador Style

2008-10-20T12:13:00.000-07:00

JNF, El Salvador style
Central American country decides to adopt Israeli model for redemption of land, environment protection
Itamar Eichner YNET

The El Salvador authorities have decided to adopt the Israeli model of the Jewish National Fund for the redemption of land and protecting the environment.

In meeting held several months ago between Israeli Ambassador to San Salvador Mati Cohen and El Salvador's foreign and environment ministers, Cohen learned of their desire to invest resources in the promotion environmental education in cooperation with the El Salvadorian immigrants' community living in the United States.

The Israeli envoy told the officials about the JNF organization and the affinity it creates between the Diaspora Jews and the State of Israel, as well as its relation to the redemption of land and environment protection for more than 100 years.

Cohen suggested that the two ministers try and duplicate the JNF model and implement it in El Salvador, and recruited JNF representative in Argentina, Michael Adari, to help with the mission.

A first-of-its-kind seminar was held by El Salvador's Foreign Ministry several days ago, attended by senior officials from the Foreign, Agriculture, Education and Environment Protection ministries, who learned about the JNF principles and ways to implement them in the central American country.

Rabbi Yerahmiel Barylka, director of the KKL-JNF's Latin-American Desk, traveled to El Salvador to take part in the seminar.

Pint-Size Eco-Police, Making Parents Proud and Sometimes Crazy ...

2008-10-18T12:14:00.000-07:00

Pint-Size Eco-Police, Making Parents Proud and Sometimes Crazy
New York Times
10/10/08

Sometimes, Jennifer Ross feels she cannot make a move at home without inviting the scorn of her daughters, 10-year-old Grace and 7-year-old Eliza. The Acura MDX she drives? A flagrant polluter. The bath at night to help her relax? A wasteful indulgence. The reusable shopping bags she forgot, again? Tsk, tsk.

"I have very, very environmentally conscious children -- more so than me, I'm embarrassed to say," said Ms. Ross, a social worker in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. "They're on my case about getting a hybrid car. They want me to replace all the light bulbs in the house with energy-saving bulbs."

Ms. Ross's children are part of what experts say is a growing army of "eco-kids" -- steeped in environmentalism at school, in houses of worship, through scouting and even via popular culture -- who try to hold their parents accountable at home. Amid their pride in their children's zeal for all things green, the grown-ups sometimes end up feeling like scofflaws under the watchful eye of the pint-size eco-police, whose demands grow ever greater, and more expensive.

They pore over garbage bins in search of errant recyclables. They lobby for solar panels. And, in a generational about-face, they turn off the lights after their parents leave empty rooms.

"Kids have really turned into the little conscience sitting in the back seat," said Julia Bovey, a spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a leading environmental group that recently worked with Nickelodeon on a series of public service announcements and other programming called "Big Green Help."

"One of the fascinating things about children is that they don't separate what you are doing from what you should be doing," Ms. Bovey said. "Here's this information about how we can help the environment, and kids are not able to rationalize it away the way that adults do."

In Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, Jan Schmidt, a stay-at-home mother, and Mark Goetz, a professor of furniture design, have watched, amazed, as their 4-year-old son chastises them for letting the water run while they brush their teeth. "He'll come over and turn it off and say, 'Every day is Earth Day,' " Ms. Schmidt said. "He learned it at school."

Their older child, 12-year-old Elly, extols the clothesline in her bedroom the way other girls her age might show off a new beanbag chair. An aspiring marine biologist, Elly raised $250 last year to protect coral reefs by selling handmade earrings at school. And she was a big factor in the family's decision to hang on to their current car instead of buying a bigger one.

"With Elly, there's sort of an unspoken thing about not buying an S.U.V.," Ms. Schmidt said.

Elly elaborated: "I wouldn't be happy if they bought an S.U.V. because they're not fuel efficient, and they pollute more than other cars."

They learn this stuff everywhere. In the summer, the Pixar film "Wall-E" served up an ecological parable of a planet so punished that it had to be abandoned. The Girl Scouts recently added patches including "Environmental Health," "Get With the Land," "Earth Pact" and "Water Drop." Scholastic, the global children's publishing, education and media company, has teamed up with the American Museum of Natural History to create Web sites and magazines about climate change and other environmental issues.

A Scholastic message board where children share eco-friendly tips, called Save the Planet, has had three million page views in the past year.

And school districts across the country are adding lessons on the environment to their curriculums in many subject areas, as well as enforcing idle-free zones in school driveways, switching to plant-based cleaners, doing away with pesticides and, in some places, installing solar panels.

In the Byram Hills School District in Armonk, N.Y., middle-school teachers plan to roll out new material related to the environment starting in January.

"We're trying to integrate it into anything where it naturally fits," said Jackie Taylor, the district's superintendent. "It might be in a math lesson. How much water are you really using? How can you tell? Teachers look for avenues in almost everything they teach."

Katie Ginsberg, co-founder and executive director of the Children's Environmental Literacy Foundation, a nonprofit group in Chappaqua, N.Y., has trained hundreds of teachers from Massachusetts to New Jersey in issues of sustainability and environmental science. More than 1,500 students attended the group's annual expo, Students for a Sustainable Future, at Pace University this spring.

"In 2002, the environmental education children were getting was very isolated," Ms. Ginsberg said. "It was emphasized mainly on Earth Day and an occasional field trip to a nature center. We started looking for different paradigms of environmental education around the world."

But the green initiatives in schools have not been universally embraced. Some critics say such lessons are a distraction as districts struggle to meet minimum standards on math and reading tests. Others say turning children into stewards of the environment is an inappropriate use of taxpayer money.

And even parents who are impressed by their children's commitment to remake the world can also sometimes feel, well, badgered. Paul Wyckoff, a writer in Hunterdon County, N.J., said his 15-year-old son, Will, yells at him for "leaving the car idling for a few seconds in the driveway." He has even taken to turning off nightlights to save energy.

"My philosophy is get the big stuff," Mr. Wyckoff said. "I think he takes it too far. But I'm proud of him. I think he'll moderate with age."

Given that children often lack a sense of social boundaries, things can get sticky when their haranguing extends beyond the home. Liz DiVittorio, of Raleigh, N.C., a mother of three, recalled walking with her 10-year-old son, Michael, this summer after a rainstorm and seeing a neighbor running his sprinkler.

"My son looked at him and said, 'Why are you watering your lawn? It just rained,' " said Ms. DiVittorio, who works for a software company. "I sat there and cringed."

For middle schoolers, money is fairly abstract -- and therefore no object. Sarah Hodder and Dr. Peter Allen of Chappaqua have three boys, the oldest of whom, Charles, 10, is itching to go solar.

"Any time we pass a house with solar panels, he says, 'Why can't we do that?' " said Ms. Hodder, co-chairwoman of the Roaring Brook Elementary School Environmental Committee. "I always say, 'Talk to Daddy.' A lot of these steps are cost-prohibitive, although ultimately in the long run they're good for the environment and the wallet."

Ms. Hodder said that in the short term, she and her husband are making more modest changes, with the children's support, like turning down the heat, composting, walking to school and "not buying so much stuff." But as enthusiastic as Ms. Hodder is about protecting the environment, the children seize on her lapses, as when Peapod delivers the groceries in plastic bags.

"They'll say, 'Mom, I thought we weren't supposed to use plastic bags,' " she said.

Douglas and Alison Distefano, of Rumson, N.J., who have two children, dubbed their fifth grader, Olivia, "the recycling militant general."

"For us, Earth Day is a reason to go outside," said Mr. Distefano, an executive with Soltage, a solar energy company. "But for them it's a religious holiday."

Ann Tedesco, a psychologist in Armonk, said her daughter Celeste, 9, "is always policing the regular garbage bins to make sure we're not throwing paper away in there," adding: "She particularly enjoys catching her older sister."

Dr. Tedesco's husband, Rick Alimonti, a lawyer, recalled how their son, Lucas, 7, kept reminding him to turn off the engine while waiting outside school.

"I was only idling for a minute, and I explained that it uses more gas and pollutes the atmosphere more to turn the engine off and back on again," he said. "I looked it up afterward to make sure I wasn't exaggerating."

