Legal Stewards of the Land - MD HB 1053 and SB 824

The law is a most conservative body. For example, it will not let me sue you unless I can prove that what you are doing - or planning to do - directly threatens to harm me. In other words, I need standing, locus standi, in order to legally thwart your plans and stand in your way.

That sounds fair, when it comes to the things I want to wear or the religion I choose to believe in.
But what about when it comes to the earth? Can I sue to prevent you from clear-cutting your property even if I live dozens, or hundreds, of miles away? Can I prevent you from burying toxins on your land when I never go near there? Can I prevent you from building in sensitive areas that can destroy fragile ecosystems that I do not own and might never see?

The question boils down to: who owns the earth and its precious resources like land, air, water and who has the right to protect it?

On the one hand, the earth belongs to all of us. What you do there affects me here, and what I do here affects you there. On the other hand, if we all could sue everyone over every act of development, the courts, and our neighborhoods, would be locked in interminable battles. (Though the lawyers among us might be happy.)

There are currently 44 states in the United States that have found a way around this conundrum. They allow certain individuals and organizations to have standing in the state courts to fight against violations of our environmental laws. Maryland is not yet among them. There is, however, a way now to remedy that:

Senate Bill 824 and House Bill 1053: Community Environmental Protection Act of 2009

These bills are currently in their respective Environmental Matters Committees. If passed by both chambers, these bills will allow certain individuals and organizations to be designated as having legal standing to sue in Maryland courts on behalf of the earth, and you and me.

If indeed we believe what we teach, that humans have the obligation to tend well to the earth; and if we wish to act according to what we know, that all the earth is connected and what we do in one place affects the health of people and the ecosystem hundreds even thousands of miles away, then we need these bills. We are the stewards of the earth, and we therefore need the legal standing to be its legal guardians.

This effort is also a Maryland League of Conservation Voters priority. As they say, "We urge Maryland to follow the current national trend and expand a citizen’s right to a day in court."

Please support these bills. Go to www.mdlcv.org to see how you can help.

The Natural Step

"The non-sustainable path of society is not about some natural catastrophe that we need to tackle. It's about human desires and curiosity and wittiness and the decisions that lie behind our non-sustainable development..." ( The Natural Step Story).

This is why BJEN and the Jewish community and the entire religious world need to get behind the sustainability movement. We live in a world of limited resources and capacity but with a human appetite that is expansive and infinite. That is the human blessing. And if not well-guided, that will be our curse. How we reconcile these two conflicting elements of life is a spiritual question. What, or when, is enough? How do we get beyond stuffness to satisfaction? What is our rightful place on this earth? To what extent do we have rights to the earth's resources? In how long a time horizon do we measure satisfaction, reciprocity and compensation?

Judaism, as all religious traditions, seeks to help us answer these questions. Ultimately, their answers determine our behavior. It is not as if we have no current environmental ethic. We do. We may not have named it yet, and we may not like it when we do. But we live one. The question is: is it the one we are proud of?

Meanwhile, in the world of litigation and EPA, the 11/14 Grist.org reports:

In a major win for environmentalists, the U.S. EPA's Environmental Appeals Board handed down a landmark decision on Thursday that essentially puts a freeze on the construction of as many as 100 new coal-fired power plants around the U.S.

It will now be up to the Obama administration to develop rules on carbon dioxide emissions from such plants.

In July 2007, the EPA issued a permit for a proposed Bonanza coal-fired power plant in Utah. Lawyers for the Sierra Club, Western Resource Advocates, and Environmental Defense filed a request that the permit be overturned because it did not require any controls on carbon dioxide pollution. The enviros pointed to the Supreme Court's April 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, which found that the EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

"Essentially what this decision does is it gives the Obama administration a clean slate to decide what our nation's energy future should be," said Joanne Spalding, the senior attorney at the Sierra Club who argued the case before the board. "It puts it back in the lap of an Obama EPA to determine how to treat greenhouse-gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, and it gives the opportunity to establish policies that will essentially favor clean energy and impose restrictions on fossil fuels that emit lots of greenhouse gases."

