Central Tel Aviv’s beach and tayelet. Democracy is a messy system. Churchill was probably right when he said that democracy was the worst system of government, except for all of those other systems that have been tried from time to time. However, democratic decision-making is an art, and in most cases its practitioners are […]
[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=544518686784404916&hl=en[/googlevideo]A short public service announcement from our friends over at Zalul.Last year we wrote a story on Israel’s sewage problem “The Sludge Report” and the fact that it regularly flows into the sea. You’d have thunk by now, that a country as advanced as Israel (talking ’bout electric cars and mighty microbes) that we’d find […]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uASd-doKOlk&rel=1[/youtube]We have never seen these “green police” in action, but we’d like to believe that they exist, if only in our dreams. This video is a cheesy commercial for Israel’s Environmental Protection Ministry police, and what they will do to you if you pollute. Watch out! It’s in Hebrew, which makes their Cops-esque slogan sound […]
The hot environmental topic this season, seems to be about banning the bag – the plastic bag that is.Zalul ‘s blog Clear has reported on it this week and has provided a link (in Hebrew) where you can sign a petition to get the plastic bag banned in Israel.San Fran has done it, so has […]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ODhBEayJA0&rel=1[/youtube]It’s Friday, and hey we like videos. Here is a short movie on an Israeli green achievement: the dud shemesh. Israelis were quick to adopt the low-tech technology which uses heat from the sun to warm sink and bathwater.We are pretty sure that the invention was pioneered elsewhere. But that doesn’t stop us from puffing […]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4Xz2fLlNpo&rel=1[/youtube] Some people call for Israel to be wiped off the map. We say, put us down on a Green Map. That’s just what a local NGO SPNI and students from Green Course in Jerusalem have done (see the above video). Green Maps is an international enterprise, that lets locals and visitors literally map out ecological […]
Tel Aviv is the first Israeli city, and the only city in the Middle East to join Earth Hour, a new worldwide campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Lights out for Tel Aviv will happen on March 29, 2008 at 8 pm, so get your solar-powered flashlights handy. Tel Aviv joins cities in Denmark, Australia, […]
Unlike Americans and Canadians, Israelis are none too quick to start building with strawbale and adobe. I did meet a couple pioneers over the last 5 years who have built adobe homes: Lila, a German immigrant who lived near Arad in the Negev and Shai Gonorov, an eccentric Israeli living off the grid in Shaharut, […]
A few weeks ago, we were driving our “tourist” mom from Canada around the country, when we accidentally took the wrong cut-off and found ourselves somewhere in the middle of east Jerusalem. Excited by seeing the children riding around on donkeys and the general sense of chaos, Mom commented on how very different this place […]
Apartments for China, outfitted with individual greenhouses. We’d live in one of these eco-abodes. Outdoor vegetable gardens are nice, but as it turns out, they are so 2007. Now Technion Institute researchers Tagit Klimor and David Knafo have developed a design for high-rise apartments that will have their own self-sustaining greenhouses. The greenhouse spaces will […]