Blog Action Day 2007-The Environment

Today is a day that the good folks at Google are trying to change the world. This year they are trying to put some emphasis in the environment. As we know, it's very important to be environmentally conscious, and I have definitely been more environmentally aware since I started
taking my Environmental Science class, and a long the way I've found some very interesting things.

Well obviously, we here in these United States used the most energy of any other country in the planet. We also have the largest amount of energy that is used per capita. This is largely due to the low energy prices, if you go to countries like England, they also use, it would seem, the same amount of energy as us. They have light and heat in their homes, they still drive the car everywhere, but why is the per capita energy use so much lower in England compared to the United States?

Well, like I said before, energy prices. It's cheap to use inefficient cars, and home heating and electrical sources. I England the cost of a gallon of gas is in the $6-7 range. Therefore they have more of en incentive to drive a more economical car.

But anyways this blog isn't about England's energy use. It's about ISRAEL.

I posted a few weeks back a flyer I had made about the ecological footprint Americans and Jews in Israel make. If the every single person in the world lived like Americans do we would need the resources of 7 planet Earths to support everyone. If everyone lived like Jews in Israel, I said that we'd need 1. (It's actually 1.2, but that sounded awkward).

But look at all of the things that Israel has done, not just for itself in the world of conserving energy, but also at what it's done for the world.

Israel developed the drip irrigation method, a way to give each individual plant, even in a large field, the exact amount of water and fertilizer it needs. That means that there is little, if any, runoff into the environment.

Israel is one of two countries, the other being Spain, that requires all residential buildings to have a solar hot water heater to heat the houses water. It's hooked up to an electrically system for the cloudy days, but the majority of the year it's sunny and hot, the perfect weather for this type of system.

OK, so that wouldn't work here in Maryland (in which I've estimated that we have approx. 45 'nice' days a year. But what about areas of the US that have similar climates to Israel's. Texas for example.

Anyways, I think that I've made my point clear, but on a closing note, If the Jews of America made Aliyah, they would not only fulfill the commandment of settling and living in the Land of Israel, they would also make a huge difference in global warming.