To Till and to Tend

Filling my gas tank is more painful than it used to be.  With gas averaging $3.61 a gallon last week, I'm spending about $45 with each visit to the pump.  Thankfully, my hybrid can drive 550 miles between fill ups – but that does not negate the pain, regardless of the frequency. 

In a rash attempt to alleviate this discomfort, our political leaders have proposed a "gas tax holiday."  For three months, we will (theoretically) spend about 18 cents less per gallon of fuel, or about 2 dollars each visit to the gas station.  Over the course of the summer holiday, the blog Autopia reports that this proposal will save the average American about $30.  Of course, it's unlikely we'll actually see this "tax break" at all, because oil companies will simply raise the price of gas by almost the size of the tax cut.  Americans will continue to pay roughly $3.61 a gallon – but now, our nation will lose billions in potential tax revenue, which could be used to maintain our nation's infrastructure.   And at a time when unemployment rates are already rising, the proposed gas tax holiday could cost more than 300,000 jobs.

The flaws of this approach are clear.  Automobiles are the second largest contributor to US greenhouse gas emissions. Shouldn't we be trying to reduce the amount Americans drive – rather than creating incentives for people to drive more?  And what better way to incentivize carpooling and public transportation than to raise the price of gas?  In fact, the market is already creating its own incentives, with AAA reporting a decline in miles traveled and sales of compact and subcompact cars reaching record highs last month – a trend Ford's chief sales analyst has called "the most dramatic segment shift" in his 31-year career. And if we want to encourage the use of clean-burning alternatives to fossil fuels and coal, shouldn't we give tax breaks for those alternatives?  Sadly, our leaders are painfully misdirected. They are offering a tax break on the behavior they hope to discourage – yet, as I described in my February 12 post, they have failed to extend tax breaks on activities they should reward. 

More than 2000 years ago, our ancestors fell victim to a similar scheme.  Left alone in the wilderness at the base of Mount Sinai, the Israelites built a golden calf in a desperate attempt to find security.  The calf, of course, did not offer any answers.  To the contrary, when Moses descended from the mountain, he rebuked the Israelites and repeated his journey to retrieve the Ten Commandments.  The calf was an exercise in futility – a false prophet that never brought its intended reward.

Today, it is our leaders who offer a false prophet – suggesting $30 could ease a troubled economy or eliminate our dependence on foreign extremists who control our oil markets.  Like the Israelites, we need strong leaders who can guide us through times of adversity.  We need leaders who will require our cars to drive farther on less fuel and who will support a growing transit system, who will invest in research on alternative energy and provide incentives for the people who use it.  In short, we need leaders who have the courage to introduce policies that will actually reduce our dependence on oil – so that it does not matter if prices rise. 

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:

I'm not as happy as I used to be.  Being a climate change policy advocate is a tough job.  My days are spent working on an issue that could mean the end of the world as we know it.  It's scary – and depressing – spending your waking hours reading about the catastrophic implications of sea-level rise and melting ice caps.  Sometimes it's hard to focus on the hundreds of wonderful, positive things that surround me every day – a phone call from an old friend, a morning when my children sleep past 6:00 am – because these daily gifts are over-shadowed by the apocalyptic threat of climate change. 
And these fears persist when I'm not technically at work.  I was reminded of this reality repeatedly this winter when the temperatures in the DC suburbs crept into the 70s.  I found myself briefly enjoying a picnic in the park – only to feel guilty about my happiness.  After all, it seemed like there was a certain "appearance of impropriety:" how could I be happy wearing short sleeves in the middle of winter? And though part of me appreciated the time I saved this winter by not shoveling my front steps or bundling the baby before running an errand – I also believe these things are the necessary inconveniences of living on the East Coast.
It turns out, I'm not alone.  In fact, there's an emerging field of "ecopsychology" – a cadre of about 120 therapists worldwide who explore the relationship between people and the environment.  The New York Times recently wrote about the phenomenon – focusing, in particular, on people with "global warming anxiety."  One therapist teaches the afflicted to follow a "multistep process that is similar to kicking an addiction."   The prescription includes “'fasts'” from shopping, e-mailing, and the news, while cultivating calmer pursuits like meditation or gardening."  Who knows, it might work – as long as the gardening doesn't occur on a warm winter day.
I, for one, am happy that spring is around the corner.  At least then, I don't have to feel guilty about enjoying a walk in the park!

I'm not an economist, but I know the basics:  Lower the price and people will buy more.  It's true for every industry: From the proverbial widgets of freshman economics class to flat-screen TVs and tomatoes -- and renewable energy.  So, if we want to make people buy renewable energy, shouldn't we make it cheaper for them to buy it? Apparently, the Senate fell asleep during Economics 101. 

Last Wednesday, the Senate rejected a stimulus package that included $5.7 billion in tax incentives for (among other things) the installation of energy-efficient appliances and building improvements.  The package would have given tax breaks to wind-farm developers, appliance manufacturers and businesses that install fuel cells.  The Sierra Club reports that this is the third time in only seven months that the Republican leadership has blocked a package of clean-energy tax incentives.

The sad thing is, this should have been a no-brainer.  For one thing, the breaks were signed into law years ago.  Unfortunately, they are set to expire at the end of the year.  The stimulus package provided an easy vote for a short-term fix to extend the tax breaks while Congress works out a long-term solution.  Moreover, these breaks should have been an easy political win.  As Scott Segal, an energy lobbyist in Washington told the LA Times, these are one of the few things that both the Sierra Club and industry can rally behind.  The IPCC was just given a Nobel prize for finding that climate change is "unequivocal."  NASA just declared that 2007 can claim the dubious honor of tying for the second warmest year since the start of the Industrial Revolution.  Shouldn't we be doing whatever we can to encourage the use of low and no-carbon technology?