He was in the clear: Several blogs asserted that idling for a minute or less is preferable to shutting off and restarting the engine.

Jim Joseph Foundation Awards JNF $50,000 Grant for Environmental Fellowship

2008-09-17T12:16:00.000-07:00

September 16, 2008 -- New York, NY -- Jewish National Fund (JNF) is proud to announce that the Jim Joseph Foundation has awarded a $50,000 grant to the organization for the JNF/Bronfman Center Jewish Environmental Fellowship at NYU.

Twenty students will participate in the fellowship, which will focus on environmental sustainability issues and their connection to Jewish values and tradition. By examining Jewish content through an environmental lens and incorporating examples of Israeli environmental leadership, the program aims to engage unaffiliated Jewish students who might not otherwise be interested in existing Jewish programming. The goal is to inspire them to make changes in their personal lives as well as to take action in the Jewish community and in the broader campus community at NYU.

"The Jim Joseph Foundation is proud to be supporting the development of the Jewish Environmental Fellowship program and the unique partnership between Jewish National Fund and the NYU Bronfman Center," said Dvora Joseph, a Jim Joseph Foundation board member.

"We believe that this multi-faceted approach to Jewish learning which allows students to explore an important topic through a combination of traditional Jewish study, interaction with peers and community leaders, hands-on service to our environment, and self-exploration will be both effective and impactful for the student participants."

The Jim Joseph Foundation, established in 2006, is committed to a sustained program of grant-making in pursuit of a vision that leads to ever-increasing numbers of young Jews engaged in ongoing Jewish learning and choosing to live vibrant Jewish lives. The Foundation manages close to one billion dollars, using all of its resources to foster compelling, effective Jewish learning for young Jews in the United States.

"We are delighted to partner with the Jim Joseph Foundation and welcome them into the JNF educational family to benefit the Jewish students of NYU," said Rabbi Eric Lankin, D.Min., Chief of Institutional Advancement and Education at JNF. "This program will play an important role in our development of a strategic plan for engaging college students across the country on the critical environmental challenge facing our world and Israel's global environmental leadership through JNF."

Throughout the year, students will meet to discuss environmental issues such as energy, water, food production, waste and recycling, and building and landscaping. Each topic will be studied from an environmental perspective, by learning about the science and innovation relating to the subject; a Jewish perspective, by examining modern and ancient texts; and by looking at case studies of New York City and Israel. Sessions will be devoted to learning and meeting with environmental experts as well as work in the field, including on-site visits, volunteering, and seeing environmental activism in action. Conversations about social justice and personal and communal responsibility will be incorporated throughout.

In March, students will spend one week in Israel volunteering on an environmental kibbutz as part of JNF's Alternative Spring Break, a hands-on transformational Jewish educational program. They will study environmental issues and solutions in living laboratories and participate in community service projects. During the second semester of the fellowship, students will work on a project of their choice that incorporates what they have learned and engages the NYU community.

"We at the Bronfman Center are extremely excited to work with our partners at JNF as well as NYU students to plan and host the JNF/Bronfman Green Fellowship," said Sam Krentzman, Special Projects Coordinator. "The Bronfman Center strives institutionally to combine Jewish learning with a sophisticated approach to understanding important contemporary issues. The fellowship will enable us to share Judaism's deep teachings about environmental and communal responsibility while taking action and relating those teachings to realities faced in New York City and in Israel. We are extraordinarily grateful to the Jim Joseph Foundation and to JNF for making this groundbreaking experience possible for our students."

For more information, contact Rebecca Kahn at 212-879-9305 ext. 248 or rkahn@jnf.org.

Can environmental activism unite Israel, Diaspora?

2008-04-15T12:18:00.000-07:00

Can environmental activism unite Israel, Diaspora?
Jpost.com

Environmental activism could be the "special interest" that unites the Jewish world and reignites Jewish philanthropy, according to an unpublished report commissioned by UJA-NY and the CRB Foundation and obtained by The Jerusalem Post.

Not only could Israel and the Diaspora rally around the environment, but the issue would also help bring in younger Jews who are rapidly becoming more and more disenchanted with affiliated Judaism, according to the report.

While a senior development official at the Jewish Agency agreed on the environment's fund-raising potential, that potential has yet to be realized, the American Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel's co-chairman, Leon Sokol, told the Post on Wednesday.

The report, authored by Jewish Council for Public Affairs Senior Associate Executive Director Martin J. Raffel late last year, argued that the environment was becoming an increasingly attractive issue for a variety of reasons.

"First, the interest in environmentalism and the challenge of global warming, especially in the wake of [former US vice president] Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth, have become public affairs concerns of the first order. Reliance on oil and other fossil fuels causes not only concern about the health of our environment, but also pours huge amounts of money into the coffers of Middle Eastern countries, such as Iran, that pose threats to Israeli, US and global security interests," Raffel wrote.

Israel's environmental NGOs had also gotten stronger over the last decade and were now ready to face the country's environmental challenges, according to Raffel. Moreover, the local climate had helped give rise to a host of green technologies potentially marketable all over the world, he wrote.

To recapture the attention of younger Jews, Raffel argued, you needed to engage them.

"Taglit and other programs directed toward the younger generation have resulted in a large new audience potentially hungry for a more substantive engagement with Israel and with Jews in other parts of the world. The environment, not surprisingly because it will be their world to inherit, is one of the areas of high interest to members of this generation," he wrote.

Raffel pointed to a convergence of interest among US and Israeli philanthropists, President Shimon Peres, and Israeli and American activists surrounding the environment. According to Raffel, it is both an area where people are beginning to be willing to donate money and where activists "hunger" for contacts with their counterparts across the sea.

However, Sokol, who heads SPNI's American development arm, hasn't found it easier to raise money.

"There are many worthwhile charitable organizations competing in the US for donations. We have to make the case to the people interested in Israel and interested in the environment," he said during a visit here with the American Society for the Protection of Nature executive board. "We're hoping that as awareness of environmental issues and their global interconnection grows, that will help us," he told the Post.

Sokol and the board are here this week to improve coordination with SPNI. "We are learning what the priorities are for SPNI so we can coordinate our fund-raising efforts," he said.

"The most serious observation so far is the lack of rain in the Kinneret area and what that is going to mean in terms of a water shortage going into the summer," he said, "I think SPNI can play a major role in water conservation campaigns."

"We can help out by taking an inventory of water conservation programs that were successful in the States and fit Israel best, and making that information available in Israel," he added.

Jeff Kaye, director-general of the Jewish Agency's Department of Resource Development and Public Affairs, told the Post that the Agency's sole foray into fund-raising for an environment project "was a very good experience."

"We developed the solar energy park in Nitzana. There was a very enthusiastic response," he said.

Kaye also felt the potential for environmental giving was high. "Donors respond to the urgency of matters first. Emergency situations of basic safety, security, health issues are usually on top. The need to save a life comes before everything else," he said.

"Next comes those looking to see long-term impact. For the Jewish Agency, that is often about educational opportunities, closing gaps, for instance on the periphery," he continued.

Culture and the arts, and religious-giving rounded out the list, according to Kaye.

"So long as globally, the environment was a fringe issue, it was parallel to arts and science. As the planet becomes more affected by lack of attention to the environment and the environment is beginning to affect people's health and impact on people's lives," its attraction as an issue rises, Kaye noted in line with Raffel's conclusions.

Michael Jankelowitz, spokesman for the Jewish Agency, said that North American Jewish Federations provided most of the donations to Israel.

Total charitable donations to the Israeli public and private sectors from local federations and others abroad totaled almost $2 billion a year, according to Bank of Israel figures, Jankelowitz said.

Regarding the environment, he said that small organizations such as SPNI faced an uphill battle obtaining donations overseas. People give to big names and large institutions, he said. The Jewish National Fund had been very successful rebranding itself as not just about planting trees, he added.

Sokol explained how his organization raised money for SPNI's projects.

"We have about 2,500 active members, and about 6,500 donors, so we have a base of people with whom we communicate on a regular basis. We send out a newsletter four times a year, and we have a Web site. We also run ads in various magazines.

"People who visit Israel and learn about SPNI when they visit here then become members when they return," Sokol said. Membership is $54 a year for a family.

