An  Innovative Initiative To Avert a Climate Catastrophe and Leave a Habitable, Healthy, Environmentally Sustainable World For Future Generations

Because climate threats are increasingly apparent, Jewish Vegan Life (JVL) has started  a unique, potentially game-changing initiative to reduce them, called “Shofar for Change.” It involves a Zoom event featuring  the blowing of the shofar at the Kotel on September 29, 11 AM US Eastern time  (6 PM Israel time), followed by several talks on the seriousness of climate threats and how it can be prevented. JVL hopes the shofar blasts will awaken people to the following realities.

1. The world is rapidly approaching a climate catastrophe.
2. Significant shifts to plant-based diets are essential to efforts to avert it.
3. Animal-based diets seriously violate fundamental Jewish teachings on protecting our health, reading animals with compassion, protecting the environment, conserving natural resources, reducing hunger, and pursuing peace..
4. There are now many plant-based substitutes for meat and other animal products.
5. The above points must be widely recognized and acted upon to give future generations a chance to have a decent world.

There is a robust consensus, composed of 97% of climate experts, all the primary science academies that have taken a position on the issue, and most importantly, over a thousand peer-reviewed articles in respected scientific journals, that climate change is a significant threat to humanity, caused mainly by human activities.

Every decade since the 1970s has been hotter than the previous decade. All 24 years in this century are among the 25 hottest years since temperature records were first recorded worldwide around 1880. 2023 was the hottest year worldwide, and 2024 will likely surpass it. All 13 months, from June 2023 to June 2024, broke monthly temperature records.

As a result, glaciers, ice caps, and permafrost are rapidly melting, seas are rapidly rising, and lakes and rivers are drying up in many regions. There has also been a significant increase in the frequency and severity of heat waves, droughts, wildfires, storms, floods, and other climate events.

 Israel is especially threatened by climate change because the Mediterranean area is warming up much faster than the world average. Climate experts project a hotter, drier Middle East that will increase instability, terrorism, and war. The rising Mediterranean Sea could also inundate the coastal plain that contains much of Israel’s population and infrastructure. 

In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an organization composed of climate experts from many countries, warned that “unprecedented changes” were needed by 2030 for the world to have a chance to avert a climate catastrophe. Despite that warning, atmospheric carbon dioxide has continued to increase, indicating that the world is still heading in the wrong direction regarding climate change. 

 Because of  many dire warnings, like the one above, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated that the climate situation is a “Code Red for Humanity” and that “delay means death.”

As devastating as recent climate events have been, prospects for the future are even more frightening for four critical reasons:

• While all the recent severe climate events have occurred at a time when the global temperature has risen about 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the start of the Industrial Revolution, climate experts project that this will at least double by the end of this century, triggering far worse climate events.
• While climate experts believe that 350 parts per million (ppm) of atmospheric carbon dioxide is a threshold value to avert the worst effects of climate change, the world has surpassed 420 ppm, and it is increasing at 2 – 3 ppm per year.
• Climate experts fear that self-reinforcing positive feedback loops (vicious cycles) could result in an irreversible tipping point, causing global warming to rise uncontrollably, with catastrophic results. One example is that more air conditioning will be used as the world gets hotter, meaning that more fossil fuel will be burned. This will release more greenhouse gases, heating the atmosphere even more, resulting in still more use of air conditioning, etc.

Everything possible must be done to avert a climate catastrophe. A major shift to plant-based diets is especially important for two reasons.First, cows and other ruminants emit methane, a greenhouse gas over 80 times per unit weight as potent as CO2 in heating the atmosphere. Second, about 43 percent of the world’s ice-free land is now used for grazing and growing feed crops for farmed animals. If much of that land was reforested, the additional trees would sequester much atmospheric CO2, reducing it from its current very dangerous level, potentially leaving a habitable, healthy, environmentally sustainable world for future generations.

Another vital reason to shift away from animal-based diets is that they violate at least six fundamental Jewish teachings:

While Judaism emphasizes tsa’ar ba’alei chayim, the prohibition against causing needless suffering for animals, animals are raised for food today under cruel conditions, in crowded, confined cells, where they are denied fresh air, exercise, and any natural existence.

While Judaism mandates that we be very careful about preserving our health and our lives, animal-centered diets have been linked to heart disease, several forms of cancer, and other degenerative illnesses.

While Judaism stresses that we are to share our bread with the hungry, seventy percent of the grain grown in the United States and over one-third of the grain grown worldwide is fed to animals destined for slaughter, as millions of people die annually because of hunger and its effects.

While Judaism teaches that “the earth is the Lord’s” and we are partners with God in preserving the world and seeing that the earth’s resources are properly used, a flesh-centered diet requires the wasteful use of food and other resources, and results in much pollution.

While Judaism stresses that we must seek and pursue peace and that violence results from unjust conditions, flesh-centered diets, by wasting valuable resources, help to perpetuate the widespread hunger and poverty that eventually lead to instability and war.

Fortunately, it is much easier to follow a plant-based diet today because of the abundance of plant-based substitutes that look, feel, and taste similar to meat and other animal products.

The above factors must be recognized and acted upon to have a chance to avert a climate catastrophe and leave a habitable, healthy, and environmentally sustainable world for future generations. Therefore, JVL will email messages about their initiative to thousands of rabbis and other Jewish leaders. I have arranged with JVL to match donations to them up to $25,000. Donations will be used to place ads with the above essential messages online and in Jewish publications in the US, Israel, and the UK. 

So, please donate generously to JVL to further this potentially game-changing initiative. It is the most important thing you can do to help reduce a positive future.

You can learn more about Jewish Vegan Life and make a tax-deductible donation at JewishVeganLife.org.

This bold initiative must succeed. There is NO Planet B or practical Plan B.

---