I recently spent a wonderful week relaxing and enjoying the green and quiet of Tuscany, an area of Italy steeped in viticulture and olive oil production. We went there to rest, write and read, dip into the pools of mountain streams, and kick back high in the quiet mountainous area outside Fivizzano, an ancient town […]
“We are not gaining knowledge with every generation. We are losing it. A dark and gathering sameness is upon the world.” – Terry Glavin – ‘The Lost & Left Behind: stories from the age of extinction’ 2007 This is one of those very few books that sit right in the hand – a few pages […]
The Earth has a memory. It has records of African flowers blooming in the summer; it remembers cold, desolate Arctic winters since winters began, and the spawning of coral in the Great Barrier Reef one night, every spring. I remember my first lesson as a child, on how the Earth remembers. The teacher had brought […]
How can you set your professional dreams in motion if you have mountains of fear to overcome? For some it may be quitting one’s job to start up the new “green” home business, for others it may be as simple as asking the boss for a raise. For me, as an environmental journalist dreaming about […]
With spring just around the corner, the weather in Israel is perfect for enjoying the outdoors and getting back to nature. Before the short, but icy winter melts into the fierce summer heat, Israel’s Heschel Center for Environmental Leadership will be teaming up with Hazon in New York for a four-day hike along the northern […]
We’re accustomed to the doom-and-gloom prophecies of Israel’s chronic water shortage and how the thirst of the growing population of a country that is over 50% desert is going to crash and burn one day in the future. So it came as a shock to the system to hear Machiavellian German hydrogeologist, Clemens Messerschmid insist […]
I’ve been researching Bedouin issues in the Negev Desert for about 5 years, and one of the first individuals I met was Nuri El-Ukbi. Nuri and the El-Ukbi tribe have claims to the land named in arabic El-Araquib, which is roughly situated between Rahat and Beersheva. It is a vast area of land, roughly 19,000 […]
Probably my best memory of Israel is hiking in the Galilee as a teenager. With its green expanses enlivened with blood-red and yellow flowers and sparkling streams, there is no place in Israel like the Galilee. Much political furor has been provoked by Minister Meir Sheetrit’s promise to build an Arab city in the Galilee. […]
The wonderful wild weather of last week, and according to forecasts, in the week to come; has inspired a series of special water-related posts. This first one examines the findings of a new International report focusing on the condition of the World’s Oceans. It does not unfortunately make for happy reading…………………. Ben Halpern, a […]
It’s only February and the beach is already a hot topic in Israel, but alas, for all the wrong reasons. Work has got underway in the last few weeks to build a 350-apartment holiday resort on a virtually untouched part of Palmachim Beach, which lies midway between the cities of Tel Aviv and Ashdod. It […]
Eight years ago Ofir Drori, now 31, set off for Africa. He was looking for adventure and work as a photojournalist. Inspired by animal right’s activists Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, Israeli Drori got in deeper than he expected. He is now fighting crime and corruption in the animal trade business in Africa – working […]
This post is devoted to the sheer joy of growing something, in this case, an organic gooseberry bush (Hebrew: Hazrazar) (Latin: Ribes Grossularia). Growing something – anything really, from a geranium stem, roughly transplanted and shoved in soil, to vegetables for your plate; can be a mystical experience. It mesmerizes, absorbs, transfixes … and continues […]
While most Israelis take pride in having made the desert bloom, some of the imported “blooms” have been contested over the years as threats to the ecosystem. In a land where Biblical passages echo everywhere, it’s sometimes disconcerting to realize just how dramatically the face of the landscape has been changed in recent years, and […]
Bring out the tissues. When we heard the news that a 15 metre fin whale had made it to Ashkelon, in Israel, our hearts filled with joy. We know whales have come to these shores before. Take Jona and the Whale story, for example. Our hearts sunk. The young female calf found swimming off the […]
The Kishon River was once a notorious dumping ground for seven chemical plants, with the result that the entire ecosystem died and the river was even blamed for causing cancer in soldiers (though that has never been proven conclusively). In recent years, the Ministry of Environmental Protection has initiated what they refer to as a […]
Israel has a number of Eco-Tourism options. But we suppose, at the end of the day, it all depends on semantics, marketing and what one classifies as “ecological.” We are of the notion that an eco-trip could be as simple as a walk in the forest, basking in the sunshine at your local cafe, or […]
It could only happen in 2008. During the year of Shmitta, which is every seven years, Jewish law dictates that we not work the land of Israel in any way. The Jewish National Fund customarily organizes tree-planting activities that attract thousands of people in honor of Tu B’Shvat…but not during Shmitta.
It’s a yearly ritual in Israel: we worry about rain. We worry when we don’t have rain in the winter, when it is supposed to fall; and we worry when we get rain if it’s the wrong time for the crops. This is not a new phenomenon: the Jewish religion is richly interwoven with customs […]
Timna Valley north of Eilat in the Arava Desert, believed to be the ancient site of King Solomon’s mines, is under threat. The pristine valley is in danger of being turned into a Disney-land style hotel complex and spa, and convention hall. Four hotels are planned for the site, Daniel reports in the Jerusalem Post. […]
Citizens and tourists rejoice: the Clean Coast Project of 2007 has ensured that we can hit those beaches in 2008. At least that’s according to the Israel Ministry of Environmental Protection, which reports that 80% of Israel’s beaches have been declared clean, with a mere 2% getting the dreaded rating of “dirty.” This is is […]
In previous articles, we’ve illustrated that religious Jewish practices such as Shabbat and Shmitta have the potential to affect the environment in a positive way. This makes us happy, as we at Green Prophet like when Jewish customs dovetail with the ideals of sustainability that we want to promote. We therefore regret to report that […]
In a recent interview with this writer, Professor Pinhas Alpert, head of Tel Aviv University’s department of Geophysics and Planetary sciences, stated that “winters here in Israel are becoming warmer, with much less precipitation annually, and these extreme temperatures, at the minimum and maximum ends of the scale, also show a greater fluctuation between them.”Thats […]
I want to share with Green Prophet a great site that encourages participants worldwide, not only here in Israel, or in the UK where it is based, but every computer-using sentient being anywhere, to cut down their energy output: be it water, waste, or carbon in general … and monitor their own reduction levels, and […]
It’s really romantic to carve your lover’s name on a tree. But let’s admit, it’s so last century! An even more romantic gesture, to show your love for ______ [insert name/s], would be to plant a tree in his or her name. And the act would even offset carbon emissions. Rather than going on a […]
We love the Heschel Center for reminding us about their fundraiser: Hike Bishvil Yisrael – March 23-27, 2008. Israel’s outdoor scenery is breathtaking, writes Heschel, “and there is no better way to see it than with the people working to preserve it. “This is an opportunity for a unique, challenging and rewarding Israel experience and […]