Some of the donations are earmarked for specific projects. For example, one major donation improved the Jerusalem Bird Observatory situated near the Knesset, to make it more hospitable for migrating birds. ASPNI had also raised money for the Hula Valley birding center, Sokol said.

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2008-04-03T08:28:00.000-07:00

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An Ecological Mission - Israel learns that going green isn't just for the birds

2008-03-29T08:29:00.000-07:00

An Ecological Mission : Israel learns that going green isn't just for the birds

As the sun dips behind the Ramat Naftali Mountain range, beginning to draw with it what's left of the light in the Upper Galilee, we set off to see the cranes. Our group, mostly journalists from around the world, are being led out into the middle of the broad Hula Valley by the steady pull of a battered old tractor. We sit behind it, in what has been called a "camouflaged" vehicle. Rounded like a trailer, it's longer than it's wide, lined with wooden benches and open on one side.

The young man driving the tractor explains that the cranes won't panic when they see this vehicle, as they've grown accustomed to farm equipment. But he does ask us to turn off our cell phones and refrain from using flashes on our cameras.

When we first entered the valley, rocking gently over the rutted, close-cropped terrain, we heard the sound of the cranes, like some distant, plaintive cry. As we begin inching closer, and are, at last, swung effortlessly into place by our guide, we're not only faced with a mass of large, grayish-white birds but with their trumpeting -- persistent, near-deafening, magical.

The Golan Heights stand before us, darkening in the sunset. Every few minutes, off in the distance to our right, large swaths of birds bound up and, like black streamers, blanket the sky. These newcomers then set themselves down before us, one after another, with a grace that seems unimaginable for their size and the speed at which they've flown.

We had been informed of some of what to expect, once we'd reached this vast sea of cranes. Before we took our places in this customized conveyance, Dr. Omri Boneh, director of the northern region for Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund -- the sponsor of our ecologically focused press mission -- had briefed the group on the region and its inhabitants.
In the Arava region, exquisite flowers are grown for export.
Photo by Conrad Myrland

The Hula Valley, which includes Lake Agmon, was covered by marshland when Israel was founded 60 years ago. The idea back then, said Boneh, was to tame nature.

"Wetlands were considered a negative," he said, "nothing you would want to preserve." Reclaiming the Jewish homeland, he added, meant getting rid of these troublesome marshy spots, filled as they were with disease-carrying pests. So they were drained and cleared for farming.

"We think differently about wetland preservation today," he continued. "Ten or 15 years ago, we reflooded the area, and it's become one of the most important bird-watching regions in the world, along with Eilat in the south. The Hula Valley is part of the route of migration, part of the great rift valley from Turkey to Southern Africa, and 500 million birds pass over this area in the fall and spring. Hula is the last site before the birds begin the Sahara desert portion of their flight, a grazing area for what are called common white cranes, which come here from their home in southern Ukraine."

The Ramat Menashe Biosphere Park, located in the center of the country, is a lush preserve open to the public free of charge. It's often called one of Israel's best-kept secrets.
Photo courtesy of KKL-JNF

The Hula Valley Restoration Project does ongoing research, he went on to explain. "Many of the cranes continue on their journey. But some, over the years, have realized that they can graze here fairly easily. So they stay for the winter, and they can damage the Galilee farmers' peat fields considerably. We want to keep them moving, so we are looking into all sorts of methods to do that without harming them and keeping the farmers happy, too."

Conservation is especially important in the valley, said Boneh, since all of the sources of the Jordan River are here, and they feed into Lake Kinneret, Israel's main source of drinking water.

Some 200,000 people visited the area last year, and Boneh is working with UNESCO to have the spot designated a World Heritage Site. And that seems completely plausible to all of us surrounded by a spectacular show of white motion and sound. The cranes preen, displaying their plumbish bodies; long, tapered, flexible necks; sharp beaks; and stick-thin legs.

Our tractor driver informed us early in our ride that these birds are monogamous. Right now, they are accompanied by their offspring, about whom they are exceedingly vigilant.
Water droplets form on the tips of pine needles in the Yattir Forest.
Photo by Conrad Myrland

We watch as the elders move about with their young close at hand and how they assume threatening positions -- rearing up and flaring their impressive wing spread -- if unknown cranes venture too close. And there are curious behaviors: Some birds seem to be doing a kind of joyous dance, ending by scooping up a feather in their beaks and offering it up as a gift.

Boneh explains that these trinket-bearers are the males, who never take anything for granted and court their wives continually with little tokens of love and displays of affection.

We begin to move again, the tractor pulling us in an almost lazy figure-eight until the Ramat Naftali range, seen only in outline, appears before us again. Our guide tells us simply to sit and wait. As the last bits of color fade from the sky, leaving only thin steaks of gray behind, there comes another powerful rush of sound as the cranes take off in thick packs, moving to the wet places a short distance behind us, where, we are told, they'll bed down for the night. The crack of their wings makes the air reverberate.

Ronit Ratner, a longtime pepper farmer in the Arava region, praises the beauty of the flowers and vegetables grown in that part of the Negev. Most of these goods are exported to Europe.
Photo by Dave Sommerhalder

For a time, we can see the cranes make pinpoint landings off in the distance, barely rippling the surface of the chill-looking water. We're told they'll stand in the shallows all night, huddled around their children. They feel safer there, more able to ward off threats.

The tractor starts up again, leading us back to where we began, rocking from side to side to the continued accompaniment of the high, sharp snap of wings and the ever-fading call of the cranes.

'Creating Sustainable Development'

The next day finds our group flying up the Ramat Naftali Mountain Range in a fleet of cable cars. On this cold, crystal-clear morning in late January, the Hula Valley and the Golan Heights are off in the distance, growing smaller as we hurtle upwards, with snow-capped Mount Hermon standing watch in the far north.

The forest we see whizzing by beneath us on the mountainside was planted by new immigrants in the 1950s, we are told. It was their first work when they came to Eretz Yisrael.
The Yattir Forest is 40 years old and thrives in a semi-arid terrain.
Photo by Conrad Myrland

But at one point in our upward climb, the deep green of the forest turns jaggedly black. These are the trees scarred by Hezbollah rockets that rained down on the area during the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006.

When we reach the end of the cable-car line and disembark, we gather around Paul Ginsberg, KKL-JNF director of the forest region in the north, who speaks of the devastation wrought by the more than 30 days of war two summers ago.

"One kilometer from here -- a little more than half a mile away," Ginsberg says, turning to point off into the distance behind him, "is the border with Lebanon. Kiryat Shemonah, just below us, received thousands of rockets, and 77 percent of this forest burned.

"Even after the north was evacuated, KKL-JNF workers volunteered to come here; they did it of their own volition. They knew, if anyone did, that this forest was not a gift of God. These trees were part of our cultural heritage."

Ginsberg was the person who co-ordinated the firefighting effort. He tells us that they worked in two 12-hour shifts utilizing a dozen fire trucks; aerial firefighters also assisted in the effort.

"We would try to fight the fires, then more Katyusha rockets would fall, starting new fires. It was very stressful."

Pelicans also make stops at Lake Agmon in the Hula Valley during their migrations.
Photo courtesy of KKL-JNF

KKL-JNF has begun to rehabilitate the forest here and throughout the entire region, and we are driven to nearby Biryia Forest to see more clearly what's been done in terms of reclamation.

Standing high above a wide stretch of valley, we're told by area officials that the terrain was cleared of damaged trees soon after the war's end. Native broadleaf trees were planted rather than pines, as was first done here and at Ramat Naftali. Cedar trees were then added on the slope above the broadleaf trees. It was also decided to leave portions of the land as is, to wait for natural regeneration.

In this way, they hope to create what they call "a diverse forest," different from what was here before. The original forest, made up mostly of pine, was a simple ecological environment. But KKL-JNF has learned that simple is not necessarily good. Now they wish to create a forest with "a higher ecological integrity."

"This is the golden lining to the gray cloud of Hezbollah bombing," Paul Ginsberg tells us. "We lost forest area here, but instead of waiting for it to go fallow naturally and then take action, we've learned that we can improve and diversify the forest, and thereby strengthen the ecological infrastructure."