Many of us have great hopes for the Obama administration, in this area as so many others. But we cannot sit idly by and observe and judge. We must continue to support and advocate. Even if only from our computers at home! Shabbat shalom.

biofuels, environmental degradation and world hunger

We now know that the very thing we hoped would become a multifaceted solution has, like Frankenstein, become a multifaceted nightmare. The real-world experience of biofuels has shown us that biofuels: ratchet up prices for basic food staples which they are displacing or diverting exacerbating world-wide hunger; they are driving increased destruction of virgin rainforests to create yet more farmland so more folks can capitalize on this windfall (an area the size of Rhode Island was cleared in the Amazon in the second half of 2007 for this very purpose!!); the US continues to subsidize the growing of these biofuel crops thereby artificially deflating the cost of this "fuel" when compared to alternative, renewable and clean fuels, thus delaying and suppressing investments in renewable energy research and installations. CBS reports that there have been food riots in Bangladesh, Egypt, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal. And most recently Haiti where a UN soldier was shot and killed trying to deliver food! (check out New Era of Hunger on www.cbsnews.com).

When all is accounted for, including the loss of world forests, the increased use of fertilizer, the run up in food prices, the civil violence and unrest around the world spurred on by long lines and short supplies, the social injustice (the poor around the world now spend 75% of their income on food alone), the diversion from areas of real energy advancement, biofuels become a culprit, not a savior.

We must limit their development and use and devote our land and our financial resources to those areas that can provide real solutions.

Jewish Environmental Manifesto

American Judaism is defined by its extraordinary activism. When Jewish learning and identity needed bolstering, we organized schools, youth groups, JCC’s and Hillels to respond. When “continuity” was a concern, we mobilized to fund funky efforts engaging Jews who hang close to the edge. Whenever Jewish rights and liberties were restricted, we created a network of defense organizations, which helped not only Jews but others who suffered prejudice and exclusion.


In the last decade alone, the leadership of the Jewish community launched such remarkable and successful efforts as Taglit/birthright, designed to confer upon every Jew between the ages of 18 and 26 the right and ability to visit Israel; PEJE – The Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education designed to increase enrollment in Jewish day schools; and the Foundation for Jewish Camping designed to increase the number of Jewish children “participating in transformative summers at Jewish camp”.

All of these efforts - powerful, valuable and successful - were launched because dynamic Jewish philanthropies and donors organized, studied, led, funded and inspired them. These Jewish leaders did not wait for the right combination of staff, ideas, capacity and programs to come to them. They saw a need, a vacuum in our capacity to respond to that need, and mobilized. They gathered the lay leaders, the professional staff, the thinkers and strategists and social scientists, and they put their money behind their commitment.

It is time we utilize that same formula, employ that same energy, engage that same wisdom and dynamics in the arena of Jewish environmentalism. The vibrancy of the environment and the well-being of the Jewish community need nothing less.

The facts are clear: the environment is being rapidly degraded by business-as-usual. We need to re-imagine and redesign the ways we mine, manufacture, build, power, use and dispose of the stuff of society. If we don’t, we will irrevocably deplete and so exhaust our available resources (both natural and monetary) that we will diminish the security, health, dreams and options we bequeath to our children. Thousands of young Jews see environmentalism as the defining issue of their lives. And they see organized Judaism making little to no significant contributions to the cause. Which means they see Judaism (or at least organized Judaism) as making little to no difference to them.

We can respond to both needs in one comprehensive response. Here is what we must do:


1) Reclaim tending to the earth a mitzvah. We must re-establish environmental ethics as a mitzvah, a sacred standard of Jewish practice, like tikkun olam, feeding the hungry, caring for the elderly, freeing the captive.

We must enfold it in the practices and policies of all that we do, from the paints we use in our classrooms and Section 202 housing, to the food we serve at our simchas to the flooring we choose for our JCCs, to the curricula we develop in our day schools and synagogues, to the investment policies of our Federations to the vans we buy to carry our seniors to the legislative policies we endorse on local, state and federal levels.

In short, environmental concerns must become part of the formula the guides the actions and decisions of the Jewish community in the basic conduct of our lives.

