Maybe we can’t.

Perhaps Global Warming is happening regardless of our presence here.

Or maybe our presence does contribute to it, but the only way to make a real impact – to stop global warming or even just to slow it down – is to live a life that we can’t live anymore, a life that we don’t want to live – a life without automobiles, airplanes or any other type of polluting, energy-consuming industry.

Can humanity go back to being a non-industrialized society?

Maybe Huffington Post’s Gazelle Emami is right – maybe all these efforts to recycle, reuse, consume responsibly are just a drop in the ocean, maybe we are wasting our time, soothing our conscience but making little impact. Maybe we need to stop driving cars, stop having kids, stop flying.

Maybe if we simply cease to exist, Earth can be saved… no doubt humans are polluting and draining Earth of its precious resources. But then again, maybe Earth is doomed to heat up and disappear underwater regardless of what humans do (though it could certainly take much longer without our contribution).

Looking at the Huffington Post’s 7 ways to truly make an impact, some of them are actually doable, especially when modified. Buying local, limiting meat intake (they say “go vegetarian”), choosing a hybrid car (rather than not owning a car) and purchasing carbon offsets when flying to name a few.

Whatever you’ve been doing, don’t stop doing it – reusable shopping bags, energy efficient lighting, insulating your home, composting, turning the heating down in the winter and the cooling in the summer, taking shorter showers – all of these do add up, especially if we all do them.

If we do nothing, many of us will likely not be here to experience the devastation that global warming will cause, but our children will.

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Interesting Comment: “Huffington Post’s Gazelle Emami is a simpleton. If everyone just followed her step #6 – “Don’t Have A Baby” – then the rest wouldn’t matter, would it? The “Human” problem would just take care of itself in a 100 years or so.” Computer Addict.

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Can We Save Planet Earth?

The phrase “why do people bully” is searched about 3000 times per month, according to the Google Adwords keyword tool – more during the last month, probably becuase of the Phoebe Prince suicide. I guess people who have heard about Phoebe’s death are trying to make sense of what had happened and figure out how to prevent it from happening in their own communities or to their own children.

Ever since I first heard about Phoebe Prince, a teenager who was harassed so badly at school that she put an end to her own life, I can’t stop thinking about it – not just about Prince’s heartbreaking story, or about the reports that the bullies are not even showing remorse, or about other teenagers who had committed suicide following ruthless bullying.

I think about that, of course, but mostly I’ve been thinking about the question that obviously bothers many other people – why DO people bully?

Evidently, people bully – which means picking on someone weaker than you are – to gain power and social acceptance. When bullies are not stopped, bullying continues and becomes worse, and as it weakens the victim, it strengthens the bully, and the relationships within the group of bullies.

In my recent post about the Holocaust, I wondered whether we all have a monster inside that would enable us to dehumanize a person and see them as less than human, so that we would not feel any remorse when inflicting pain and suffering – even death – on them.

I don’t know if the frequent occurrence of school bullying means that the answer is “yes.” Different people have different moral compasses and some are stronger than others. I do believe that some people would never hurt another human being, regardless of social pressure, possible social gain or the threat of negative social consequences. But I also think that many people are indeed capable of dehumanizing and hurting others for their own gain, and the only reason they don’t do it is fear of punishment.

Unfortunately, in many bullying situations, there’s no fear of punishment. While bullying is illegal in 42 US states, it is very difficult to prosecute. The nine teenagers who bullied Phoebe Prince will indeed be prosecuted, but whether they will be convicted is a different question. A direct link between the bullying and the death will need to be established, and this may be difficult to do in court.

Following the Phoebe Prince case, many experts are calling for stricter supervision of teenagers by parents and are saying that the best way to achieve that is to hold not just the teenagers, but the parents too, legally responsible for the results of bullying.

Bullying is apparently part of human nature, especially when someone’s moral compass is weak, but so are murder and burglary and assault. We don’t allow these behaviors – and we need to find a way to stop allowing, and enabling, bullying.