In these two examples -- the Hula Valley and the Biryia Forest -- we had the two major strands of KKL-JNF work displayed for us: conservation to assist nature and wildlife -- its new green approach -- and the continuing effort to plant trees as the organization has done in the past, though these days, this, too, is being executed with green awareness in mind.

This was not always the organizational mission. KKL-JNF was founded 107 years ago specifically to buy land to allow the Jewish people to settle in pre-state Palestine. And, according to Zeev Kedem, KKL-JNF director of development, "Until 1948, this is how it was done. Then there was the War of Independence. After that, the group bought land from the State of Israel. We wanted to reclaim and develop the land. That was the goal then.

"But we've moved even beyond that. We've moved from developing the land to creating sustainable development -- and all that this term means" -- that is, to nurture and maintain the environment with an eye to future generations.

This new emphasis may not have yet penetrated the American Jewish consciousness, which seems to still conceive of the Jewish National Fund (the American side of the KKL-JNF equation) as the group that plants trees to mark special occasions -- births, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, weddings. JNF undoubtedly remains Israel's national foresters, but the work is executed with an added twist.

According to Kedem, not everyone's happy about how this new emphasis is administered, especially some of Israel's other green organizations. "We're called too cautious. We aren't aggressive enough in our green projects. But we've learned from the past.

"Before, KKL-JNF would come into an area and bulldoze everything, then build a road or plant trees. These days, the organization does its research," always with an eye to sustainability.

There are numerous, very green endeavors that JNF-KKL supports throughout Israel, among them, Ramat Menashe Biosphere Park, a lush preserve in the center of Israel, open to the public at no charge; Kibbutz Lotan in the Negev, which is run on ecological and Reform Jewish principles; and the Eilat Ornithological Park, which is a major flyway for those 500 million birds each spring and fall, as well as a significant research center.

All of these are pieces in the KKL-JNF mosaic, but perhaps the most pressing national problems the organization tackles, especially in light of global warming, are lack of water and the threat of desertification -- that is, the desert's slow creep northward. True to form, KKL-JNF is resorting to an old standby to counter this effect: planting trees, since they absorb carbon emissions.

Our group hears from Dr. Uri Shani, director general of the Israel Water Commission, on the first of these crises. He says that water scarcity in Israel is an age-old dilemma, but today the situation stems from three sources: increased demand; a decrease in supply; and the contamination of surface and ground water.

But Shani says that Israel, on the state level, if not among the citizenry, has become very efficient in water use.

"We recycle all our waste water to higher levels," he says in a Jerusalem meeting. "We'd like to get it to an even higher point so that people could possibly drink it. For now, it goes to agriculture.

"But because we haven't enough natural water to keep up our standard of living, we are focusing on desalination. We desalinate 150 million cubic meters of water per year, and we're trying to get to 500 million cubic meters per year. Lake Kinneret, our main source of drinking water, is getting brackish, so we would like to have one-third of our drinking water from desalination by 2012.

"Water is the country's most basic resource. You can stop electricity for days, and I'd argue everyone would survive. Stop water and you have another story."

To witness what is being done to combat desertification, we head south, to the Yattir Forest in the Northern Negev, a 40-year-old, man-made forest planted in a semi-arid area. We're told by officials there that no one expected a single tree to survive. It's become Israel's largest forest. Drought-resistant species of trees -- Aleppo pine, Acacia, Eucalyptus, Carob -- are used here because the shallow soil common to the area is where they thrive.

As we drive through this hilly, parched-looking region -- covered with rolling outcroppings of yellowish, unappealing-looking sand -- it does seem miraculous that anything could take root, let alone sprout so greenly and head so determinedly for the light.

It's not for nothing, Kedem told us, that Israel is one of the few countries in the world that had more trees at the end of the 20th century than it had at its start.

This ideal will continue in the new millennium. This year, KKL-JNF wants to plant 7 million trees, in the cities especially, to help cool them naturally so the demand for air-conditioning might lessen.

And officials also told us that in the fight to combat global warming, a combination of money, land and knowledge will have to be applied. Israel is the country with the know-how, especially about what trees can accomplish, and it plans to export this expertise as often as it can.

'Best Produce in the World'

But perhaps even more astonishing is what we see on the way farther south, when we stumble upon the Yair Research and Development Center, which is that day sponsoring its annual R&D event. The center is owned by the region, though 50 percent of its funding comes from KKL-JNF. Once a year, the center has this open house to show local farmers what they've discovered.

Ronit Ratner, who's lived and worked for 30 years in this, the Arava region, running a pepper farm as part of Moshav Paran, addresses the group in an open-air space on this cloudy, soggy day.

"Most of the time -- 360 days of the year -- it's sunny here, even in winter," she says. "I can't believe it's cloudy. But things have changed. Recently, we had 9 millimeters of rain in one day. On average, we have 20 millimeters a year. And we had a terrible frost that did lots of damage to our crops. But we'll start again next year.

"Generally, in the last week in July, we plant the seedlings, we irrigate, and then by November we have the best produce in the world. In fact, 60 percent of the fresh vegetables and flowers exported from Israel came from this region.

"And here, there's a lack of arable land. We have a good sandy soil, but it's limited. So we're doing research with what's called soil-less culture -- perlite -- and we use drippers to irrigate. The soil only provides the base for the roots. All else has to be provided.

"We have to use our soil very smartly since this is the emptiest place in Israel. Soil-less is very efficient. It can be irrigated frequently without causing problems. And it has brought us to market with a cleaner product."

She escorts us around the fairgrounds, which is packed with people and has a festive, carnival air. As we walk, we marvel at the size and color of the vegetables and flowers grown in row after row of long, narrow soil-less containers, all shielded from the sun by yards of white tenting stretched high above them.

We soon head south toward Eilat.

In a matter of miles, we pass row upon row of the kind of white tenting we'd seen at the fair, filled with vegetation of all sorts. The tents stand in the middle of nowhere, the only thing to be seen for miles. In such dry, open spaces, you won't survive, Ratner had said, if you're not a dreamer. It's not an easy place, she'd added with a wry smile.

Farmers are at the mercy of the elements, especially the strange quirks that global warming appears to be having on the environment. But perhaps it's here, in these inhospitable stretches -- deep in the Negev, as Israeli founding father and first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion had hoped -- that the new Zionism is being carefully tilled, and has even begun bearing some of its finest fruit.

Make Your Shabbat “Green” With JNF!

2008-02-26T08:30:00.000-08:00

Make Your Shabbat “Green” With JNF!

April 4-6 marks the first JNF GoNeutral Shabbat and Make a Difference Day. Join synagogues, schools and communities all across the country by celebrating Shabbat in an eco-friendly way and learning about the connection between Judaism, Israel and the environment. JNF has an online guide for you to use that includes ideas for having a “green” Shabbat dinner, sermons and text for study at services, as well as ideas for projects and discussions that can be held after Shabbat. This weekend is a great way to make your commitment to “GoNeutral” in 2008. Visit www.jnf.org/makeadifferenceday to register and learn more about this new program. All registered organizations will receive a JNF GoNeutral tote bag and a certificate of participation.

A down-to-earth connection with Israel

2008-02-15T08:31:00.000-08:00

A down-to-earth connection with Israel

http://www.stljewishlight.com

BY FRAN CANTOR

I don't often go around advertising how passionate I am about preserving the environment, and thus the world, for future generations. Somehow, in the face of hunger, wars and violence, it seems trite to express passion about ecosystems.

But, I do care about ecosystems. I care about them on a selfish level because I love nature and being outdoors and I want to hand a beautiful world to my grandchildren and their grandchildren. Even more importantly, I care about ecosystems because everything in our world is linked. The examples are everywhere we look. We put fertilizer on our lawns and the excess nitrogen ends up in the dead zone of the Gulf of Mexico where algae is destroying thousands of miles of ocean. The carbon we emit by the use of fossil fuels is causing the earth to warm and the polar ice caps to melt. The list goes on and on and on. Every ecosystem is related, and in the real world you can't have paradise in a vacuum.

