On Thursday I announced my intention to join the civil disobedience against the Tar Sands XL Pipelinein a Listserve post to fellow congregants at Temple Rodef Shalom, the Reform Jewish congregation I belong to in northern Virginia.
I wasn’t sure what people would make of it. I am co-chair of our Green Team, a temple group that works to raise awareness on environmental issues, so my concern about climate change is well known. Still, there is a certain reticence in our community about overt political engagement on controversial issues. Wouldn’t it be smarter to stick with things like promoting car-pooling and recycling? Is it really necessary to get arrested in front of the White House?
So I was relieved on Friday evening when I entered our sanctuary and several long-time members, including our founding rabbi, Laszlo Berkowits, rose to greet me and wish me well in the action. Said Rabbi Berkowits, an elderly Auschwitz survivor: “If I were younger I would be there with you.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. The “Summer Sermonette” that evening was based on an excerpt from Pirkei Avot (3:22) , the ethical teachings of the ancient sages, on the balance between wisdom and action. In it, the person whose wisdom “is more abundant than his works” is compared to a tree “whose branches are abundant but whose roots are few.” Such a tree is easily toppled in the wind. But a person “whose works are more abundant than his wisdom” is likened to “a tree whose branches are few but whose roots are many, so that even if all the winds in the world come and blow against it, it cannot be stirred from its place.”
How odd this is, coming from a tradition that has put incredibly strong emphasis on study and learning. Wouldn’t we expect wisdom to be the roots, and action the branches? And yet here are the ancient rabbis, speaking to us across the centuries, reminding us that actions speak louder than words.
If you are reading this you are probably like me, deeply alarmed at the failure of our society to respond to the mounting evidence that rapid climate change is already upon us, hitting first and worst poor people in the developing world but also not sparing those of us in more affluent societies.
You know we are on the brink of catastrophic disruptions; that Americans have among the highest per capita emissions of heat-trapping gases in the world; and that the U.S. failure to pass a climate bill is one of the main reasons that international climate talks have ground to a halt. You have watched with dismay as President Obama shape-shifted from speaking passionately about climate change on the campaign trail to being afraid to even utter the word “climate,” preferring instead to speak about “clean energy,” in deference to fossil-fuel lobbyists and their know-nothing proxies, the climate change deniers. You have read books, talked to your friends, written to your elected representatives, conserved energy, given money to environmental causes, and perhaps even installed solar panels on your roof.
But unless you are part of a very small minority of activists, you have yet to engage in civil disobedience to make your views known.
Up until now, the movement for sane climate policy has resembled the tree with more branches than roots. We know a lot, and we write a lot, and we talk, talk, talk. For me, at least, the time has come for that to change. Civil disobedience might not succeed. But one thing we know for sure: our efforts so far are inadequate.
And civil disobedience just might make a difference, as it has with other great campaigns for social justice: Mahatma Gandhi’s campaign for India’s independence, Martin Luther King’s movement for Civil Rights, the ant-Vietnam War movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In each case, mass, peaceful civil disobedience served as a catalyst for overdue change.
Others have written persuasively about the importance of blocking the Tar Sands XL Pipeline. (See this post from Patriot Daily News for an excellent explanation with photos and, as usual, Bill McKibben lays it all out with unusual clarity). It’s important to know that President Obama has the ability to block it. And it’s important to understand that it’s CRAZY that our country is even considering building a pipeline to tap what Jim Hansen, NASA’s top climate scientist, calls “the world’s biggest carbon bomb.”
But for me the details of the Tar Sands and the XL Pipeline matter less than the urgent need to shift to a post-carbon energy future. The Tar Sands XL Pipeline sit-ins at the White House this month are an opportunity to finally begin to match my knowledge about climate change with action. Maybe the time has come for you, too. You can learn more about the action and sign up to risk arrest, or to support others who are doing so, at www.stoptarsands.org.
An aphorism from Pirkei Avot puts the question for us all succinctly in a famous quote from Rabbi Hillel that has never been more apt:
“If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?”