Bidding 5768 goodbye

The difficulties we are experiencing at the end of this year are certainly making it a pleasure to bid it goodbye. The financial markets worldwide, led by the United States mortgage fiasco, are teetering and fragile. Unemployment is up. Consumer confidence is down. Ethical behavior is in tatters. Basic rights guaranteed under the constitution of the United States are sliced away in the guise of security and our own best interest. How could the Treasury Secretary even imagine, even as a bargaining ploy, to dare ask for the exclusive, non-reviewable, non-challengeable, non-supervised right to single-handedly manage and distribute $700 billion?

And we just learned that despite all our efforts at stabilizing our atmospheric greenhouse gases, they rose 3% this past year, almost all increases coming from the developing world. China - now the largest contributor to greenhouse gases - is responsible for 60% of this 3% increase. The good news is that we in the "developed world" are holding our emissions steady - and soon might be able to see them decline. Just this past week Maryland and nine other eastern states held their first Regional Greenhouse Gas carbon auction, which will both limits CO2 emissions and create funds for alternative energy research.

So while things are looking rough we cannot throw up our hands. Just as China is beginning to crack down on manufacturing abuses that are killing their children, sooner or later China will begin to crack down on the pollution that is killing the world's environment. And when they do, we should be ready with technologies that can help them. Then, we will be the grand exporters and China the importers. We will turn the economic tables. Green industry, research and technology can re-establish America at the head of the technological revolution and enable us to become the green industry leaders. But we must invest well, fully and wisely.

This is not the time to be timid.

We created the money to prosecute a fabricated war; and to bail out a banking industry that could have avoided this whole fiasco if it just did not seek usurious rates from greed-driven mortgages.

We might not think we have any money left over for grand, Manhattan Project like efforts to green our industries, but surely if we do not invest in efficiency technologies, in new renewable forms of energy, we will within ten years be spending billions of dollars we also do not have to take care of people displaced by - and repair their homes damaged in - increasingly angry storms, spend more money on a gallon of clean water than a gallon of gasoline when local water systems are polluted and unhealthy, heat and cool our homes with over-priced energy that continues to degrade the environment.

The environmental picture is not looking much better despite all our efforts. But we cannot stop - rather must work harder. How do we do that and not give in to despair? What keeps us going?

No doubt we each have our own answer. In no small measure it is the company we keep, the comforting and encouraging presence of those who care just as much as we. And just like the star thrower - who threw back all the starfish he could, even thought there were many more he could not - we do what we can, hoping that cumulatively someday it will all add up to something big. No doubt someday it will.

And some of us keep going for the pure joy we get from less, from a life of increased simplicity. From buying less, and wasting less, and disturbing the world less. Surprisingly, the less gives me so much more - a greater appreciation of all, an awareness of worlds in littler things and individual acts. Being green isn't just good; it is fundamentally, life-alteringly, fulfilling.

My very best wishes to you all for a healthy, sweet, green new year, filled with its full share of blessings that will heal this fractured world of ours.

Shana tova

Big News

Two big bits of news for us to celebrate this week:

The No Child Left Inside bill passed overwhelmingly in the House this past week, thanks to its lead sponsor, Maryland's very own John Sarbanes, and to the hard work of BJEN's Ricky Gratz, who also forwarded to me the following email from the NCLI Coordinator, Don Baugh.

In a major victory for our young people, the US House of Representatives
overwhelmingly passed a landmark bill today to support environmental
education.

The bi-partisan vote of 293 to 109 for the No Child Left Inside (NCLI)
Act is a show of support by the House of Representatives for the
importance of outdoor education and environmental literacy.

This bill, sponsored by U.S. Rep. John P. Sarbanes of Maryland, is
designed to help states provide high-quality outdoor and environmental
instruction. The legislation is intended to fix the unintended
consequences of the No Child Left Behind Act by keeping public schools
from becoming too narrow in their focus on standardized testing and by
restoring the rich and academically challenging experiences outdoor
education provides. Nature provides a powerfully motivating classroom.
Children will carry the lessons they learn outdoors for the rest of
their lives.

Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island is the lead Senate sponsor of the No
Child Left Inside Act. The House vote underscores the strong
Congressional support for environmental education and sets the stage for
including NCLI as part of a broader elementary and secondary education
bill in the next Congress.