Probably twenty years ago, I was reading Sierra, the publication of the Sierra Club. I was reading the little ads at the back of the publication when I came across an ad for an organization that was working on environmental issues in Israel. It turned out it was Jewish National Fund (JNF). I knew how JNF had purchased land in Israel piece-by-piece in the name of the Jewish people. I had planted trees, but it wasn't until I read that ad that I began to realize what an important environmental organization JNF is. All the pieces fell together. Here was an organization that spoke both to my Jewish and environmental yearnings. The more I learn about JNF, the more impressed I am with what it is accomplishing.

We (JNF) planted forests, but now we know we need to plant forests with diversification. We are reclaiming wetlands. We are providing crucial resting sites for migrating birds. We are leaders in water conservation, cleaning up polluted rivers, and building reservoirs to recycle water for agricultural use. We are using the best methods to push back the desert and make it habitable while remaining acutely aware of the need to do so this in a sustainable manner.

Recently, JNF launched a Web site to help individuals offset their carbon footprint. You can go to the JNF GoNeutral web page and calculate your personal yearly carbon emissions. It's like getting on a scale! You don't want to tell anyone the number that shows up. The beauty is you get immediate guilt-relief by purchasing trees to offset your yearly carbon emissions. Then, of course, you can consider how you want to lower your carbon emissions number.

Martin Luther King, of blessed memory, isn't the only one who had a dream. I dream of Israel, at peace with her neighbors, exporting environmental practices that can literally save the environment of our Earth and I look at JNF with pride. As a non-governmental organization at the United Nations, JNF generously shares what it knows with the rest of the world and is also a founding member of the International Arid Land Consortium, an organization comprised of six U.S. universities, Jordan, and Egypt, dedicated to exploring the problems and solutions unique to arid and semiarid regions. It is enough to make an American environmentalist pay attention. It is enough to make a Jewish American environmentalist kvell with pride and feel hopeful for the future.

Please seriously consider supporting the work of JNF. You will truly feel you are accomplishing something good for the planet.

Fran Cantor is a member of the St. Louis JNF Board and past president of Solomon Schechter Day School of St. Louis. She and her husband, Harvey, reside in Creve Coeur where she served as chair of the Recycling, Environment and Beautification Committee.

Israeli energy initiative makes climate change a social cause

2008-02-04T08:32:00.000-08:00

Israeli energy initiative makes climate change a social cause

By Karin Kloosterman
January 31, 2008

For every car that drives, every plane that flies and every appliance that gets plugged into the wall, a price is paid by the environment. The burning of fossil fuels for use in transport, industry and our day-to-day lives, emits carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Al Gore has exposed the effects of global warming at great lengths. And some activists around the world - like those from Israel's Good Energy Initiative - think that there is still time to turn around, or at least stop, the acceleration of climate change.

The Good Energy Initiative, a non-profit organization, is the first and only voluntary carbon offset provider in Israel. Through donations, it lets people and organizations neutralize their "carbon footprint" by funnelling cash investments into local grassroots educational and social projects. Carbon offset money also goes toward developing new alternative energy projects.

This term carbon neutral is used when the amount of greenhouse gases one emits (a carbon footprint), is balanced either through the purchase of offsets, or by greenhouse gas reduction practices.

The Israeli project is unique because its offset projects are all based locally, and have a strong social element. Not only does the organization plan to reduce greenhouses gases emitted locally, it educates schoolchildren about global warming, alleviates pressures on marginalized communities, and creates new alternative energy projects.

By working locally, the initiative may also have profound implications for peace building, too. What normally happens in carbon offsetting initiatives is that projects are carried out elsewhere, often in developing nations.

But for $6 a pound, one can neutralize your carbon footprint through Good Energy and know that the projects are being monitored closely. The group currently appeals for donations from conference organizers, the media, and even those flying to the Holy Land on mission trips.

Since it was founded a year ago by environmental entrepreneur Eyal Biger, who specializes in biological fuel alternatives, the initiative has helped a number of local businesses go carbon neutral. The list includes The Marker, a Hebrew language business daily; and the organization is currently advising coffee chain Aroma Israel, how to become carbon neutral.

The offset money goes to a number of local projects, and includes an effort to reduce emissions by replacing boilers with solar heating systems in apartment buildings. The group has supplied solar energy systems for cancer-stricken children in Bedouin settlements. In lieu of diesel generators, their parents now use a non-polluting means to keep medicine cool.

Good Energy is also running an organic waste composting program for communities and public entities; and has developed a regional incandescent-to-CFL bulb campaign.

"Ours is a social venture. Our only profit is the social profit," Tom Brecher, environmental advisor at Good Energy tells ISRAEL21c.

The Good Energy Initiative owes its start in life to the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership, Israel's premiere environment education center. Heschel will support Good Energy until next year.

This particular project is "super innovative" says Heschel's resource developer David Pearlman Paran. "It is breaking new ground in Israel. Its focus on social initiatives is fairly uncommon," he says, and it adds value by "improving energy efficiency and society."

How does Good Energy compare to other offset organizations in the rest of the world? "It is up to speed, and in some ways it is far ahead," replies Paran.

Hillel celebrates tree festival

2008-01-29T08:33:00.000-08:00

Our GoNeutral campaign was also featured in The Daily Collegian at Penn State. Check it out here.

"This year, between the blessings of the festival, different facts about the environment were read to put an extra emphasis on environmental consciousness. Gernett said the Jewish National Fund and Hasbara, two pro-Israel groups, used the seder to inform people about a carbon offsetting competition. Hillel is trying to raise $400 for the fundraising competition."

Newt Gingrich's Contract With The Earth

2008-01-24T08:33:00.000-08:00

Below are some of our favorite and most informative snippets from Newt Gingrich's book Contract With The Earth. These encompass some of the ideals of JNF GoNeutral.

“Clearly, from a boomer’s perspective, the earth needs our help. We recognize a call to action that affects the future of life on this planet. We easily embrace a cause that will make life better for our children and secure our future. To protect the next generation, baby boomers are prepared to commit time, energy, and expense. Like war, however, we must demand a complete and decisive victory.”

“Americans must reach a broad-based agreement on the environment. Adversarial politics has prevented a strategic consensus from driving our nation’s environmental vision. As a result, we have become a conflicted, confused, and timid polity when it comes to environmental concerns. Historically, America has been a decisive nation. We must now take the necessary steps to return our country to a position of leadership on the environment. It is not too late to make a difference.”

“No single enterprise, event, or idea will renew the earth. Instead, I believe it will take a movement composed of dedicated citizens who can see the world in a new way and who will work together to bring about revolutionary changes in the way we conduct our lives.”

“Our environment’s current state represents both a unique challenge and a golden opportunity. If we respond with the ingenuity and diligence consistent with our national heritage and our sense of duty, we will not begin to resolve our environmental problems, but we will also launch an unprecedented epoch of economic prosperity. No person or entity, especially the business community, can afford to sit on the sidelines as our natural resources are squandered and degraded.”

“America will benefit economically and culturally from fostering partnerships that generate new environmental business opportunities. Working together, responsible environmental groups, neighborhoods, governments, small businesses, and major corporations will shape a future bound by a common cause—the environment—and against the common foes of inertia, indifference, and apathy.”

Jewish National Fund: Reversing The Donor Aging Process

2008-01-19T08:34:00.000-08:00

JNF GoNeutral was recently featured in TheNonProfit Times. You can access the article here.

The article notes:

The accompanying Web site is fresher and edgier than JNF's main site, and the campain is featured on social networks.

Converting to Green: How many skeptics does it take to screw in a CFL light bulb?

2008-01-04T08:34:00.000-08:00

Converting to Green: How many skeptics does it take to screw in a CFL light bulb?

By Howard Gordon

All right, I admit it. When it came to believing that I could make a difference in the fight to stop global warming, I was a skeptic. Sure, I drove a Prius, and I dutifully deposited my Fiji bottles in the nearest blue recycling bin. But the truth is, I mostly did these things to make my wife, Cami, feel better. She's been such a true believer for such a long time that I had no real choice in the matter if I wanted to keep the peace at home.

So I humored her passionate activism, I indulged her fears in the dire predictions being offered up daily by scientists and by the media. Not that I didn't believe that our consumer society is on the fast track to destroying the planet -- I just didn't think that anything I did was going to derail the inevitable.