2) Offices of Sustainability. Every significant Jewish community should create an Office of Sustainability to assist in the “greening” of the buildings under local Jewish ownership or management. The American Jewish community controls millions of square feet of public space, from federation buildings to JCCs to synagogues to schools to senior homes and more. Our collective behavior can significantly reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases nationwide, create healthier indoor space for all those who work and visit our buildings, save money that can ultimately be used to bolster salaries of our communal workers and support greater programming from pre-school to senior centers, and serve as a model for others, both for-profit and not-for-profit concerns, in our communities.

But synagogues and schools and others cannot do this themselves. The learning curve, the options, and the financing to pursue greening strategies are often daunting to organizations that want to do the right thing (never mind those who are skeptical). Going green often requires the investment of human resources that these individual organizations do not possess. This can be easily remedied, however, if each sizable Jewish community created one centralized office that can assist all local Jewish organizations, encouraging them and guiding them in their green building efforts. This office could be based in the Federation, or the JCC. This would not only assist in our environmental agenda but also serve to strengthen the ties among a community’s various Jewish organizations.

Many of our communities are already blessed with Jews involved in the green building trade, green waste management, green consumer knowledge, green energy experience. And many of these Jews are not yet engaged in the Jewish community. We can both benefit from their knowledge and experience and, perhaps for the first time, make meaningful and potentially enduring connections with them.

3) Green Fund. We need a handful of influential funders and philanthropists to come together to use their moral and financial suasion to move this issue toward the top of the American Jewish agenda, and as importantly, to embed it in our contemporary Jewish identity. Just as we think of American Jewry as committed to supporting Israel, working toward tikkun olam, and protecting human life and dignity around the world, so we now need to add: the protection, sustainable management, and attitude of awe toward this miraculous but fragile world of ours.

Through the leverage of a Green Fund, a group of philanthropists can inspire and enable the Jewish community to fully engage in this work. They can guide a national discussion on Jewish environmentalism so that every school, every federation and every synagogue embraces and explores this issue. They can entice and grow the field with a call for RFPs (requests for proposals) for new or expandable programs, seeking out the most creative and most successful, They can fund Jewish environmental classes and programs to create more informed lay leaders, train and support Jewish environmental professionals, and build an educated and committed populace. They can assist in the initial funding of local Jewish Offices of Sustainability. They can support the pioneering and ground-breaking work of national Jewish environmental organizations such as Teva, Isabella Friedman, Hazon Kayam Farm, the Jewish Farm School and others that work on both ends of the learning continuum, teaching the teachers and the learners.

A Green Fund created and guided by Jewish philanthropists can bring welcome and beneficial energies, wisdom and freshness to our community.

With these three initiatives: restoring a sacred engagement with the environmental to the status of a fundamental mitzvah that commands our attention and behavior; creating mechanisms to green our Jewish built-environment; and providing the social, moral and financial leadership to make this happen, we can pursue our sacred mission, substantively and spiritually re-connect with many Jews, and contribute to the healing of this wounded world.

folded green paper

A confession: I use Kleenex. Yes, I have heard that Kleenex brand tissues are not good for the environment. I even tried buying Seventh Generation tissue instead, when I could find it. But it wasn't soft enough. So, I continued to buy Kleenex. And then this morning, this happened:

I was in my car and reached down to open the new box of Kleenex tissues that I had placed there a little while ago. Upon enjoying that delightful little zzhhipp-ing sound the cardboard makes as you rip off the closure, I saw peeking out at me a folded slip of deep green paper.

Thinking, whoa, what a lovely surprise. What sort of gift could this be? A coupon for my next purchase? Had I unsuspectingly bought their billionth box and now would enjoy a lifetime of free tissues? Delighted at this unexpected joy, I opened the accordion-folded 3 x 5 inch paper.

It was none of that. Instead, it was a creative act of guerilla advocacy waged by Greenpeace. Now, I am not always a fan of Greenpeace. Their tactics often offend more refined (not to mention civil) political sensibilities. But I have to tip my hat to them when they are this inventive.

