William McDonough

Sarah Saxon is a senior at Roland Park Country School working as a BJEN intern this spring. She authored this guest entry.

In 2006, a man named William McDonough came to speak at my school. I have to give some credit to him on this blog, because his speech introduced me to the world of environmentalism, and he had a very profound impact on my way of thinking.

There are two main things I remember about his speech (Besides the fact he is a very persuasive speaker):

1. “Waste is Food” – This is one point that William McDonough mentioned multiple times. He talked about the cycle of stuff. And by stuff, I literally mean stuff. McDonough talked about a circular pattern off stuff instead of the linear pattern that exists today. This is both in the technological world and the environmental world. McDonough’s idea is that we should eliminate the idea of waste all together (not just reduce it). For example, why shouldn’t we be able to use our TV until it is too old, go back to the TV supplier, turn it in, and say “I would like a new one please?” Then the supplier could use parts from the old TV for something else.

2. “All children of all species for all time” – The other thing that McDonough mentioned that really stuck with me, is that the point of making the world better isn’t just about helping humans, it’s about creating a safe place to live for “all children of all species of all time”. To me, this pretty much covers it. If we strive to make a place that is safe for all children of all species of all time, we haven’t let anyone out.

In the time since McDonough spoke at my school (3 years ago), I like the rest of the general public have become a lot more aware of the environmental issues that exist today (besides global warming and greenhouse gases). I have also become a lot more aware of the political side of “saving the environment”.

I have learned more about William McDonough and his effort to help the environment. He talks about “remaking the way we make things” (in his book Cradle to Cradle) and “the Second Industrial Revolution”. McDonough states that the first industrial revolution was what got us into this mess and second one will be about getting us out of it. Both, he claims, are simply about design.

If you don’t know or haven’t heard anything about William McDonough, I suggest looking him up. He is very insightful. You may not agree with everything he says; he is very strong willed. However, I think he has a lot of good things to say.

LEED Certification

Sarah Saxon is a senior at Roland Park Country School working as a BJEN intern this spring. She authored this guest entry.

When I was brainstorming with Rabbi Cardin about some of the things I could talk about as a guest writer on the blog, we came up with the idea of the new athletic complex at my school. In particular, the new types of landscaping and water management systems that have been employed. When my school reconstructed the building and surrounding area, they made sure it was LEED certified by the U.S. Green Building Council. Some examples of LEED criteria involve storm water management, building orientation, irrigation and use of potable water, and resources involved in building construction.

The interesting thing about our athletic complex is how we went about dealing with some of the criteria. First of all, I have to say that the school did not just reconstruct our gym. They took the two grass fields next to the gym and turned them into turf fields. Also, they did a lot of new landscaping. And, second of all, the school had to do all of this keeping in mind that there is a natural habitat (which we call the back woods) that exists behind the building.

Here is the # 1 coolest fact about the new landscaping – it does not require any irrigation. What most people don’t realize is that if you plant flora that is native to the area in which it is being planted, it does not need to be watered. It is already acclimated the natural climate.

Here is the # 1 coolest fact about the new storm water management system - the two turf fields I mentioned above, both have cisterns underneath of them. When it rains, the storm water is absorbed by the fields, filtered, and then stored in the cisterns. The cisterns then release the storm water slowly out into the back woods over time.

Landscaping and storm water management are both very important when considering a building’s effect on the environment. Non-native landscaping uses a lot of unnecessary water that comes right from the municipal water supply. And, poor storm water management can lead to serious soil erosion and runoff.

Pimlico Race Track - Park or Office Park?

Sarah Saxon is a senior at Roland Park Country School working as a BJEN intern this spring. She authored this guest entry.

Last weekend was the Preakness. On the day of the race, I was in the car with some friends. While thinking about the fact that the people who owned the track were considering putting it up for auction, I absentmindedly said, “I think they should turn it into a park.” To which one of the passengers replied, “Oh yeah, that would be a good place for an office park”. I said, “No, like a real park”. In turn the passenger said, “Who do you expect to pay for it? The city already has enough parks. Why not just plant some trees?”