On more than one occasion, I slipped and admitted to my wife my true feelings on the subject. That we were hypocrites. Limousine liberals. Driving a Prius might make us feel better about ourselves, but it didn't compensate for all the carbon we were emitting by employing the small army of people who help maintain our not-so-modest home -- from gardeners to house cleaners to handymen. These are people who commute from faraway places in cars far less efficient than ours. If we really wanted to reduce our carbon footprint, we should sell our house, move into a high-rise, and take public transportation.

We had this argument at least a dozen times. And each time, my wife held her ground, insisting that doing something was better than doing nothing. She said if everyone did something, it would make a difference.

So I'd grudgingly go back to carrying my own canvas bags to the supermarket, unplugging my cellphone charger, even trading in my Fiji water for a refillable aluminum bottle. Until one day, the light bulb went off over my own head. Literally.

I was replacing an incandescent bulb with a more efficient compact fluorescent bulb, and when I turned it on to test it, I suddenly realized that the skepticism I'd been carrying with me for all this time had given way to something else. Something that felt a lot like satisfaction. The solution was never going to come all at once; it was a process. By doing these small things, however reluctantly, I'd begun to believe that I really was making a difference. And that was the whole point of doing something, of doing anything that contributed to the solution.

Having taken these few halting, reluctant steps, I found myself looking forward to taking more steps. Carrying the canvas bags to the supermarket stopped feeling like a hassle. I went out of my way to carpool with people I knew were attending school events and business meetings. I had solar panels installed at our house. I even headed up an effort to make more energy efficient the physical production of the television show I produce, "24," as part of News Corp.'s Cool Climate Change initiative. I'd finally joined Cami on what had been, until now, her solo journey.

Perhaps most significantly, I realized that our actions, small and large, were starting to change the behavior of the people around us. Because we've been making choices to reduce our carbon footprint, the people around us are starting to take their own first steps to reduce theirs. Our children are getting pretty good at turning off the lights when they're not in a room, and turning down the heat. Some of our friends have started replacing their incandescent bulbs with CFLs.

Now and again, that familiar skepticism comes back. Bringing my own mug to Starbucks still doesn't seem like much of an answer to the massively rising energy consumption happening in India and China. And I'm waiting for a DWP audit to find out how much energy those solar panels of mine are really producing. But even if it doesn't turn out to be as much as I'd like, we're still doing better than we would have been doing without them -- and not nearly as good as I hope we'll all be doing in the future.

Tel Aviv joins Earth Hour

2007-12-21T08:35:00.000-08:00

Tel Aviv became the first Israeli city to join Earth Hour, a worldwide campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The initiative, which began with a blackout for one hour in Sydney, Australia, last March, aims to go global on Saturday, March 29, 2008, at 8 P.M. Twelve cities pledged this week to turn out their lights. Tel Aviv will be joined by four cities in Denmark, three cities in Australia, Manilla and the Philippines, Suva in Fiji, Toronto and Chicago.

“We are now at the point in time where we can no longer postpone the issue of climate change. Earth Hour is a beginning, and every city to join can help make a difference by taking responsibility to reduce emissions,” Tel Aviv’s mayor, Ron Huldai, said in a statement.

Earth Hour is an initiative of the World Wildlife Fund. During the inaugural Earth Hour last March, the lights of the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge were switched off as 2.2 million Australians did the same in their homes, which reduced energy consumption by about 10 percent.

This article can be found on the JTA website.

Letter From Al Gore - Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance

2007-12-12T08:35:00.000-08:00

Here is a letter recieved by JNF earlier this week:

I wanted to share with you my speech from the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo. Check AlGore.com for video of the event later today.

Thank you,

Al Gore

SPEECH BY AL GORE ON THE ACCEPTANCE
OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
DECEMBER 10, 2007
OSLO, NORWAY

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Honorable members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen.

I have a purpose here today. It is a purpose I have tried to serve for many years. I have prayed that God would show me a way to accomplish it.

Sometimes, without warning, the future knocks on our door with a precious and painful vision of what might be. One hundred and nineteen years ago, a wealthy inventor read his own obituary, mistakenly published years before his death. Wrongly believing the inventor had just died, a newspaper printed a harsh judgment of his life’s work, unfairly labeling him “The Merchant of Death” because of his invention – dynamite. Shaken by this condemnation, the inventor made a fateful choice to serve the cause of peace.

Seven years later, Alfred Nobel created this prize and the others that bear his name.

Seven years ago tomorrow, I read my own political obituary in a judgment that seemed to me harsh and mistaken – if not premature. But that unwelcome verdict also brought a precious if painful gift: an opportunity to search for fresh new ways to serve my purpose.

Unexpectedly, that quest has brought me here. Even though I fear my words cannot match this moment, I pray what I am feeling in my heart will be communicated clearly enough that those who hear me will say, “We must act.”

The distinguished scientists with whom it is the greatest honor of my life to share this award have laid before us a choice between two different futures – a choice that to my ears echoes the words of an ancient prophet: “Life or death, blessings or curses. Therefore, choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”

We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency – a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here. But there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst – though not all – of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly.

However, despite a growing number of honorable exceptions, too many of the world’s leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler’s threat: “They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.”

So today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun.

As a result, the earth has a fever. And the fever is rising. The experts have told us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. And the consistent conclusion, restated with increasing alarm, is that something basic is wrong.

We are what is wrong, and we must make it right.

Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is “falling off a cliff.” One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years.

Seven years from now.

In the last few months, it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter. Major cities in North and South America, Asia and Australia are nearly out of water due to massive droughts and melting glaciers. Desperate farmers are losing their livelihoods. Peoples in the frozen Arctic and on low-lying Pacific islands are planning evacuations of places they have long called home. Unprecedented wildfires have forced a half million people from their homes in one country and caused a national emergency that almost brought down the government in another. Climate refugees have migrated into areas already inhabited by people with different cultures, religions, and traditions, increasing the potential for conflict. Stronger storms in the Pacific and Atlantic have threatened whole cities. Millions have been displaced by massive flooding in South Asia, Mexico, and 18 countries in Africa. As temperature extremes have increased, tens of thousands have lost their lives. We are recklessly burning and clearing our forests and driving more and more species into extinction. The very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and frayed.

We never intended to cause all this destruction, just as Alfred Nobel never intended that dynamite be used for waging war. He had hoped his invention would promote human progress. We shared that same worthy goal when we began burning massive quantities of coal, then oil and methane.

Even in Nobel’s time, there were a few warnings of the likely consequences. One of the very first winners of the Prize in chemistry worried that, “We are evaporating our coal mines into the air.” After performing 10,000 equations by hand, Svante Arrhenius calculated that the earth’s average temperature would increase by many degrees if we doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Seventy years later, my teacher, Roger Revelle, and his colleague, Dave Keeling, began to precisely document the increasing CO2 levels day by day.

But unlike most other forms of pollution, CO2 is invisible, tasteless, and odorless -- which has helped keep the truth about what it is doing to our climate out of sight and out of mind. Moreover, the catastrophe now threatening us is unprecedented – and we often confuse the unprecedented with the improbable.

We also find it hard to imagine making the massive changes that are now necessary to solve the crisis. And when large truths are genuinely inconvenient, whole societies can, at least for a time, ignore them. Yet as George Orwell reminds us: “Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”

In the years since this prize was first awarded, the entire relationship between humankind and the earth has been radically transformed. And still, we have remained largely oblivious to the impact of our cumulative actions.

Indeed, without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the earth itself. Now, we and the earth's climate are locked in a relationship familiar to war planners: "Mutually assured destruction."

More than two decades ago, scientists calculated that nuclear war could throw so much debris and smoke into the air that it would block life-giving sunlight from our atmosphere, causing a "nuclear winter." Their eloquent warnings here in Oslo helped galvanize the world’s resolve to halt the nuclear arms race.

Now science is warning us that if we do not quickly reduce the global warming pollution that is trapping so much of the heat our planet normally radiates back out of the atmosphere, we are in danger of creating a permanent “carbon summer.”

As the American poet Robert Frost wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice.” Either, he notes, “would suffice.”

But neither need be our fate. It is time to make peace with the planet.

We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war. These prior struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the 11th hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope and readiness to sacrifice for a protracted and mortal challenge.

