Green Prophet

“Look at My work, how beautiful and perfect is everything that I created. I created it for you. Be careful not to ruin and destroy My world. If you ruin it, there is nobody to restore it after you.” (Ecclesiastes Rabba 7:28)

It’s not only about offsetting and it’s not about who’s right. The above passage is the bottom line. In this week’s Torah segment God creates the heavens and the earth. He gave it to us “to work it and to keep it” and it doesn’t look too good at the moment.

World-renowned physicist, Stephen Hawking, exclaimed: “The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there’s an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy the Earth.” And the Norwegian government along with the Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT) has created a Doomsday Vault. 700 km from the North Pole they have established the vault to preserve a wide variety of plant seeds from locations worldwide in an underground cavern. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault holds duplicate samples of seeds held in genebanks worldwide to provide insurance against the loss of seeds in genebanks, as well as a refuge for seeds in the case of large scale regional or global crises.

This all sounds grim but guess what? It is. I usually like to keep these posts upbeat, but there is so much to do yet before we can exhale, knowing that we are leaving a true legacy and not a mess for the upcoming generations. Let’s not let our climate’s tipping point come and go without a fight. With the new year in let’s all take on a little more. It’s about making change, and lot’s of it!

Tags: Al Gore, carbon offset, Eco-Rabbi, Religion