I’m not trying to make the passenger out to be a bad guy who is against environmentalism. On the contrary, he’s absolutely for it. However, I don’t think he understood the nature of my comment. Just like office buildings, parks are a part of industrialism, and they definitely require the use of natural resources. Unlike office buildings, however, parks sustain two types of life. Of course they sustain the environment (at least better than office buildings), but they also help sustain human life.

I think sometimes when people consider sustainability, they cut humans out of the picture and just look at the environment. But, sustainability isn’t just about the environment. It requires a balance between environmental issues, social issues, and economical issues. You cannot ignore people when you are trying to better the Earth. Advocating for the environment shouldn’t just be about scolding humans for progress and industrialization; and advocating isn’t just about spending all of your efforts on the environment because humans are such a huge part of the global environment.

So maybe one day, the owners will take Pimlico Race Track - a place where people gamble and get drunk - and turn it into a park (not an office park), where people can exist in equilibrium with the environment.

Own Alone

The news today tells us that circulation is up in Maryland libraries. Instead of buying books, going to movies, renting videos, or otherwise spending money on alternative leisure time activities, people are returning to the old-fashioned, tried-and-true free resources of their local libraries.

The simple experience of walking into our library offers a glimpse of successful community-sharing we rarely notice and hardly ever celebrate. This is a place we all can come for pleasure, growth, leisure, company. Even more, there is a physical bond that it establishes between us. The books that I check out today might have been in your lap yesterday. The book I hold today may be toted about in your bag next month. I for one bemoan the loss of the Due Date sheet in the back of the book. It told me a bit of the history of the travels of the book, but even more, a bit of the interests of my community. I felt closer to my neighbors back in those days.

But this reminded me of something more I learned this past week that astonished me. In Europe, or so I am told, people do not own their hot water heaters. They only lease them. After all, it was explained to me, people don't really want hot water heaters. They want hot water. Yet to buy a hot water heater, which is the only way to get hot water here in the states, means a ten year investment, locking out the benefits of advances in technology and energy efficiency that develops over those ten years. No one is invested in the upkeep (companies even make money in the repairs) and no one cares where the broken, old heater goes after its useful life. No wonder we have such a waste-rich economy.

In Europe, the company owns the hot water heater, is responsible for its upkeep, is incentivized to have them be the most efficient (or the customer will rent from a competitor), and is responsible for taking them back and properly disposing of them, or better, recycling much of them, at the end of their usable life.

Indeed, why do we need to own things we don't want just to get the stuff they produce? What if we could buy the use of things to get the results we want without the burden of ownership, inefficiency, upkeep and waste?

This is a new way of thinking for most of us, and a new model for building sustainable businesses. We do this in some sectors of the marketplace: we lease cars, we rent homes. But what if we expanded that thinking. On the one hand, there should always be free libraries for all the books and films and things we want to read or see or use but don't need or want to own. But what if, for example, when we wanted to own a book, we could download the text of the book to an electronic book and have the book without having its "stuff". Amazon's Kindle works on this principle. The books you purchase for download come right to your hands via your Kindle, but also sit in your Amazon account for reading from any monitor or computer. And nothing of substance changes hands but zeroes and ones (and a bit of money).

Now I will be the first to tell you all the limitations of Kindle, so I am not urging you to go out and buy it. But they are on the right track. As are the outfits that run Zip-cars, the car-sharing company; bike-share groups; handbag swaps; clothing swaps; free-cycle, neighborhood groups that offer for free usable stuff we no longer want; etc.

This new approach of de-coupling the benefits of something from the (permanent) ownership of something promises to emerge as a key player in our reconstructed economy. It will be more affordable, more sustainable, and more efficient. And it will build stronge, caring, mutually-responsible ties among the various members of the community. We just need to open our minds, change our way of thinking, and reconnect .

