- The Jewish community is not in need of an Israel advocacy campaign of facts and figures alone, but also of a new Jewish narrative based on Jewish ideas and values for engaging Israel in a way that will help integrate Israel into a modern Jewish identity. Jews today need to be able to address crucial questions for which they currently do not know the answer. For example: What is the role of "peoplehood" in modern Jewish identity? What is the meaning and purpose of Jewish sovereignty connected to territory rooted in the land of Israel to modern Jewish life? What are the requirements of morality of war, and how can Israel use its power in a way that is consistent with the highest standards of Jewish morality and values? How does Israel balance its legitimate right of self defense with the rights of others? Can a Jewish state be reconciled with the values of Jewish pluralism and freedom? Does the aspiration for a Jewish state automatically define Israel as a racist, apartheid state?
These are just some of the questions that need to be addressed and answered by this new Jewish narrative of Israel and Zionism. If one cannot answer them, there is neither a foundation for connecting to Israel nor the ability to sustain a viable and meaningful relationship. We need to educate and empower the Jewish community to engage Israel in a meaningful way before we can even think about asking them to advocate on its behalf.
50 Years Ago: The Reclamation of a Man-Made Desert (Scientific American)
Aurelio Peccei's Flawed Vision and The Club or Rome (The Nuclear Green Revolution)
"First, we must ask if Peccei over rates the human ability to foresee the consequences of its haphazard decisions and underrate the human ability to successfully adapt to those consequences as they emerge. We have to ask what Peccei envisions as the human and ecological consequence of modernity. First, premodern human economies were also capable of producing significant environmental feedback as a 2000 report by the state of Israel on the On the Implementation Of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification noted,
The arid regions of Israel suffered natural soil erosion due to climate change during early historical times, and ancient Negev populations invested commendable terracing efforts to halt this erosion and to develop run-off agriculture there. From the dawn of history nearly all parts of the country have been under intensive land use by humans, including pastoralism and cropping, though evidence for desertification or the lack of it during historical times is not conclusive. During the turn of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century exploitation of woody and herbaceous vegetation especially in the dry subhumid areas, for firewood and due to grazing, caused severe soil erosion and significant degradation of vegetation. Many lowland regions have become waterlogged and salinized. It is not known whether or not semi-arid drylands suffered desertification at that time.
The report does not elaborate on the relationship of grazing practices to desertification, but these are well documented elsewhere. "Wildlife", and Internet site states.
In the Near East, the plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers formed the ancient region of Mesopotamia. This area was known for its agricultural wealth, but it became an early victim of desertification brought about by humans.
Ancient farmers knew that periodically leaving land fallow or unplanted, helped to renew the soil’s fertility. But they stopped this practice so that they could grow more crops.
After 3000 B.C. irrigati- First, we must ask if Peccei over rates the human ability to foresee the consequences of its haphazard decisions and underrate the human ability to successfully adapt to those consequences as they emerge. We have to ask what Peccei envisions as the human and ecological consequence of modernity. First, premodern human economies were also capable of producing significant environmental feedback as a 2000 report by the state of Israel on the On the Implementation Of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification noted,
The arid regions of Israel suffered natural soil erosion due to climate change during early historical times, and ancient Negev populations invested commendable terracing efforts to halt this erosion and to develop run-off agriculture there. From the dawn of history nearly all parts of the country have been under intensive land use by humans, including pastoralism and cropping, though evidence for desertification or the lack of it during historical times is not conclusive. During the turn of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century exploitation of woody and herbaceous vegetation especially in the dry subhumid areas, for firewood and due to grazing, caused severe soil erosion and significant degradation of vegetation. Many lowland regions have become waterlogged and salinized. It is not known whether or not semi-arid drylands suffered desertification at that time.
The report does not elaborate on the relationship of grazing practices to desertification, but these are well documented elsewhere. "Wildlife", and Internet site states.In the Near East, the plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers formed the ancient region of Mesopotamia. This area was known for its agricultural wealth, but it became an early victim of desertification brought about by humans.
Ancient farmers knew that periodically leaving land fallow or unplanted, helped to renew the soil’s fertility. But they stopped this practice so that they could grow more crops.
After 3000 B.C. irrigation be-came more widespread, proba-bly in response to a population increase. As a result, the soil be-came exhausted. Its fertility was also decreased by a buildup of salts left behind by evaporated irrigation water. Eventually the once lush plains became a des-ert, and the ancient Mesopo-tamian civilization collapsed. At one time the lands north of Africa’s Sahara Desert supported a wide range of wildlife. Ancient rock paintings, murals in tombs, and Roman mosaics all depict deer and gazelle in grasslands, with predators such as leopards and lions hunting them.
Thus the ecological damage caused by modern agricultural practices must be measured against the ecological damage caused by traditional practices of agriculture. Neither is desirable, but the superior resources available to modern agriculturalists, would appear to make mitigation more likely. A recent Chinese report of the mitigation of agriculture related desertification states,
Under Roman rule, North Africa produced vast quantities of cereal grains such as barley and wheat. However, centuries of overgrazing by cattle, as well as harm to shrubs and trees by goats, have combined with climatic shifts to erode the land and destroy wildlife. Tunisia, for example, has lost approximately half its arable land.
Some scientists believe desertification reintorce itself intensifying the changes in the climate. Whenever vegetation is destroyed on a large, long-term scale, ground temperature rise and rainfall decreases. In 1969 the Israelis built a fence across the Sinai-Negev Desert between Israel and Egypt. On one side the Egyptians continued grazing camels, sheep, and goats. On the other side the Israelis left the land uncultivated, and wild plants began to take hold. Satellite photographs re-veal dark patches of vegetation under hazy cloud cover on the Israeli side but a clear sky and a desert in the making on the Egyptian side.Transforming the traditional resource-consuming agriculture into modern agriculture is the only choice and fundamental way to improve agricultural and ecological conditions in the Northwest.
Modern agriculture is a resource-saving and technology-intensive industry run by intensive management with the combination of planting, breeding, processing, trading, manufacturing and farming. The traditional way of extensive cultivation and management as well as the divorce of agriculture from animal husbandry must be replaced by the concept of modern agriculture. Only in this way, can the course of industrial management and adjustment of the agricultural structure be advanced, and a technology-industry system will come out of the combination of animal husbandry, cultivation of herbage, farming of fine breeds of livestock, water conservancy, processing of agricultural products, and management of agricultural energy.
Both irrigation- and rainfall-dependent agriculture can form an expanding agro-pastoral circle centered on villages or oases, which is the outcome of harmonized relations between human and nature, and an optimized man-made ecosystem suitable for natural and cultural environments in the Northwest.
If switching from grazing to rearing sheep in folds is to tackle the problems of desertification and degeneration of the grassland at the root on a large scale, speeding up the construction of modern agriculture is to resolve the issues of ecological improvement and agricultural development in the Northwest at a higher level. As fundamental measures to combat desertification, raising sheep in pens, stopping cultivating and grazing, and promoting the course of modern agriculture are emphases for the investment of capital and technology and deserve favorable policies.Thus not only may traditional agriculture cause far more ecological damage than modern agricultural practices, but modern agricultural practices offer routes to mitigation of the damages caused by traditional practices.
Nuclear Power Does NOT Help to Combat Climate Change (Coalition Against Nuclear Energy)
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