With less than 40 days until the 40th annual Earth Day, the news on climate and energy is not good: despite recent White House meetings on energy, Congress is still stuck on health care (though we are hopeful for a vote this week!) and public opinion on the urgency of addressing energy and environment actually declined in 2009.<\/p>\n
The poll numbers aren’t promising<\/a>, but they don’t tell the whole story. Many attribute the falling public interest in climate change (and legislative solutions) to poor poll design, failed messaging, and industry attempts to fight climate science akin to the smoke & mirrors efforts of the tobacco industry<\/a> to disprove the danger of smoking decades ago. The bottom line: experts still agree that climate science remains solid and the need for action has never been more urgent. Business leaders, veterans, and Administration officials<\/a> remind us that the climate challenge is not just an environmental issue, but a critical economic and national security concern. And a growing coalition of environmental, labor, civil rights and faith groups recently launched the Earth Day Revolution campaign<\/a>, featuring a daily countdown of 40 reasons why we need an Earth Day Revolution (conveniently packaged as tweets), the Declaration of Energy Independence, and myriad ways to get involved.<\/p>\n We still have the time and capacity to turn things around. So here we are, less than 40 days from the 40th Earth Day, and at a critical moment in the fight for our climate and energy future. How will you get involved?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With less than 40 days until the 40th annual Earth Day, the news on climate and energy is not good: despite recent White House meetings on energy, Congress is still stuck on health care (though we are hopeful for a vote this week!) and public opinion on the urgency of addressing energy and environment actually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-441822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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So what can we do to turn the tide and get things moving? First off, the faith community is continuing to bring new voices to the table. We are emphasizing that our shared environment is not a political fight but a social justice and distinctly Jewish issue (learn much more in this recent B’nai B’rith magazine cover story<\/a>). The recent recommendations from the White House Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships stress the need to make this an issue about people by strengthening green jobs and international climate change resilience programs, and ensuring that our houses of worship become model green communities. (Read the full recommendations from the Environmental Task Force<\/a>, chaired by Rabbi Saperstein.)<\/p>\n