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.

the trouble, and promise, of lists

The word “sustainability” is taking root in society. Along with the word "green," it is becoming the official term of art for the cultural transformation we need to survive on this planet. The question is, though, amid its popularity, what does it mean? Or more precisely, what do people think when they hear the word "sustainability"? And what does that predict about our ability to make the societal changes necessary to heal the earth?

Dr. Daniel Sherman, a professor of environmental policy and decision-making at the University of Puget Sound, asked this very question to members of his campus community and came up with a challenging finding. "The dominant association," he writes of the word 'sustainability', "is a list of prescribed practices for [people] to adopt, or feel guilty for failing to adopt."

There is good news here, and not-so-good news. The good news is that people are increasingly convinced that there is a problem and that they can, and should, do something about it. In response, sometimes they do; and sometimes they don't. (Wait. That's still part of the good news.)

The not-so-good news, he suggests, is that this to-do list approach either supplants or defers a deeper understanding of the true meaning. Sustainability does not, after all, mean an isolated list of discrete things to do. It reflects a 360 degree attitude that guides the everyday acts of our lives. It is a belief that we need to use things fairly, wisely and well today so that others can use them fairly, wisely and well tomorrow. To treat sustainability as a list of "shoulds" is imagining it to be so much less than it is.

While not great news, this is not bad news either. For sometimes, lists can transcend themselves. When we begin to learn something, we often begin with lists. As a child we are taught to say thank you, I am sorry, and please in certain situations. But we also learn, as we grow older, that those words are not isolated acts, not numbered items on a limited to-do list of politeness. Rather, they are markers, symbols, of deeper, intersecting values of gratitude, remorse, humility, caring, kindness. What begins with lists can morph into values and beliefs that define our lives. Put another way, over time, we become what we do. And one day, we realize we no longer need to check the list to know how to behave.

Sometimes, though, lists never rise above themselves. They remain external enumerations of things that we might forget if we don’t write them down. In such a case, they never transcend their particularity. They never become more than the things they are. We never see the big picture. They do not change our spirit or the way we choose to live on this earth.

Perhaps what Dr. Sherman's findings are telling us is not that sustainability is misunderstood, but rather that it is in its first stage of absorption. We may in fact be on the way to making the values of sustainability part of our personal and cultural identity. If we successfully make that transformation, we are witnessing the birth of a new era. Let's do it.

living fences, furniture and buildings

This is so amazing, imaginative and suggestive of the miracles that lie unseen before us. Enjoy the visions it conjures up. (from the JCPA Insider)

Israel's Plantware Creates Living Urban Jungle.A group of young Israeli idealists have found a way to manipulate roots from trees such as figs, and to grow them into useful structures. The aim is to one day build the structures of homes from living trees - and save the planet at the same time. Currently the company has taken its patented methods and built park benches, playgrounds, streetlamps and gates - all from trees. To read more and see video footage visit Israel21c.org.

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.

World Water Day

Today is Purim, a day of celebratory abandonment, when we read a raucous and bawdy book about the Jewish people's triumph over hatred and external threats, eat and drink a bit too much, and otherwise act as if we hadn't a care in the world. We all deserve one day a year to slough off the burdens and worries life places upon us.

But Purim ends tonight, as Shabbat blessedly begins, and reality returns. Coinciding with Shabbat this year is World Water Day. At the urging of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, the UN designated March 22 as the annual day "to draw international attention to the critical lack of clean, safe drinking water worldwide." Over a billion people worldwide lack adequate, safe drinking water. And the numbers are likely to grow as climate change threatens annual rainfall patterns and the rapid melting of glaciers robs many areas of a slower, steady seasonal water supply.

This week, click on www.worldwaterday.net to learn more about the problem, what is being done and what you can do. And check out www.thinkoutsidethebottle.org. This group is spearheading a return to drinking local instead of relying on bottled water (40% of which is tap water anyway!). Bottled water is not the solution for several reasons: the manufacturing, packaging, transportation and disposal of these bottles harms the environment, and wastes valuable resources, including good money that could be spent elsewhere.

