When I heard that this year’s OHALAH conference was to be in person only, my heart broke. Where was the ALEPH I helped to found? What happened to living through a paradigm shift when it is not always pleasant and positive? What happened to being on the cutting, or growing edge?
I decided years ago that the carbon footprint I would leave by going to Colorado in person, in addition to the footprint left by staying in a hotel with huge energy inefficiencies, was a Sophie’s choice. For sure, being with everyone is a special treat and, in a different world, an opportunity for growth. For me personally, it would be wonderful to enjoy the appreciation and respect of the chevre I had nurtured through teaching, listening, caring, and having been Reb Zalman’s chasid for over forty years. Like Reb Zalman, I had many difficulties to overcome as the first of our kind, transforming communities and then losing my jobs and moving every decade or less. How satisfying it would be to experience the realization of my dreams.
But if the price of a passing satisfaction is suffering visited on my/our children, grandchildren, and beyond, what other option is really possible? What happened to evaluating our behaviour by the standard Reb Zalman liked to quote and which we all repeat, that we need to take into considration the effects of every action seven generations in the future?
I had been thinking of writing this blog for some time, but wasn’t sure why I wanted to write it or what difference it could make. I’m only rehashing what I’ve written and said dozens, if not hundreds of times. OHALAH should not meet every year; meeting every second year would halve its carbon footprint. OHALAH should always have a digital option for those who won’t or cannot come in person. Each of us needs to carefully examine our choices and accept the downside of the options that, in the end, are most compelling. What finally brought this blog into existence is a discussion still underway on the OHALAH Facebook page.
Climate offsets are a bad joke. Flying is flying and greenhouse gasses are emitted. True, planes are less than 3% of the total world emissions. However, mile to mile, it is the most carbon intensive form of travel. And, more, it is an aspect of our privilege, since only a tiny fraction of humanity generates those emissions. So where is our commitment to reducing inequality and enhancing social justice?
This is not a matter of personal choice. Whether I choose to travel to see family (and, full disclosure, we are planning for the third time to visit our Portland family by hybrid car after cancelling two earlier plans and whom we haven’t seen in over a year and a half) is indeed a decision I need to make. But when my chevre tell me that the only way to maintain a particularly important piece of our connectedness is for all of us to get on planes, that is a choice which disregards the extent of the emergency in which we are living. Climate disruption is not in the future; it is happening right now. My seeds are failing to germinate because the soil is too warm and we are in an increasingly serious drought. There are 300 fires burning in my province, another 300 in Manitoba and Ontario, along with all the others burning in the northwest and elsewhere. Europe and China are flooding and Siberia is burning again.
So many times I’ve written that we, klei kodesh, need to lead by example, most recently in a series of blogs I posted during the omer. I feel that, while people like and respect me, they draw the line at making changes in their lives if those changes mean giving up earlier choices about what is important. I suppose that this may be the real reason I’ve hesitated to write more. I’ve preached enough times and gone on record enough times and I see that I get a personal release from writing and speaking and trying to teach, but the time is long gone for preaching or signing onto constitutional ammendements that, even in the best of scenarios, take years to pass. This the time is to knuckle down and do whatever we can, make the necessary sacrifices for the sake of those who are already present and those who are yet to arrive on the planet.
I’m turning my attention, by becoming the president of the Hornby Island Residents and Ratepayers Association, to helping my local community work together to mitigate whatever we can, to make us resilient by growing more of our food, to remain welcoming to visitors who need to escape from cities every so often, and by working to further reduce our own emissions. We are a very small piece of our province which is only a fraction of Canada which, in turn is a smallish country with an outsized carbon footprint and so it is tempting to give up in the face of the huge task before us all. But I do take seriously the saying that it is not up to us to complete the work, yet neither are we free from undertaking it.
I suppose it’s true that the OHALAH board made this decision, but that doesn’t mean that we all must abide by it. Making the conference “safe,” for whom, is not the issue. If a hundred or more of us get on planes and fly to Colorado, then the conference is not safe but a contributor to the very thing we claim to care most about. Last year’s conference on Zoom was amazing. People who wouldn’t otherwise be able to come became our teachers. People like me who won’t travel got to participate (and I was even toying with offering something this year), people with disabilities could join in from home instead of subjecting their bodies to extreme stress, those of us with less money or without discretionary funds could join in.
I could write much more, but I no longer see the point. If you are truly interested in knowing what I say going beyond connecting the dots staring us in our collective face (and I wrote about this in my chapter of Integral Halachah), I highly recommend A Good War by Seth Klein (Naomi’s brother). While it’s primarly about Canada, he has a great deal to teach about where we actually are, what we need to do, and how to go about it.
Since before Tish’a b’Av and every day since, I hear:
עיני עיני ירדה מים
My eyes tear over the breaking of the collective will of my beloved chevre
’שפכי כמים לבך נוכך פני ה
My heart pours out her sadness before God, her worry that we are failing to respond to the climate emergency as we eagerly return to the unsustainable “normal” from before the pandemic, putting our own short term needs first.
May I be proven wrong.