As parents, the best we can do is speak with our children about bullying – and start doing so early, when they still listen. Even young children can understand simple messages such as “sometimes we feel the urge to put others down in order to feel better about ourselves, but we need to fight that urge becuase hurting other people is wrong.” Or, “Sometimes kids pick on other kids really badly, and threaten them that if they tell their parents they would hurt them, but you should always tell us if someone hurts you. We will always help. Protecting you is part of our job.”

I strongly believe that the messages and values we instill in our kids early on stay with them for life. A strong message about bullying, in addition to modeling (if I am a bully, my kids are likely to perceive bullying as OK) and doing everything in our power to raise kids with a high self esteem can make a real difference in our kids’ lives and in our communities.

I’ve already discussed bullying with my own children. Have you talked with yours?

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Interesting Comment: “I thank God I made it through middle school bullying without hurting myself or someone else. I was tortured in two different schools, in two different states, in seventh and eight grade… It was a classroom full of kids either saying and doing cruel things, or laughing and standing by watching. In that way, I can see the Holocaust connection – when bystanders do nothing about things they know are wrong, tragedies happen.” Tina Kubala, The Creative Nerd.

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R.I.P Phoebe Prince, Or: Why Do People Bully?

I am sitting here at the local park and enjoying the sun. The weather is beautiful, and I’m saying a silent “thank you” for living in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area of California. The kids are playing happily, climbing and jumping and running. I sit there, melting in the warm rays of the sun, feeling relaxed and happy. And then, as I watch the kids playing, I realize that what I’m seeing is beautiful – far more beautiful than just kids playing, or green grass or a bright sunny day: what I’m witnessing is racial blindness, color blindness, complete racial integration – and the best of all: while I’m aware of what I’m seeing, the kids are not even aware that they are playing with kids who are “different.”

That little blond child running around with his Asian friend? I don’t think either of them is paying much attention to the fact that their skin tones and the shape of their eyes are different. And look at that little African American girl, happily playing on the monkey bars with my own Jewish American kids – they are focused on playing and on helping her learn the proper technique of doing the monkey bars. No one seems to care that they are playing with someone whose skin is colored differently than their own skin, or whose traditions are different than their own.

I close my eyes and reflect on the Seder night at my beloved friends’ home – celebrating Passover with them is always an amazing (and yummy!) experience. Now I remember that their daughter brought her best friend with her to the Seder night – the Jewish American girl and the Asian American girl, best friends, getting to know each other’s cultures, never judging, never building walls, just accepting.

Or the wonderful farewell party held a few weeks ago for our neighbors who are retiring to Arizona. Neighbors on the guest list: British, Taiwanese, Indian, Jewish, and part Hispanic. Unlike the children, we are accepting – but aware of the differences. We talk about them, ask questions about the others’ culture. It’s still beautiful – accepting and non-judgmental – but it lacks the beauty of the kids’ lack of awareness.

Now contrast that beautiful racial integration and acceptance surrounding me here, in the Bay Area of 2010, with the movie I watched on DVD last night – Far From Heaven. The movie captures the racial tension and prejudice typical of the 1950s – and makes one realize just how ridiculous those social taboos were, forcing people to live a lie or be shunned by society. The scene where a little black boy enters the pool at a resort and all the white kids run out of the water is absolutely shocking.

Of course, here in the United States we don’t have official racial segregation anymore – but in practice, I don’t think we have achieved racial blindness either. With an African American President, the glass ceiling has finally been broken – I am so proud of that – but it would be foolish to pretend that race is not an issue anymore.

Basking in the sun’s warm rays, watching the kids playing with each other, I am saying another silent “thank you,” and hoping that these amazing kids who are so blissfully racially blind will grow up to be adults who just don’t accept race-based prejudice anymore, a generation that will end racial segregation and racial discrimination once and for all.