These were not comforting and misleading assurances that the threat was not real or imminent; that it would affect others but not ourselves; that ordinary life might be lived even in the presence of extraordinary threat; that Providence could be trusted to do for us what we would not do for ourselves.

No, these were calls to come to the defense of the common future. They were calls upon the courage, generosity and strength of entire peoples, citizens of every class and condition who were ready to stand against the threat once asked to do so. Our enemies in those times calculated that free people would not rise to the challenge; they were, of course, catastrophically wrong.

Now comes the threat of climate crisis – a threat that is real, rising, imminent, and universal. Once again, it is the 11th hour. The penalties for ignoring this challenge are immense and growing, and at some near point would be unsustainable and unrecoverable. For now we still have the power to choose our fate, and the remaining question is only this: Have we the will to act vigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion?

Mahatma Gandhi awakened the largest democracy on earth and forged a shared resolve with what he called “Satyagraha” – or “truth force.”

In every land, the truth – once known – has the power to set us free.

Truth also has the power to unite us and bridge the distance between “me” and “we,” creating the basis for common effort and shared responsibility.

There is an African proverb that says, “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” We need to go far, quickly.

We must abandon the conceit that individual, isolated, private actions are the answer. They can and do help. But they will not take us far enough without collective action. At the same time, we must ensure that in mobilizing globally, we do not invite the establishment of ideological conformity and a new lock-step “ism.”

That means adopting principles, values, laws, and treaties that release creativity and initiative at every level of society in multifold responses originating concurrently and spontaneously.

This new consciousness requires expanding the possibilities inherent in all humanity. The innovators who will devise a new way to harness the sun’s energy for pennies or invent an engine that’s carbon negative may live in Lagos or Mumbai or Montevideo. We must ensure that entrepreneurs and inventors everywhere on the globe have the chance to change the world.

When we unite for a moral purpose that is manifestly good and true, the spiritual energy unleashed can transform us. The generation that defeated fascism throughout the world in the 1940s found, in rising to meet their awesome challenge, that they had gained the moral authority and long-term vision to launch the Marshall Plan, the United Nations, and a new level of global cooperation and foresight that unified Europe and facilitated the emergence of democracy and prosperity in Germany, Japan, Italy and much of the world. One of their visionary leaders said, “It is time we steered by the stars and not by the lights of every passing ship.”

In the last year of that war, you gave the Peace Prize to a man from my hometown of 2000 people, Carthage, Tennessee. Cordell Hull was described by Franklin Roosevelt as the “Father of the United Nations.” He was an inspiration and hero to my own father, who followed Hull in the Congress and the U.S. Senate and in his commitment to world peace and global cooperation.

My parents spoke often of Hull, always in tones of reverence and admiration. Eight weeks ago, when you announced this prize, the deepest emotion I felt was when I saw the headline in my hometown paper that simply noted I had won the same prize that Cordell Hull had won. In that moment, I knew what my father and mother would have felt were they alive.

Just as Hull’s generation found moral authority in rising to solve the world crisis caused by fascism, so too can we find our greatest opportunity in rising to solve the climate crisis. In the Kanji characters used in both Chinese and Japanese, “crisis” is written with two symbols, the first meaning “danger,” the second “opportunity.” By facing and removing the danger of the climate crisis, we have the opportunity to gain the moral authority and vision to vastly increase our own capacity to solve other crises that have been too long ignored.

We must understand the connections between the climate crisis and the afflictions of poverty, hunger, HIV-Aids and other pandemics. As these problems are linked, so too must be their solutions. We must begin by making the common rescue of the global environment the central organizing principle of the world community.

Fifteen years ago, I made that case at the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro. Ten years ago, I presented it in Kyoto. This week, I will urge the delegates in Bali to adopt a bold mandate for a treaty that establishes a universal global cap on emissions and uses the market in emissions trading to efficiently allocate resources to the most effective opportunities for speedy reductions.

This treaty should be ratified and brought into effect everywhere in the world by the beginning of 2010 – two years sooner than presently contemplated. The pace of our response must be accelerated to match the accelerating pace of the crisis itself.

Heads of state should meet early next year to review what was accomplished in Bali and take personal responsibility for addressing this crisis. It is not unreasonable to ask, given the gravity of our circumstances, that these heads of state meet every three months until the treaty is completed.

We also need a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store carbon dioxide.

And most important of all, we need to put a price on carbon -- with a CO2 tax that is then rebated back to the people, progressively, according to the laws of each nation, in ways that shift the burden of taxation from employment to pollution. This is by far the most effective and simplest way to accelerate solutions to this crisis.

The world needs an alliance – especially of those nations that weigh heaviest in the scales where earth is in the balance. I salute Europe and Japan for the steps they’ve taken in recent years to meet the challenge, and the new government in Australia, which has made solving the climate crisis its first priority.

But the outcome will be decisively influenced by two nations that are now failing to do enough: the United States and China. While India is also growing fast in importance, it should be absolutely clear that it is the two largest CO2 emitters — most of all, my own country –– that will need to make the boldest moves, or stand accountable before history for their failure to act.

Both countries should stop using the other’s behavior as an excuse for stalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global environment.

These are the last few years of decision, but they can be the first years of a bright and hopeful future if we do what we must. No one should believe a solution will be found without effort, without cost, without change. Let us acknowledge that if we wish to redeem squandered time and speak again with moral authority, then these are the hard truths:

The way ahead is difficult. The outer boundary of what we currently believe is feasible is still far short of what we actually must do. Moreover, between here and there, across the unknown, falls the shadow.

That is just another way of saying that we have to expand the boundaries of what is possible. In the words of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, “Pathwalker, there is no path. You must make the path as you walk.”

We are standing at the most fateful fork in that path. So I want to end as I began, with a vision of two futures – each a palpable possibility – and with a prayer that we will see with vivid clarity the necessity of choosing between those two futures, and the urgency of making the right choice now.

The great Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, “One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door.”

The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: “What were you thinking; why didn’t you act?”

Or they will ask instead: “How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?”

We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource.

So let us renew it, and say together: “We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose we will rise, and we will act.”

Israeli delegation heads to Indonesia climate parley

2007-12-04T08:36:00.000-08:00

Israeli delegation heads to Indonesia climate parley

"A delegation comprised of officials from various government ministries as well as environmental NGOs will head to Bali, Indonesia on Friday for the UN Climate Change Conference. The conference runs from December 3 to 14.

Environmental Protection Minister Gideon Ezra decided last week not to attend because it would be too expensive to protect him there. However, two other officials from his ministry will be attending.

One part of the delegation, representing the Jewish National Fund, will present its successes with desert forestation."

Israeli delegation heads to Indonesia climate parley

2007-12-03T08:41:00.000-08:00

Israeli researchers focus on 'an inconvenient truth'

2007-11-05T08:40:00.000-08:00

Israeli researchers focus on 'an inconvenient truth'

If climate change wasn't already on the international agenda, then the decision to award this year's Nobel Prize for Peace to Al Gore and the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has certainly placed the issue on the consciousness of the world.

Gore's persuasive Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth presents a wealth of scientific data to show that humans are largely responsible for global warming and also highlights some of the devastating consequences that this change in climate could bring.

While some skeptics have criticized the film as exaggerated, at least one Israeli scientist is thankful that Gore spoke out. Dr. Ilan Koren, a senior scientist in the department of Environmental Science at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, is one of several Israeli scientists and researchers who have been working for years on monitoring and evaluating the effects of the Earth's climatic shift.

"He did a very good job," said Koren. "[The film] will have the largest impact in the field of climate change, instead of the hundreds of detailed scientific studies. The film found the right balance between being a popular movie, and not exaggerating the evidence."

Koren's major area of research is studying the roles that clouds and precipitation play in the balance of energy within the earth's eco-system, and how they are both affected by smoke and aerosol pollution. He starts his research from the assertion that clouds are the only vehicle for bringing fresh water to land, and that any alteration to the precipitation will affect the water cycle.

"Clouds are involved in earth's radiation budget," Koren told ISRAEL21c. "Without them, more of the solar energy would be absorbed on the surface and there would immediately be a warmer atmosphere."