As Gristmill reported last week, "These tax credits are good economics and good climate policy."  That's clear to me.  In fact, it should be clear to any student in freshman economics.  It's a real shame that it wasn't clear to the U.S. Senate.

… luck blew my way.  After a run on the beach with my father, the two of us joined my mother for breakfast at the hotel, a hotel that was built on a slope rising from the shore.  A mere fifteen minutes later, that slope slowed the waves as they approached.

… 300,000 people weren’t that lucky.  Some were too close to the epicenter of the quake and nothing could have saved them.  Others lived and vacationed by the shore, at places where coral reefs were harvested and sand dunes flattened. 

After the tsunami, scientists began to ask why some waves reached 30 feet, while just a few miles away, the waves peaked at 10.  As nature can destroy, so can it protect.  Coral reefs, sand dunes and mangrove forests are all nature’s way of protecting its shores. Years before, coral harvesters and hotel developers unknowingly made the choice of who will live and who die; whose life possessions swept away and whose kept out of harm’s way.  At the time, their actions were innocent and maybe even noble; after all, they were feeding their families.  But now we know - their actions led to the destruction of their coastal communities. 

We so rarely see the repercussions of our actions. Whether we take the time to consider the chain of events that brought us our strawberries in December, discounted meat at the market, mahogany wood for our cabinets, or Southeast Asian coral for our bathroom decorations, lives and ecosystems change and sometimes even die.

Although there is always more to learn, we already know so much. Let 2008 be a year that we stop ignoring that which we know and act constructively.

At a holiday party last weekend, my three-year old was playing baseball.  Not a particularly noteworthy afternoon – except that the bat was emblazoned with the American flag.  And the ball was an inflatable globe.  My husband declared that this was yet one more example of our boy's genius and precocious insight.  My son was not merely playing ball – he was commenting on our nation's climate policy.  And he hit a homerun. 

Earlier this month, more than 10,000 people, including representatives of over 180 countries, met in Bali, Indonesia to formulate an international response to climate change.  The conference culminated in the adoption of the Bali roadmap, which provides the first step for an international agreement to go into effect when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. 

True to form, the US challenged global efforts to incorporate firm emission reductions in the final document.  The delegates had enough.  At one point, as the US insisted on provisions that would've derailed an agreement, a delegate from Papua New Guinea leaned into his microphone and declared that if the US was not willing to lead it should "at least get out of the way."  The Papua New Guinea delegate was not alone.  The entire room of high-level ministers – otherwise very courteous dignitaries – actually booed US Undersecretary of State (the top US official at the meeting) for nearly a minute. 

Thankfully, the US did get out of the way in Bali.  Indeed, though the agreement is not as strong as it could be, it nonetheless provides a starting point for future negotiations.  The United States eventually relented and agreed to language without specific limits on global warming.  Though the Bali agreement does not include any specific numeric emission reduction targets, it does acknowledge the need for measurable, reportable, and verifiable mitigation “actions" and "commitments." Critically, the final agreement recognizes the importance of mitigation, adaptation, financing, and technology in responding to climate change.  These initial agreements can pave the way for a firmer commitment when the delegation reconvenes in Denmark in 2009, after the next election.

Unfortunately, the Bali concession did not mark a sea change in our country's response to climate change.  Days after the US agreed to "get out of the way" in Bali, our leaders were at it again.  Last Thursday, the US Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency denied California’s petition to limit greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks.  California had sought to establish stronger emissions standards for cars and trucks sold in the state.  This is not a novel request.  The Clean Air Act explicitly allows California to adopt its own standards. And the federal government has granted similar requests fifty times since 1968.  The last time it denied a request was in 1975.   

California had first requested the waiver in 2005.  It is set to take effect for vehicles manufactured in 2009.  After two years of silence from Washington, California sued EPA and demanded a response.   EPA finally responded last Thursday – justifying its denial of the waiver because it claimed the new Energy Bill (also signed into law last week) was stronger than California's limits.  This is simply not true.  Admittedly, the Energy Bill makes tremendous strides.  It improves our national fuel economy standards for the first time in more than thirty years.  However, the California standard was more protective.  It demanded reductions to kick in by 2016.  It also explicitly addressed carbon dioxide emissions – which are not limited in the Energy Bill.  If the California standard was adopted by California – and the sixteen other states that have promised to embrace it – emissions would be reduced by 100 million metric tons in 2020.

Californians aren't prepared to back down.  California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has already pledged to sue to overturn the EPA decision. In the past three months, federal judges in Vermont and California have already ruled twice against automakers’ attempts to block state tailpipe reductions for greenhouse gases.  Even EPA’s own lawyers seem to doubt the Administrator's final decision.  In an agency presentation, aides wrote that if Johnson denied the waiver and California sued, EPA is likely to lose in court.

There is virtual scientific consensus that climate change is happening.  The evidence is already here.  Eleven of the last twelve years rank among the warmest years in global surface temperature since 1850.  Scientists caution that greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 60 to 80 percent from current levels to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. 

Perhaps my husband was right and my three-year old was onto something.  We're in the bottom of the ninth – and it's time for the United States to "lead, follow, or get out of the way."