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Loved this comment: “If one starts at the north pole and walks to the equator, initially people will be very light skinned, as the walk continues, people will become darker until reaching the equator. This change will happen so gradually that it will not be noticed, only the north and south extremes… there is only one race, the human race. The concept of more than one race is not real.” Dr. J, Dr J. Will See You Now

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The End Of Racial Segregation?

Beautiful nature pictures can make even the most cynical person melt.

Indeed, I normally tend to be on the cynical side, maintaining that while we certainly need to do our best to preserve our planet and ourselves, this is not going to last forever regardless of what we do.

I think it would be incredibly arrogant of us to assume we are the only form of life in this universe, or that we are more important or significant than other forms of life which preceded us, lived and flourished, only to eventually disappear.

I believe it’s very likely that Earth as we know it, and humans, are destined to eventually disappear too. After all, evolution has shown us that 98% of all species that ever existed have gone extinct, while new species developed to replace them.

If conditions on this planet continue to change due to global warming, at some point it won’t be able to support life as we know it. Existing forms of life, including humans, will become extinct, and perhaps other forms of life will then develop.

Or maybe it will be just the cockroaches who survive.

Having said that, when one sees these amazing nature pictures, so colorful and delicate and beautiful, one can’t help but appreciate the miracle we call “life.” When I see these images, I wonder if maybe humans can unite after all in one last huge effort to save this planet or at least make life as we know it last a little longer.

Butterfly

Mushroom

Bee

Swans

Frost

Nature’s Colors

Flying

Drinking

Sunset

Water Droplets

—
Posted for Earth Day 2009.

Related Reading: Green Tips.

Each of these beautiful nature pictures was taken by the incredibly talented fmc.nikon.d40.

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Nature Pictures

Simple, practical green tips for adopting a healthier, greener lifestyle and reducing your environmental impact.

Clean Up Your Food

1. Buy organic, locally grown produce. A weekly visit to your local Farmer’s Market is a great way to support local farmers.

2. Eat less red meat. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN says livestock production is one of the major causes of the world’s most pressing environmental problems, including global warming, land degradation, and air and water pollution.

Reduce Waste

3. Be vigilant about recycling. Don’t forget to also recycle used batteries.

4. Avoid individually packaged items.

5. Consider making your own baby food instead of buying hundreds of those pesky little jars.

6. Buy items in recycled packaging.

7. Instead of throwing away stuff you don’t need, donate.

8. Take old computers and electronics to a gathering center.

9. Instead of buying books and videos, check them out at the local library or rent videos at the local video store.

10. Reuse paper scraps and packaging for crafts and play activities.

11. Choose a reusable bottle and fill it with filtered tap water.

12. Cut up old clothes and linens and use them as cleaning rags.

13. Keep a reusable bag in your car at all times for shopping trips.

14. Use rechargeable batteries whenever possible.

15. To avoid use of “to-go” packaging, sit down, have your coffee at the coffee shop and ask them to use a mug instead of a paper cup. It will give you a nice break too!

16. Give a great deal of thought to your purchases. Don’t buy something unless you truly need it. Don’t engage in “recreational shopping.”

17. Use reusable cloths and towels instead of paper towels.

18. Use cloth napkins instead of paper napkins.

19. Consider using cloth diapers instead of disposable diapers. Not everyone agrees this is actually helpful in terms of the environment, but if you’re expecting a baby, it’s a good idea to research the topic.

20. Reuse empty jars: turn them into containers for leftover foods, for holding craft supplies, or even for original homemade gifts.

21. When packing or storing food, choose reusable plastic containers instead of Ziploc bags.

22. Sign up to receive paperless statement from your bank or broker.

23. Pay your bills online.

Save Energy

24. Don’t be too quick to turn on the lights in the evening. Are you SURE you need to turn them on? Could you get enough light by simply opening a curtain?

25. Turn off the light when you leave a room.

26. Unplug electronics when they are not in use, especially overnight or when going on vacation.

27. Replace your incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs.

28. Wash your clothes with cold water.

29. When using the washer to wash clothes, only do full loads. Small loads are wasteful.

30. Turn your thermostat down in the winter.

31. Minimize use of air conditioner during summer. Install a ceiling fan.

32. Plant deciduous trees (trees that drop their leaves in the fall). It’s a great way to cool your home and reduce your air conditioning costs during the summer.