"Aerosols have always been emitted in the atmosphere. But since humans have been emitting smoke, gases, sulphites and carbon, by a much larger order of magnitude, the properties of clouds have changed, and there are more droplets with a different size distribution. This creates a different chain of feedback to the eco-system," he added.

Koren, who worked closely with the late Yoram Kaufman, a NASA-based senior scientist and Technion graduate, uses advanced technology to measure droplets in all types of cloud worldwide.

"Within a pristine environment, an ocean-covering cloud would have 200 droplets per cubic centimeter. In a polluted environment, it could have 2,000 in the same cubic centimeter," said Koren.

"The cloud will live longer, precipitate less, and give less solar reflection: this will affect the water budget and the energy budget of the atmosphere."

Having studied clouds in the Amazon for 20 years, Koren has found, and is publishing the evidence, that increased biomass burning is damaging the natural cloud cover over the region, loading up the clouds with smoke pollutant, and changing the annual precipitation patterns. Within the period 2000 and 2005, biomass burning increased 50% overall.

In 2006, scientific monitoring and government legislation dramatically reduced the man-made fires in the region. Koren is optimistic that using this data, legislation and cultural change can slowly improve human health, the rain forest and the climate system, locally in the Amazon, and then systemically, worldwide.

According to another key Israeli researcher in climatic change, Professor Pinhas Alpert, head of Tel Aviv University's department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences, countries in the Middle East have already started seeing more extreme weather.

"Our data gathered from the last 40 years and with projections to 2050, show that winters here are becoming warmer, with much less precipitation annually, and these extreme temperatures, at the minimum and maximum ends of the scale, also show a greater fluctuation between them," he told ISRAEL21c.

Alpert has initiated several key research projects that encompass the entire Mediterranean basin, and link in with European scientists. One of these, the GLOWA Project, is in its sixth year of operation as a cooperative effort between Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, and Germany. Other work includes cooperation with the UK Meteorological Office, and as the head of the Israel node of the NASA Space Agency.

"We can now say, with much more confidence, gained from using the most modern tools available, that we can forecast changing weather patterns for this region," Alpert says. The worst scenario, he says, is A2, which includes rising sea levels, an increased number of extreme weather events, rising temperatures, and lower rainfall in some areas. The A2 scenario will occur, he explains, if there is no adherence to the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, and humanity doesn't change its polluting habits.

One of the clearest ways Israelis will notice the change, according to Alpert, is in the reduction of snowfall. "The snowfall that occurred in Jerusalem, at least once every three years, will disappear. People will be touched by this."

Alpert is slated to be on a panel defending Gore's film at a conference this month entitled 'Global Warming - fact or fiction and how to fix it?' at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem.

"There are skeptics here," Alpert said, speaking of his upcoming participation, "but in general I feel Gore absolutely gets the message across."

The conference is planned to be both an academic debate, and a discussion between representatives of NGO's and government as to what the response to climate change has been so far, and how the development of the A2 'worst case scenario', as mentioned by Alpert, could be avoided through immediate legislation and social change.

With the Synthesis Report, the final part of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report due to be published at a press conference on November 17, and many believing that it will contain evidence that indicates humanity is veering toward the A2 scenario mentioned by Alpert and demonstrated in the film An Inconvenient Truth, the research being conducted in Israel takes on even greater significance.

KKL-JNF COMBATS DESERTIFICATION AND GLOBAL WARMING

2007-10-01T08:39:00.000-07:00

KKL-JNF COMBATS DESERTIFICATION AND GLOBAL WARMING:
Israeli Research Has Worldwide Implications

GoNeutral Featured in JTA

2007-09-29T08:39:00.000-07:00

JNF offers carbon offsets

The Jewish National Fund is launching an environmental awareness program that will propose offsetting carbon dioxide by planting trees in Israel.

In an announcement Thursday, JNF said its "GoNeutral" program is timed for Rosh Hashana... [read more]

Go Neutral Bootcamp - Learn How To Raise Environmental Awareness

2007-09-12T08:38:00.000-07:00

In support of JNF GoNeutral, Jewish National Fund is excited to offer JNF’s Go Neutral Bootcamp, which will take place on Monday, October 15 in New York City from 4:00 - 7:00PM. This free program will provide you with the tools you need to go back to your community, and raise environmental awareness, encourage action by reducing and offsetting carbon emissions while learning about and supporting JNF’s work in Israel.

The JNF Go Neutral Bootcamp will include a panel of environmental experts to teach about the environmental issues we are facing, breakout sessions to learn how the program works, and tactics to engage those in your community.

Please save the date of Monday, October 15. For more information and to register for the program please email Debra Scher at dscher@jnf.org.

HEEB Magazine GoNeutral Ad

2007-09-01T08:37:00.000-07:00

Check out our new ad which will be appearing in an upcoming issue of HEEB Magazine.

Jews Must Do More To Meet Obligation To Save Environment

2007-08-07T08:37:00.000-07:00

Check out Jews must do more to meet obligation to save environment in today's JTA World Report.

OP-ED
Jews must do more to meet obligation to save environment
By Rabbi Steve Gutow

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- As the energy crisis and the ominous reality of global warming loom larger in the public's mind, there is little doubt the United States must immediately engage this issue head on. Fortunately the solution to both concerns require the same shifting of policies, the same courageous actions and the same discipline.

Carbon emissions that are destroying the earth of our children and grandchildren, and a world dependent on tyrants such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir are not realities in which Jews can safely relax.

The Jewish community, which has a particular stake in this race because of Israel's vulnerability to enemy nations whose power is derived from the flow of petrodollars, must do more.

Recently I sat with a group of 15 senators in Washington and presented the concerns of the Jewish community about energy and the environment. Among the key leaders on hand from leading Jewish organizations were David Harris of the American Jewish Committee and Howard Kohr of AIPAC. Harris made a presentation on Israel; Kohr presented on Iran.

The senators clearly saw climate and energy policy as a paramount concern of the day, and the responsible question is if our community is paying enough attention to these issues. Sadly, it is not.

The Jewish community is right to make Israel's safety and thwarting Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons top priorities, but energy independence and global warming are equally important in the long run and deserving of the same level of attention.

While our tradition may not favor a particular policy, it is hardly silent. Deuteronomy explicitly forbids destroying fruit-bearing trees when attacking a city. The verses ask the question: "Are the trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city?" Our tradition understands that trees are not able to act in their own self-defense and need even more protection than humans. The Torah and the Talmud say that Jews are not allowed to destroy or waste anything.

Unfortunately, this fundamental rabbinic mandate of "not destroying anything," known rabbinically as "bal taschkit," is not well known. It should be. In Psalms the Lord says that the Earth "is the Lord's and everything that is in it." As Jews, action in the world is a basic fabric of our theology and the most important proof of faith in God. Indeed, to be silent and dormant flies in the face of the fundamental nature of Judaism.

From a holistic standpoint there are two sides of the energy equation: We can use less oil and we must increase production of power from existing renewable sources. We must reduce our bloated energy consumption by tapping into the strength of our disciplined tradition and being more cognizant of what we consume. We must open our minds to the continuing dialogue of new and innovative solutions. We must also seek out alternative sources of energy such as wind power, solar power, bio-fuels and geothermal heat to address our current energy demands.

Investments in the use of these fuels are investments this country must make.

At home, in our synagogues and in our communities we can take substantive actions by reducing our energy footprint, making smart consumer choices, driving less and exchanging inefficient light bulbs for efficient CFL bulbs. As activists, you can make a difference by holding events, and calling and writing your senators, congressmen and other elected officials to tell them that you believe America deserves a smart, comprehensive energy policy.

We are in a battle for survival. Our physical world, our immediate and future security, even the air we breathe are at great risk. We are a people who from our history understand the need to engage. Energy conservation and reducing greenhouse emissions are not luxuries for those who just want to see a "better world," they are necessities and an obligation we have to the world.

After all, the Earth is really not ours; it is the Lord's and it should not be wasted or destroyed.

Discipline, innovation and investment will not wait for the next decade or even the next year -- they are needed now. Buckminister Fuller, a sage though not a Talmudic one, stated: "If the success or failure of this planet, and of human beings, depended on how I am and what I do, how would I be? What would I do?"

It is our call.

Rabbi Steve Gutow is the executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.