Lauren Freedman, board member of the Green Zionist Alliance: The Grassroots Campaign for a Sustainable Israel asks the Jewcology question of the week: What do you think is the most important environmental challenge today?
Lauren Freedman, board member of the Green Zionist Alliance: The Grassroots Campaign for a Sustainable Israel asks the Jewcology question of the week: What do you think is the most important environmental challenge today?
5 Responses
I think the most significant challenge is the increasing consumer lifestyle in the US and around the world
I think our biggest challenge is convincing people that their actions do have consequences. Our trash doesn’t just disappear, it goes to landfills and rivers; clean water is not an unlimited resource; gas guzzling cars are polluting our air and atmosphere. And that matters to everyone, or it should, anyway.
I think one challenge is making Environmental cost effective. Money talks. If the true cost of pollution becomes more apparent and the true economy of conserving and using “green” is recognized, then being environmental will become “mainstream”. In general, to get people to act on a community wide basis takes two elements: the carrot and the stick. Money can be the carrot. Another challenge is to wield the stick without becoming the “Green Police”, as famously portrayed in that commercial for Audi where a man is busted for using an incandescent bulb.
Apathy!
In the United States, it’s working with people who think that climate change is a myth; in Israel it’s working with people who can’t see past the country’s short-term security concerns; in all developed countries, it’s learning how to consume less; and in developing countries, it’s creating sustainable models for growth.