The No Child Left Inside Coalition, was the driving force behind this
legislation. With 745 organizations, representing over 40 million
people, the people spoke and Congress listened. While the coalition has
members in all 50 states, it was started here on the Bay, by CBF and
others, all with fire in their gut on this issue. Please congratulate
the founding members of the "Dream Team", Charlie Stek, Gary Heath, Jeri
Thomson, Monica Healy, Tom Waldron, Brian Day, Anita Kraemer, Bob Hoyt
and Bo Hoppin who started this effort in September 2006. Also thanks to
the wealth of other experts now on the team from NWF, Sierra Club,
NAAEE, Audubon and Project Learning Tree. A very special thanks to
Rep. Sarbanes and his staff, who were stellar throughout this campaign,
and whose artful lawmaking made this historic moment possible.

Find out more: go to www.cbf.org and click on the No Child Left Inside box.

Also, the first Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative carbon pollution auction will be held in four days, on September 25. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is the first mandatory, market-based effort in the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Ten Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states - including Maryland - will cap and then reduce CO₂ emissions from the power sector 10% by 2018.

States will sell emission allowances through auctions and invest proceeds in consumer benefits: energy efficiency, renewable energy, and other clean energy technologies. RGGI will spur innovation in the clean energy economy and create green jobs in each state.

This is a huge step forward to use the power of the marketplace to spur the marketplace to produce less pollution, more conservation techniques, invest in research and development, create green jobs and technology and turn a profit at the same time.

Keep your eyes open. Let's see how it goes!

Telling the story

"One of the most important needs a comprehensible universe meets is the ability to project the future."

I came across this line in a book by Jeffrey Fager entitled, Land Tenure and the Biblical Jubilee. And suddenly, it all became clear. Sort of. At least some of it did.

Amidst discussions about the origins and meaning of biblical land reform, Fager gives us a refresher course on the necessity of stories. Humans need to make sense of the world, to set all of life's chaotic elements in order, to recall a usable past, and through that, build a vision of an irresistible tomorrow.

"Once a universe is understood, it is possible to know how to live in it because there is a continuity between the descriptive (what is) and the normative (what ought to be)." Bottom line, we cannot live without stories linking what we choose to do today with where we want to be tomorrow.

That is what we seek from our culture. That is what we demand from our religions.

But that is what is so scary about today's non-green behaviors. That is what is so scary about a story captured by the catchy refrain: "Drill, baby, drill". It is a story all about now; it is a story all about me. And it will blithely, crushingly, burden our children of tomorrow

Once upon a time, even as recently as 50 years ago, we had a vision of a future that outlived our meager lives. Time was measured in generations, and generations were measured in decades, not months; success was measured in how much we saved, not spent; our worth was measured by what we gave away, not what we earned; business-folk cared as much about the quality of their product as they did about their stock portfolio.

But with modernity came quarterly earnings reports, global markets, digital clocks. Time was measured in now; eternity is the time between the pressing of the enter button and the repainting of the screen.


Which is to say, we have fallen pray to the moment, the now. Society has failed to give us a vision that can shine past the shelf-life of the food in our refrigerator, much less excite the rest of our tomorrows.

Why not drill now, even though at best it is a quick fix which will leave all humanity in an even deeper hole, with increased environmental, energy and financial distress, but it also eases the tax burden of Alaskan citizens? Why worry now about running out of continental shelves and Alaskan wildlife refuges to dig in and destroy? That is, oh, ten years away. Why not just keep doing what we have always been doing?

Why worry about what happens when we continue to pursue centralized power from materials ripped and sucked and blasted out of the ground, materials that enrich the owners and stakeholders but continue to destabilize the atmosphere and our oceans, and through continued centralization put millions of individuals at risk from hurricanes and other natural disasters, technological glitches and those seeking mischief or destruction?

Why worry about what about green house gas emissions that will continue to degrade our slender slip of breathable atmosphere so that whatever our children seek to do may be for naught anyway for the climate change dice will have been thrown? That is not now.

That is the failure of our current society; the failure to tell us a story about the future that includes the world the day after tomorrow. Especially when that day looks mighty bleak right now.

We used to be able to see further. We used to be able to care more. But the story of buying now and paying later has been so successful. The problem is, few people read far enough to see what happens "later."

The mortgage crisis gives us a glimpse. And with yet another venerable financial firm biting the dust, the sight is far from pretty. Perhaps now we can get people to turn the page and see what later will look in a selfish, "Drill, baby, drill" world. As none other than T. Boone Pickens is telling us: America possesses 3% of the world oil reserves yet uses 25% of the world's oil. You don't have to be a math genius to realize that all the drilling in Alaska and off the coasts will not give us the oil we crave.

It is time for environmentalists, and Jews who care, to speak another story, an irresistible story that we can offer to offset the "Drill here, drill now, no change" narrative. We can't win through lawsuits, or cost savings, or convenience alone. Compelling stories aren't always cheap, and they aren't always convenient. But they fill the soul, and they allow our children to look back, and bless us.

Let's work on crafting, and telling, that story.