33. Regularly clean your refrigerator coils.

34. Replace weatherstripping around the house.

35. Use a clothesline in the summer instead of the dryer.

36. Keep the temperature of your water heater down to 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

37. When it’s time to replace your appliances, buy energy-efficient appliances.

Conserve Water

38. Install a low-flow shower head.

39. Limit your showers to five minutes or less.

40. Only use the dishwasher when it’s packed.

41. Turn the water off while brushing your teeth.

42. When landscaping, consider low-maintenance alternatives to traditional lawn grass.

43. Fix leaking faucets.

Support Eco-Friendly Manufacturers

44. When shopping for clothes, check the labels for eco-friendly materials like organic cotton.

45. When you have a choice, choose organic and green products, including personal care products and cleaning products, over mainstream items.

Save The Air And The Soil

46. When it’s time to buy a new car, get a smaller, more fuel-efficient car.

47. Use public transportation or bikes as much as possible.

48. Combine your errands into a once-a-week session to minimize driving.

49. Use green detergents and soaps. Avoid chlorine bleach and antibacterial products.

50. Compost. Composting is a natural process that keeps organic nutrients cycling from soil to plants and back to the soil. You can use organic waste from your home such as fruit peels to return needed nutrients to the soil and reduce trash.

51. When looking for a home, look for a small home with green features.

52. When planning a trip, be aware of the damage air travel does to the environment and try to find alternative ways to travel.

53. Consider a staycation instead of a vacation.

54. Carpool to school and to work as often as possible.

After struggling for a long time to incorporate green practices into my daily routine, I am finally doing better. I probably follow more than half of these tips, which is huge for me. I’ve definitely come a long way since last year. But it’s not enough. My goal is to incorporate more and more of these tips until they become second nature and I don’t feel like I’m making a special effort anymore.

Can you offer any more green tips?

—
Related Reading: Nature Pictures

Green tips posted for Earth Day 2009.

Image credit: pomme rewny

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Green Tips

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The first draft of this post was titled “children of the Holocaust.” I wanted to honor the children who suffered unimaginable torture and death under the Nazi regime.

It’s been a while since I forced myself to look at photos from the Holocaust and read about its horrors.

As I was reading through awful testimonials and looking at terrible, heart wrenching photos of suffering, murder and indifference, I knew that what I really wanted to discuss here today is the racial basis to the Nazi ideology.

If we are to use this day as a day to not only remember the millions who suffered and died under the Nazi regime, but also as an opportunity to try and understand what made an evil of this magnitude possible, and to prevent it from ever happening again, we need to remember that the Holocaust happened because of racism.

The Holocaust was an extreme manifestation of racism, and Nazi racism produced murder on an unprecedented scale, but any form of racism is extremely dangerous and has the potential to lead to genocide.

Racism is the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. Racists believe that the value of a human being is not determined by his or her individuality, but instead by membership in a so-called “racial collective nation.”

The most coherent effort at presenting the ideological characteristics of Nazism can be found in Hitler’s autobiographical work, Mein Kampf (‘My Struggle’). In his book, Hitler presents his ‘worldview,’ which after the Nazi takeover became the political-ideological basis of the new regime.

In Mein Kampf, which was basically a system of prejudices that lacked any logic, Hitler presented a racist interpretation of world history, where the Aryan race is presented as ‘creating cultures’ and the Jewish race as ‘destroying cultures’; A social-Darwinist view of life according to which the strong survive and the weak perish; A love of war, since only in war does man show his true abilities; and a belief that Germany can and should become a world power.

Hitler believed in the biological and cultural superiority of the Aryan race. It was consequently a very important part of Hitler’s ideology that the races should not be mixed. He saw the ‘purity of the blood’ a prerequisite for the coming greatness of the German people.