Think Outside the Bottle website tells us that: Each year more than 4 billion pounds of PET plastic bottles end up in landfills or as roadside litter. Making bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil last year – enough fuel for more than 1 million U.S. cars for a year - and generated more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide. Never mind the billions of dollars spent unnecessarily which could better go to purchase or support things and services of real value.

And read about the increasing privatization of erstwhile public water supplies to meet the water demands of private water bottling companies.

Learn more about what you can do to do limit the use of the bottle, and to make it healthier. Many companies, businesses, buildings, organizations and schools are going bottle-free. Increasingly, conferences and hotels are going bottle-free. Thinkoutsidethebottle has a pledge you can take. Check it out.

You can still carry water around in your own reusable containers - just make sure it is the right kind of plastic (not the kind that leach unhealthy chemicals) or better, metal. More and more manufacturers are making attractive metal liquid containers that we can refill, wash and use again instead of disposable, one-use, throw-away containers. (And even if they can be recycled, reuse is higher on the sustainability scale than recycling, which still requires lots of additional resources to collect, transport, re-make and send back out into the consumer stream.) It can make a great gift to that someone who has everything.

But, meanwhile, today is still Purim. So while the sun shines, celebrate hilariously.

Shabbat shalom

Our New Prius

We bought a Prius today. Proud to say that both of our family cars are hybrids. It works for us now that our children are grown or growing. This is a good time to buy a hybrid, if a smaller car works for you. Car sales are down and dealers' eagerness to deal is up. As always, don't accept the first offers you get. Give them time to call you back with their next offer. And most likely you can do even better than folks like us who are a bit of a soft touch.

Still, it will take us years of high fuel prices to pay for the car. But we didn't choose the car for the savings. We chose it for the world's children; for the health of the environment; and to make it easier for us to get in to the car each day and turn the motor on.

I usually find it hard to say goodbye to a family car. I usually concoct some sort of private decommissioning or honorable discharge or farewell ceremony for me and my machine, thanking the car for tending well to my family; keeping us safe on all the roads we traveled; enriching our lives by the places it allowed us to go. I have less need to say a sentimental goodbye to this car. Perhaps it is because it only got 20 miles to the gallon. Perhaps it was because it never carried a Reisner baby. Perhaps because I really imagined it to be my husband's car all along. But this time, it is not just a car we are letting go. It is a whole innocent way of life. We now know that all the things we buy, from cars to cleaning supplies to clothes and toys, have an impact on the environment. So we must be careful, thoughtful, about what we buy.

ownerless energy

Imagine if the world's power source was not located in any one state or nation; not owned, controlled or abused by any one company. Imagine an energy source that did not have to be dug up or blown off or piped across any expanse of land. Imagine an energy source that did not have to be transported in tankers, or trunks; whose distribution was managed by the forces of nature and not the whim of CEOs; whose harnessing was tamed by the creativity of the human mind and not the brute, crude force of destruction. Imagine an energy source that could not be blown up or blown down by terrorists or storms.

Imagine an energy source that did not make any one wealthy, but that made everyone rich.

Such is the nature of wind and solar energy - and who knows what other decentralized, readily available, on-site, safe, sustainable, no waste energy sources.

No wonder the energy companies are fighting it. There is no profit in the stuff of sun or wind. They can't hold or own or control the sun's rays or the wind's force. But there is profit in the machines that capture their energy; and in the green economy of manufaturing through recycling and the ever-expanding need for a service economy that can meet the infinite needs of the human spirit for care, companionship, and culture.

