By Barbara Lerman-Golomb
(Originally posted on the RACblog)
Barbara Lerman-Golomb is a member of the Commission on Social Action and the Northeast Camp Commission. She is the Director of Education and Outreach for Hazon and an author, environmental activist and experiential educator. All views expressed are her own.

There's no question about it, "green" is in and not just on Tu B'Shvat and Earth Day. For me, this is taking some getting used to since it's been out for so long. But while "green" may be in, according to a Pew Research Center poll taken a week before the inauguration, global warming ranks dead last on the public's list of concerns.

I first started talking publicly about global warming over 15 years ago, before it became the issue du jour - when it was still called "global warming" and not the more accurate "global climate change." Common sense and public health idrew me to it. I'm also predisposed to having a penchant for underdog causes, which to borrow a phrase from Al Vorspan, Director Emeritus of the Commission on Social Action, is what being a nudnick for social justice is all about.

In 1999, I was living in rural New Jersey when it became one of the first states to deregulate its electricity. I was a volunteer for an inter-religious group called Partners for Environmental Quality, now GreenFaith, which was instrumental in bringing a renewable energy company, Green Mountain, into the state. We were going "door to door" trying to encourage houses of worship and their congregants to purchase renewable energy. It was a hard sell considering they still had to pay for energy through their regular public utility. (It wasn't much easier when I ran a fund raiser at my synagogue in 2000 selling compact fluorescent light bulbs - CFLs - for $10.00 a pop when you could get a regular incandescent bulb for 99 cents!) My argument was always the same: Making lifestyle choices like purchasing renewable energy is simply the right thing to do. I went "door to door" for l' dor va dor.

Renewable energy has remained a hard sell even though many public utilities make it easier by allowing you to purchase it directly through your regular energy bill. The proposed national Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) would require utilities to generate at least 25% of their power by 2025 from renewables such as wind, solar and geothermal, which can be supplying a much greater proportion of America's energy needs. This would create a large and increasing market for clean, renewable sources, reduce global warming pollution, create jobs, and save consumers money. As citizens we can begin to do our part by urging our representatives to sign on as co-sponsors of this bill.

When I spoke at synagogues and churches and uttered the scientific term "global warming" those many years ago, people's eyes glazed over. The devastating statistics and disaster scenarios were too doomsday-ish. So, I started opening with a Woody Allen joke to lessen the blow before going into the urgent need to take pekuach nefesh action. It became more difficult to soften the blow when I began speaking on panels with real people living in small island states and developing nations who were already experiencing the affects of flooding or drought, already becoming climate refugees;" or after the record deadly heat waves sweeping across Europe; or after Hurricane Katrina and other extreme weather patterns.

The energy issue, in general, is confusing: trying to figure out the most economic and efficient way to deal with emissions of heat-trapping gases; trying to decipher carbon offsets, carbon trading, carbon tax, carbon caps, and cap and dividend. To add to the confusion, whenever I went out to do my talks and I touted energy that was CO2 free, invariably someone in the audience would bring up nuclear power. In the height of the No-Nukes era, when I was a 19-year-old college student, I made a public service film about the dangers of nuclear power with a Japanese physicist and Cat Stevens singing "Where Do the Children Play?" in the background. As we know, this issue hasn't gotten any easier to address.

Fortunately, there are some creative people out there who see the challenge of solving the energy issue as a chance to put on our global and American ingenuity "thinking caps." But even with the current administration on board and great minds working on the problem, we can not become complacent. We need to move global warming from the issue du jour to the main menu. For me, this has meant engaging in everyday energy actions, as well as continuing to advocate for clean air and clean water, protecting endangered species and national forests, supporting a healthy food system, increasing fuel efficiency and renewables, and moving towards a more sustainable energy policy. If I didn't, what kind of self-respecting nudnick for social justice would I be?

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