Rabbi Zari Weiss EPA Climate Testimony
On May 21, 2009, the EPA came to Seattle to receive public comment on their finding that greenhouse gases pollution pose a threat to human health. Rabbi Zari Weiss gave this testimony at the EPA hearing.
Testimony - Rabbi Zari Weiss
EPA Hearings
May 21, 2009
Shalom; my name is Rabbi Zari Weiss, and I am here as a representative of the Jewish Community. A number of us here have been working on a project called The Jewish Climate Challenge: Affirming our Covenantal Responsibility to the Earth, a project in which we’re challenging members of the Jewish Community and beyond to reduce our carbon emissions by at least 2% this year and in coming years. Like many of us, we know that our actions have an impact on the environment. We also believe, as the EPA recently acknowledged, that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions are a danger to public health and welfare. We are doing what we can as individuals, but we need leadership at the national and governmental levels as well. We are so pleased that the EPA has publicized these findings, and we want to go on record in support of regulation of these pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
We are guided by the wise teachings of Jewish Tradition, which guides us to recognize that we—all humans—have a sacred responsibility to help care for this precious world in which we live. A beautiful midrash, or story, says that When G-d first created the world, G-d led Adam, the first human around the trees in the Garden of Eden. G-d said, “See My works, how beautiful and praiseworthy they are. Everything I have created has been created for your sake. Think of this, and do not corrupt or destroy My world, for if you corrupt it, there will be no one to set it right after you.” (Ecclesiastes Rabbah, Chapter 7, Section 13).
I am so amazed that this midrash was written approximately 1300 years ago, well before the modern industrial age. Our ancestors understood the profound responsibility that humans have to care for Creation, and all the parts of creation, with which we’ve been entrusted. They outlined numerous pieces of legislation which prevented people from hurting animals or from needlessly wasting the earth’s natural resources. What would they have to say to us today about the way that our actions have impacted upon the natural habitats of the earth’s fish and mammals and birds, causing many species to become extinct or be threatened with extinction, or the ways that we as a society waste our natural resources, cutting down trees, even whole forests, as one example, for catalogues and other disposable items?
Our ancestors were equally concerned about how their actions affected human beings; one statement in the Talmud, for example, states that those things which cause pollution, such as tanneries or carcasses, must be located a sufficient distance from a town so as not to jeopardize the health and well-being of the town’s inhabitants. Furthermore, they believed that it was so important to save a person’s life, that one could transgress the various commandments in order to save another person. What would they say about the health risks posed by global warming, the ways that severe climate change is threatening whole populations of people around the globe?
In so many ways, we think that we humans have evolved as a species, but in truth, our ancestors were so much wiser in many ways. They lived their lives guided by an ethic that said that we are all responsible for one another and for this earth. Though they might have framed things in more primitive ways than we, they understood the fundamental truth that all of our actions in the world have repercussions. What we do affects the world in which we live: the land, the air, the water, the other creatures with whom we share this planet. They understood that it is important, indeed essential, to choose the life-giving way in every decision they made, every choice that was theirs.
“Ha’idoti vachem hayom et hashamayim v’et ha’arets, hachaiim v’hamavet; natati lifanecha habracha v’haklalah; u’vacharta bachayim: “I call heaven and earth to witness this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse, therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.”
I pray that in this critical time of change, brought about by the warming of our planet, that we let the wisdom of our religious and spiritual traditions guide us—to choose life—in our decisions, in our choices, in our regulations—so that we and our descendants may live.
Thank you.