A new era of economics and spirit will have to dawn for us to save this planet, and ourselves. We will have to move from a disposable economy to a renewable economy; and from an economy of stuff to an economy of service. We can do this - and even more, we will be a better people, a happier people, if and when we do.

e-books

Once upon a time, I loved books. What is more romantic than floor to ceiling bookshelves, lining entire walls stocked with a universe of books. Big books, little books, fat ones and slender ones, bright ones and dark ones. Sliding ladders that promise access to the elusive upper levels, step-stools that enable you not only to reach up for a book just out of reach, but to sit down to browse books toeing the edges of the floor. While I am not lucky enough to enjoy the extravagance, or gift, or indulgence of a high-storied, brimming home library, I do have bookcases in my foyer, my office, our den (both of them) and even our bedroom. I would venture to guess that we have more built-in bookcases in our bedroom than most people have in their entire homes.

And yet, today, after yesterday's adventures in housecleaning, I find myself with four bags of books I will be toting around. Two bags of books I hope to give away to general used-book fairs (if anyone will take them and use them), one bag to Jewish libraries (if they will take them) and one bag of books to return to a university library. So, on a sustainability count: how do we best handle old, unwanted books (you cannot recycle hardbound books)? I have to hope that all that paper will somehow be recaptured, although most likely the used books will be thrown away. And no matter where I take them, I have to plan a most efficient route to limit the amount of gasoline I use to redistribute these books.

As much as I love owning books (and when put on bookcase on an outer wall - they serve as great insulation!), I have begun to yearn for an aesthetically pleasing, easily portable, all-purpose e-book. How great it would be if I could hold a sensuously designed "book" and read any paper, any magazine, and any book from any library anywhere in the world at a place anywhere I am in the world. Downloadable both via the internet AND via satellite anywhere that satellites work.

Used books - indeed all currently existing books of any value - would increase in value as this old technology of paper became a way of the past. We would save enormous amounts of resources from trees, to waste in producing paper (even recycled paper) to transportation of the raw materials, the paper from the mill, the books from the printer and the trip to the used-book fairs or the dump.

Not only that, access to knowledge would increase - for I could both graphically, and affordably, get many more publications and books than I can both physically and financially afford now.

Perhaps if I live long enough I will see it. For that day is coming - and even us early nay-sayers or doubters will come to see that the act of reading can remain sensually satisfying and intellectually fulfilling, and still be enviromentally sound.

Hurry! We are waiting.

if someone asks you...

If someone asks you, "okay, what can I do to help the environment?", start them with easy steps.

here are five:

Reduce your water heater temperature setting by 5 degrees

Buy five canvas bags and use them wherever and whenever you go into a store. (Not just at a grocery store. Any and every store where they would otherwise give you a disposable bag.)

Drive five less miles every week. (And if they can, ask them to drive five less miles three days every week!)

Keep showers to under five minutes.

Change five light bulbs to energy efficient ones. (If they have changed all of theirs, have them go to work on their parents, children, friends.)

Oh, and one more. Talk to five friends about the importance of changing personal behavior to be more environmentally sustainable.

proper orientation

I am basking in the blessings of passive solar heating. The thermostat is set for 67. The air outside is 25 - the coldest day of the winter by far. And my office feels like 71 or 72 (more in the part where I did not pull down the shade). On the brightest days, the glory of the sun bleaches out my computer screen so completely that I have to move (or read a book instead!). In the summer, the towering beech, elm and poplar trees block the rays so the room is bright but not blinding.

We were not so wise as to orient the house this way. It was like this when we bought it: front facing south framed by large, gracious trees. But we did build this room. And it is the one I spend most of my time in at home. Daily I am reminded of the subtle ways we can work with the earth to enjoy its rhythms, and blend them with ours.

Which leads me to believe that those of us who are living with pre-existing structures and therefore limited abilities to make them totally sustainable nonetheless have options and opportunities to upgrade them to green. When we renovate, buy furniture, replace windows or a furnace, we can do our bit. Even before that, we can plant trees, wear great sweaters. (We can even learn how to make them and simplify yet enhance our gifting. Start with scarves -much needed and much easier.)

