Fall 2024 | Stav 5784-85
What YOU Can DO!
CURRENT ISSUES
- Tell the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) that you believe workers deserve strong protections from the increasingly hazardous heat! Comments on their proposed Heat Rule are invited through the end of the year, and we want numerous people of faith to weigh in on this clear linkage of climate adaptation efforts with social justice and human dignity. it only takes a minute! Portal for comments forthcoming (before Rosh Hashanah) through our allies with the National Religious Partnership on the Environment, or submit your thoughts now via this announcement of the public comment period. For fuller context read here, in our News & Blogs.
- Tell FEMA ([email protected]) that heat and smoke are federal emergencies; one line is enough, and the more the better! This key agency must treat heat and wildfire smoke as the major - and growing due to climate disruption - disasters that they are. Amplify on social media too: "Extreme heat and wildfire smoke cost lives. @fema must recognize extreme heat & wildfire smoke as the major disasters they are, and invest in life-saving solutions like community solar, climate resilience hubs, & air filtration systems.
- Back up the Administration on its recent raft of rules & regulations (like cleaner cars standards and power plant rules) which promote environmental justice, public health, and climate resilience. Let's create a groundswell of support! Write the EPA and White House: "thank you; and, please stay strong"....
- Track the Farm Bill: this massive piece of legislation gets revised every five years. It critically determines social justice priorities (supplemental nutrition assistance program, "SNAP"); economic matters (crop price supports, crop insurance, etc); and all sorts of land and water conservation programs across the American landscape. Stay informed; stay tuned!
And: Lots of our efforts are coalitional; much of the work unfolds behind the scenes, in dialogue with leaders of other faith groups, policy-makers, and others. We don't always make big grass-roots "asks" of our supporters -- though we're always happy to send you toward things you can do anytime (see next section), and with our green Jewish partner organizations (see further below).
ANYTIME
- The best single thing you can do is just to talk about environmental and climate justice. Be the nudnik who keeps raising it, who will not be still until the Beloved Community includes all people and all species. Sooner or later, your friends, family, progeny, co-workers, co-congregants, and contacts will be glad you did.
- Advocate, early and often - this includes robust electoral engagement on behalf of policies that will protect Creation; ensuring voter access; building relationships with your elected officials and their staff; and connecting with local secular organizations (or eco-faith groups like IPL, outlined below) devoted to eco-justice; etc.
- Act - in your personal and communal life, and in the civic sphere as consumer and citizen - to limit or offset all the environmental harm that you can and to help others do the same. Remember that your "carbon footprint" is simultaneously quite real, and just what the fossil fuel industry wants you to focus on, rather than systemic change.
So absolutely: eat lower on the food chain; drive less and more efficiently; reconsider travel, especially by air; buy local or organic or durable or second-hand where possible; AND, at the very same time, ORGANIZE!!!
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PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS:
Dayenu always has important campaigns going, whether the targets are legislative or administrative or corporate -- plus learning and faith formation, local organizing through "Dayenu Circles", and much more. Jewish Earth Alliance, a remarkable all-volunteer effort, gathers virtually to educate and empower and advocate, always on a timely issue. Do join their list. Adamah, the largest and most widespread Jewish environmental organization, operates on many levels: national education and awareness, including the Teva Center; regional hubs in a number of cities, amping up the programming; widely acclaimed retreat centers in MD and CT; youth organizing through the Jewish Youth Climate Movement; and more. Others of note include: Aytzim.org, a whole 'grove' of Jewish environmental activity including Jewcology, Green Israel, and Jews of the Earth. JCAN, the Jewish Climate Action Network, especially active in MA & NY, with great educational and activist offerings. The Shalom Center, a venerable source for creative Jewish rituals tied to systemic change efforts. NeoHasid.org, with green liturgy and learning and more. And blessedly, the list goes on... ..... |
MULTI-FAITH COLLABORATION:
The National Religious Partnership for the Environment (NRPE.org) is the multi-faith umbrella, where leaders of many major religious traditions gather to advance shared efforts to better care for all of Creation. COEJL functions as the leading Jewish partner in NRPE, alongside our friends at Eco-Justice Ministries (Protestant), the Catholic Climate Covenant, and the Evangelical Environmental Network. Interfaith Power and Light (IPL) -- both a national organization, and a network of regional efforts active in 40+ US states. At the ground level, working with the local utility or solar installers or green gardeners, synagogues partner naturally with mosques, churches, temples, gurdwaras, and other houses of faith. Then working together as advocates at the state level, their voice is powerful indeed. Do look up your local affiliate! Other great efforts include: GreenFaith.org, strong globally, and in the US mostly in the NY/NJ region; organizer of Faiths Over Fossil Fuels and other initiatives. Blessed Tomorrow, a program of EcoAmerica.org, organizing faith coalitions around climate solutions. And many more -- including, in Israel and its neighbors, the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, and Eco-Peace. |