Glimpsing a green life

REBECA KUROPATWA

Late last month, the environmental awareness committee of Jewish Federation of Winnipeg’s next generation leadership division presented EcoShift, offering events for all ages throughout the day, from composting and recycling to a green-vendor showcase, as well as home retrofit demonstrations and a Sukkot program.

The idea for EcoShift was born nearly two years ago by Dov Secter and his wife, Sarah Allentuck-Secter, after attending a young leadership conference in Toronto.

“We came back thinking that we must be leaders, not only for other local communities but for Jewish and other communities everywhere,” said Secter. “We wanted to have this event to encourage Jewish agencies, as well as individuals and families, to move on this issue [of the environment] and to undertake green practices.”

There is little doubt about the dedication of these co-chairs in bringing this project to fruition, one that did not waver even when the then-expectant couple had a planning meeting with the event committee and Allentuck-Secter’s water broke. “I didn’t go into heavy labor right away, so we called an emergency meeting. So, yeah, we’re very committed,” she joked.

“Looking around, we didn’t see our community making living a green life a very high priority,” said Allentuck-Secter. “We set out to bring a big name speaker in, someone who could reach key demographics and inspire change.”

To that end, the committee secured Dr. David Suzuki, a leading environmentalist, author, award-winning scientist and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation, as the keynote speaker for the public lecture at the close of the day’s events.

Suzuki began by mentioning his foundation’s list of the most effective things people can do to be environmentally responsible, including driving a car less often or eating meat no more than one day per week. Suzuki said that these steps in and of themselves will not solve the world’s environmental ills, but that they’re “a start ... giving us more time.”

Suzuki also referred to the key discovery of the Human Genome Project, which, he said, was that the sequence of human DNA is nearly identical to other living entities – from apes to dogs, cedar trees to dandelions. “All life is related,” he said. “Surely we should be treating [other living things] with greater respect and care.”

He continued, “All trails lead back – 150,000 years ago – to Africa, when the world was a very different place.... Our most fundamental needs – clean air, water, soil and energy from the sun – are possible through biodiversity.”

According to him, since the time when humans made up a relatively small number on the planet, we have become the world’s most numerous species of mammal. He said, “The simple act of us staying alive means we have a very heavy eco-footprint.”

What human beings do with their unique mammalian ability to think, explained Suzuki, flies in the face of life-sustaining biodiversity. “We’re intelligent, yet we use these [air, water, soil] as a dump for some of the most toxic chemicals on this planet. And now we’ve compounded that with our incredible appetite for consumption, with a global economy that exploits the world over to satiate its appetite.”

Suzuki said he cringes when told by representatives of the federal government, for example, that he “must be realistic ... that the economy [not ecology] is the bottom line ... wanting it to grow forever. As nothing – not cancer cells and not the economy – can grow forever in a finite world.

“Ecology means the study of home, and economics is the management of home.... It’s time we put the ‘eco’ back into the economy.... Markets, the economy and capitalism aren’t forces of nature ... yet, we bow down to them – our latest idols. This is madness. These don’t govern our lives like real forces of nature that know no borders and keep us alive.

“We’re partying like there’s no tomorrow, using up the legacy of our children and grandchildren. The party is over; it’s time for us to sober up. We’ve done it in the past and we can do it in the future. All it takes is the will to do it.”

There is still hope, he said. “We must slow down, get to know each other, help our economy flourish, stop putting toxins into our environment and re-imagine the future. There are real solutions out there being tried around the world – not pie-in-the-sky concepts.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

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