And then there is our stuff. I cleaned bookshelves and clothes closets today. I will ache tomorrow, I know. But I now have bags of things to give away. That is the good part. The thing I wonder about is - why and how did I get all that stuff? Did I really need all those tops when I bought them? Were those books and gifts all necessary? Wouldn't I have been just as pleased if a gift had been given to a good cause in my name? My brother has begun giving to Jewish Women's International on Mother's Day in the name of all the women in his life. So instead of wasting money on hothouse flowers or candy or tchotchkes - all of which seem sweet until they die, get consumed in abundance or need to be dusted or moved - he uses this opportunity to do what he would not have done otherwise - help battered women put their lives back together.

We don't speak enough about conservation these days. And certainly not about our consuming habits. It is downright dangerous to the American economy to promote buying less. But what kind of long-term healthy economy can we have if it is predicated on digging more stuff out of the earth, or even recycling and making more than we truly need (that too creates production waste, transportation waste, packaging waste, etc). What if we built an economy on the minimum of goods consumption and the maximum of service consumption: paying teachers more; recruiting more nurses; getting more social workers to watch after children-at-risk; hiring more home health aides to care for the elderly who choose and are able to age-in-place with a little help from some friends and aides.

What if we shifted our GNP from counting mostly stuff produced to counting hours people actually helped and worked with each other?

What would happen then?

Nobel Gore

Al Gore used the bully pulpit of the Nobel Peace Prize to remind the world we are running out of time. "Today," he said, "we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun."


It is a stark reminder that this is a problem that grows with every passing moment. It does not stand still. Neither can we. While we work to change our laws, our technologies, our culture, we must work to change our personal behaviors as well. Conservation, while not the sole answer, is a beginning. Light bulbs can't save the world, but they can contribute mightily to reducing your waste. In addition to changing my most used lightbulbs to CFLs, I decided to try an LED in the light over my kitchen sink, without a doubt the light that stays on the most in the house.

True, it is expensive. $30 for a 40 watt bulb. But the bulb is attractive, the light is as radiant as the full moon, as soothing, peaceful and blue as a moonshadow. And it lasts up to 1000 times longer while drawing a fraction of the energy (I think I was told it drew .07 percent of the energy of an incandescent bulb of comparable size). My son assures me it will outlast me.

If I go somewhere within a mile's distance and the weather and my schedule permit, I often walk these days. I try to build in the time (15 minutes to walk vs 5 to drive). Not so hard after all. But assuredly not easy either.

Bottom line, there are some things we can do to save the earth that take almost no extra effort: recycling, turning off lights, changing light bulbs (which we need to do anyway, only with CFLs or LEDs a lot less often). But there are some things that will take more effort - organizing our lives so we drive less, consume less, forgo items with wasteful packaging, spend more for items that are not made in China. But our investment today will save us lives, comfort and even money in the not too distant future.

One more thing: Gore got the Nobel PEACE prize, not the science prize. Environmental health will avoid major conflicts based on growing scarcity, disappearing land masses, refugees, sickness, need.

What more do we need to motivate us to act?

Hans Jonas

Hans Jonas was a 20th century philosopher who - though little known in the popular American environmentalist movement - is a thinker we would do well to (re)discover.

One powerful quote by Jonas (a Jew, who also was a passionate philosopher who spent some time in Israel after fleeing Germany before WWII and ultimately settling in America) is:

"Act so that the effects of your actions are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life". This is the core of sustainability.

And another:

"It was once religion which threatened us with a last judgment at the end of days. It is now our tortured planet which predicts the arrival of such a day without any heavenly intervention. The late revelation... is the outcry of mute things themselves that we must pull together in curbing our powers over creation, lest we perish together on a wasteland of what was creation."


Haunting.

Some key works:

The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of Ethics for the Technological Age (1979

The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology (1966)

"The Outcry of Mute Things" can be found in Mortality and Morality (1996) pp. 201-202

There is a new book out which traces Jonas' Jewish influences: The Life and Thought of Hans Jonas: Jewish dimensions, by Christian Wiese.

I hope to get the book tomorrow.