They had figured out that they can slip this folded piece of paper into the very slot left for you to insert your thumb to open the box. And on this neatly folded paper, they tell you what you didn't want to hear:

Kleenex is made from 100% virgin fiber, which, in Greenpeace's words, "has a devastating impact on ancient forests."

They have approached Kimberly-Clark (the parent of Kleenex) and asked them to use recycled materials for their tissues. Kimberly-Clark, according to this insert, has declined, saying that we, the customer, don't care.

Clearly, we do. And we need to tell them so.

Here is what I plan to do:

1) Visit www.StopKleenex.com and see what I can find there.
2) Call Kimberly-Clark (1-888-525-8388) and tell them that I care and will no longer buy their product until they change their tree harvesting and manufacturing ways.
3) Buy handkerchiefs. I know, I know. Tissues seem so much more aesthetic and sanitary. Who wants to carry that stuff around in their pockets? But now that I think about it, my father used handkerchiefs his entire life. Maybe if he was bed-ridden with the flu or bad cold, he might have used tissues, but otherwise, a white handkerchief. For messy colds, for guests and cars, I will continue to buy appropriate tissues, whenever possible. In the meantime, I am on the hunt for a nice handkerchief.

advocacy and ethics

Advocacy and Ethics

Advocacy and ethics are the two poles on which environmental activism rests. They are the opposites that drive and fulfill each other.

Advocacy is public; ethics, personal. Advocacy is behavioral; ethics, attitudinal, essential. Advocacy is what you do; ethics define who you are. Advocacy is about winning (appropriately so); ethics about being.

Without ethics, advocacy has no guide, no imperative, no claim. Without advocacy, ethics has little expression, remains sterile, wanders homeless.

Advocacy is specific (one fights for the trees or CAFE standards). To be effective, advocacy must be selective, linear: choose a particular issue, develop arguments to gain fellow adherents, create coalitions and work toward its passage or approval. The question advocacy asks is: how do we get from here to there?

Ethics, on the other hand, focuses not on the specifics but on the whole; not on the externals of an issue, but the internal aspects of beliefs, behaviors and personal commitment. The question ethics asks is: who am I; and therefore what should I do?

When guided by environmental advocacy, we must choose our battles. Pesticides, global warming, the cattle industry, local food. But when guided by environmental ethics, these battles are all of a piece. When guided by environmental ethics, we know that the environment cannot be carved up into causes, bills and organizations; it is whole, inseparable. We know that we are not apart from it but one with it; that while our appetites and designs may be infinite, the stuff of the world is finite. That we are not gods who may with impunity strut and thrust our whims upon the globe, but transient beneficiaries of the earth's bounty. And that just as we have been blessed to enjoy the fullness of the earth's gifts handed to us by our ancestors, so we must bless those who come after us.

Though advocacy may exhaust us; ethics inspires us. And while ethics motivate us, advocacy gets the work done.

Ethics is the mind; advocacy the hand. We need them both.

nobel prize

Many times, the Nobel Peace Prize serves to acknowledge and celebrate past achievements. This year's prize - given to Al Gore - does more. It both celebrates and PROMOTES the very cause that it is celebrating: motivating people to tend carefully and urgently to this precious world of ours.

May our work be bolstered by this worthy award.

A quote for the day from "Inspiring Progress: religions' contributions to sustainable development" by Gary T. Gardner:

"Suppose that every time a product designer, factory manager, or consumer uses an economic resource - when a car is designed, a batch of steel is ordered, or a paper towel is used - each of these economic actors gives a prayer of thanks for the resource bounty before them, and promises to use only as much as they really need." (p. 58)

It might change not just our attitude toward all sorts of consumption but our behavior as well. Which is precisely the power of the blessings we say before and after eating; when we see a tree in bloom; or wear something we have never worn before. Perhaps we can bolster our daily acts with even more spiritual disciplines. As we go through tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, perhaps we can pause before everything we use and offer such a prayer of awareness and gratitude. And then at the end of the day, we can see how exhausted we are at the abundance of our expressions; whether we needed to use quite as much as we did. And what we must do to preserve the existence of such bounties, and such blessings.