The image is titled “Jewish Calculation,” and its caption reads, “We are Jews. We are destroying. She is fooled by the glitter. The Jewish name does not bother her.”

When the Nazis came to power they began to put this ideology into practice with the support of German scientists who believed that the human race could be improved by limiting the reproduction of people considered “inferior.” The Nazi ‘racial hygiene’ ideology was carried out systematically with great cruelty after 1933. German physicians were allowed to perform forced sterilizations of gypsies, handicapped and mentally ill individuals, and African-German. During the last six months of 1939, German physicians began to murder disabled residents of institutions throughout Germany.

Jews received a special treatment: the Nazis viewed them as a poisonous “race,” which “lived off” the other races and weakened them. They presented the Jews as a universal explanation to all of Germany’s problems and maintained that the Jews were responsible to a worldwide conspiracy to cause the downfall of the Aryan race.

This evoked “The Jewish Question,” of how to get rid of the Jews. Hitler’s answer to the Jewish Question was “The Final Solution” – the Nazi comprehensive plan to concentrate and eventually exterminate the entire Jewish population.

The Nazis conducted many experiments in an attempt to identify physical evidence of Aryan superiority and non-Aryan inferiority. Despite murdering countless non-Aryan prisoners in the course of these experiments, the Nazis were never able to find any evidence for their theories of biological racial superiority.

Sources: Auschwitz, Wikipedia, Children and the Holocaust, Nazi Racism, Holocaust Encyclopedia, The IB Holocaust Project, The Danish Center For Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Photo:Typical Nazi propaganda

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Lessons From The Holocaust: Racism

Photo credit: Franco Folini

What if we could create a social system where no one is outrageously rich and no one is miserably poor?

No matter how smart or capable you were, you would not be able to accumulate more assets than a certain pre-determined amount.

No matter how bad you had it, you would always have a roof over your head, food on your table and access to basic health care.

There would still be richer and poorer people, but not the extremes that we have today.

Would you take such a deal?

I’m not asking you if such a system is POSSIBLE. This is not a discussion on why communism failed in Eastern Europe or on whether socialism is better than capitalism. I’m asking you to assume that such a system IS possible and whether you would want to live in such a world or not.

I raised this question at a recent dinner party we hosted. It’s an interesting question to ask my real-life friends, because we live in Silicon Valley, where people basically come to make a few million bucks by starting and selling, or funding, or working in high-tech companies.

My real-life friends presented two point of views:

1. Yes, of course I would want to live in such a world. It represents a just social system that preserves human dignity and prevents poverty as well as greediness.

2. No. A system like that would kill entrepreneurship. People would not have the drive to create and invent, because more often than not, that drive is NOT a drive to help the world but a personal drive to succeed.

What do you think?

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What If You Couldn’t Be Rich But Poverty Didn’t Exist?

A homeless man has stationed himself right next to the local Whole Foods store, where I do my weekly grocery shopping.

He has an ever-changing display of signs, where he explains how he got to be homeless and asks people for any kind of help – even a can of beans. When it gets sweltering hot, or very cold outside, he disappears, and I always wonder where he is and hope that he was able to find a warm, clean homeless shelter.

Sometimes it is really hard to step out of Whole Foods with my full cart and walk past him. He looks at me, and I feel guilty and ashamed, not because I am personally responsible for his situation, but because I am part of a society that allows homelessness and doesn’t fiercely guard the human dignity and human rights of its members.

Homelessness is a violation of fundamental human rights and freedoms, including the right to liberty and security of the person, the right to freedom from discrimination, the right to privacy, the right to health, and the right to an adequate standard of living.

Up until now, I have dealt with the guilt and shame by including Shelter Network in our family’s giving budget, and by offering “my” homeless man an occasional food item.

Today, I am also blogging about it, as part of the Bloggers Unite effort.

Photo credit: SamPac

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Homelessness Violates Basic Human Rights

Today commemorates the Nazis’ highly organized effort to rid the world of its entire Jewish population.

