In this week’s green book review, guest reviewer Rabbi Julian Sinclair unpicks the recent ‘Breakthrough’ by US writers Ted Nordhaus & Michael Shellenberger. Last month Al Gore gave a rousing speech on climate change, throwing down an audacious challenge to the American people. By 2020, Gore declared, let American by powered 100% by renewable sources […]
How many shades of green can a Jaffa orange be? Israeli fruit and vegetable grower and supplier Mehadrin (owned by Hadarim, a property and building group, and a succession of other parent companies) is working with British supermarket chain Tesco in a bid to mark all its Jaffa oranges with the Carbon Trust label, a […]
Well, that depends on how you look at it… Scientists are predicting that climate change will cause upheavals in the patterns of rainfall, drought, floods, and desertification. The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that temperatures in the Middle East have increased between 2-3 degrees Celsius in the last century, […]
Here in the Middle East, echoes of the Biblical prophets are never far off–even in environmental discourse. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the famous cedars of Lebanon, which have been a wonder to the world for thousands of years, and were used to build King Solomon’s palace. Some of the remaining cedars in […]
Okay, first the bad news. Well, perhaps we’d had better warn you that there is no good news in this piece: A new campaign has been launched in the UK by the NEF (new economics foundation) warning the world that according to their analysis, the world is just 100 months away from reaching the tipping […]
From creating the world’s most popular puzzle website (and a Time Magazine top 50), Israeli-British entrepreneur and hightech whiz Gideon Greenspan decided to change gears and put a focus on the environment. A couple of years ago, Gideon (who is based in Tel Aviv) was looking for a way to offset his travel and was […]
Green Prophet’s Karin recently made us aware of a carbon offsetting scheme here in the Middle East, named Libra/Sekem, which converts cash paid for carbon offsets into compost. The project based in the Sharkia region of Egypt, turns coffee grinds, raw food scraps and more (read one of our super-enriched Green Prophet posts on composting […]
Here in Israel there is pretty good access to busses and, in the cities, they go almost everywhere. The benefits of taking the bus instead of your car are numerous. First, you’ll be saving on emissions. Second, you have more time. I must have read volumes at the slow and steady pace of half an […]
Traveling anywhere in Israel from the Holy City isn’t going to be easy on the day President Bush arrives, but it is a perfect day for experiencing the low carbon pleasure of train travel. For a start, Malcha station at 9 a.m is empty – it seems many commuters, tourists or day-trippers have left earlier, […]
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, […]
Memos, agreements, bills, pacts, hand-shaking…we’ve heard a lot of talk about Israel and its intent to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The latest episode is yesterday’s announcement that MK Ofer Paz-Pines (Labor party) has submitted a bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Israel. According to INN, the bill will call for a 25 percent reduction […]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO-gpsHNGEw&rel=1[/youtube]Everyone and their mother is doing it. Talking about global warming, that is. Stumbling around the net, we bumped into this YouTube video sponsored by the Jewish National Fund, which links nicely to our last post on tree planting in Israel.