They managed to rid the world of most of its European Jews: six million Jews were gassed, shot or died in the ghettos and in concentration camps before the Nazis were stopped in 1945.

One would think that the lessons supposedly learned from the Holocaust would ensure that the world would not tolerate another genocide, but the latter part of the twentieth century proved that genocides were still possible and that the world was not quick to intervene and bring an end to them.

For my grandmother Miep, who is 92 years old and a Holocaust survivor, every day is Holocaust Remembrance Day. She and my late grandfather Arie were in their twenties when Holland became occupied by the Nazis. They managed to escape the Nazis for more than a year, hiding in different places, until, in their last hiding place, a neighbor turned them in. They spent a horrible year in Tereisenstadt concentration camp, stripped of all human dignity, and separated from their daughter, my aunt, Elizabeth. Grandma lost both her parents and many other family members, almost died of typhus, and still has nightmares every single night.

The word ‘holocaust’ comes from the ancient Greek word for ‘sacrifice by fire’. In the 19th century it was used to refer to mass slaughter, especially by fire. The mass killing of Jews by Nazis was referred to as ‘this holocaust’ in the British parliament in 1943, and by the 1950s the name was widely applied. In Hebrew, we call it ‘the Shoah’, which means ‘the catastrophe’.

Sources: Helium, Peace Pledge Union

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Holocaust Remembrance Day 2008

Photo by aussiegal

How to be greener when, in the eco-conscious universe, you must be considered a terrible sinner? This is the challenge facing me this Earth Day 2008.

I drive an SUV, buy bottled water and disposable everything, and take wasteful, extra-long showers. Although I manage to fit many worthy causes into our giving budget, I never gave a single dollar to a green charity.

I have no excuses, really. I like to think that I am fairly intelligent, and I do realize that our actions today, or lack thereof, could turn future generations’ lives on this planet into a living hell. I am not proud of my detached attitude. But this is where things are.

Since writing with passion about Earth Day seemed a bit of a stretch, I decided to use this day as an opportunity to educate myself about how to be greener – without making big lifestyle changes.

Following my research, this is what I plan to do:

1. Recycle. This is the one thing I am highly aware of and do religiously (except for the occasional mayo jar that I toss in the trash instead of rinsing and recycling). It’s not surprising: recycling is one of the best environmental success stories of the late 20th century. It is also important to buy products that are marked as recycled/ recyclable. When we do that, we create an economic incentive for recyclable materials to be collected, manufactured, and marketed as new products.

2. Conserve water: I found lots of tips at American Water. The three that I plan to incorporate into my own routine: don’t pour water down the drain when there may be another use for it such as watering a plant; don’t let water run while brushing your teeth, shaving or washing your face. The third is going to be a bit of a struggle for me but I promised myself to try, at least a few times each week: take shorter showers.

3. Conserve energy in summer by cooling your home to only 80 degrees. Each degree below 78 will increase your energy use by 3-4%. In the winter, wear an extra layer of clothes and set the heater thermostat to 68.

4. Reuse. Reusing items by using them more than once, repairing them, donating them to charity or selling them (think Ebay) reduces waste. Reusing, when possible, is better than recycling, because the item does not need to be reprocessed before it can be used again. Examples of reusing: using cloth napkins; using refillable bottles of water and refilling them with tap water; turning empty jars into containers for leftover foods; and using reusable grocery bags instead of the store’s paper or (gasp) plastic bags.

5. Reduce air pollution by driving less. Even driving just a little less makes a difference. If possible, arrange carpools; walk or ride a bicycle if you can – I tend to drive to the local grocery store even though it is just a five-minute walk from my house. My own personal resolution is to walk there when I only need a few items. Another excellent way do drive less, which comes quite easily to me (maybe too easily) is to shop online. More tips at the California Air Resources Board website.

How to be greener? The first step: you need to want to be greener. Once you want to change and make a few simple changes, the rest will follow.

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How To Be Greener