Ashamed to Admit
Are you ashamed to admit you're not across the big issues and events affecting Jews in Australia, Israel and around the Jewish world?
In this new podcast from online publication The Jewish Independent, Your Third Cousin Tami Sussman and TJI's Dashiel Lawrence tackle the week's 'Chewiest and Jewiest' topics.
Ashamed to Admit
Episode #37 The case for Jewish action on climate change, with Joel Lazar
Why does the Australian Jewish community need its own climate advocacy network? In this episode, Tami and Dash sit down with Joel Lazar - CEO of the Jewish Climate Network - to discuss the intersection of Jewish values and climate responsibility. Joel explains how Jewish teachings inspire environmental stewardship, busts some common myths, shares some illuminating ‘factoids’ and tackles the challenges of climate advocacy in a polarised political landscape.
Articles relevant to this episode:
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/out-of-a-synagogue-in-flames-a-compulsion-for-climate-action
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/inserting-climate-into-the-jewish-conversation
Article mentioned in this episode:
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/should-mum-or-dad-have-the-safe-sex-chat
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Are you interested in issues affecting Jews in Australia, the Middle East and the world at large, but struggling to keep up with the new cycle? If you answered yes, then you've come to the right place.
Speaker 2:I'm Dash Lawrence from the Jewish Independent and in this podcast series, your third cousin, Tammy Sussman, and I call on experts and each other to address all the ignorant questions that you might be too ashamed to ask.
Speaker 1:Join us as we have a go at cutting through some seriously chewy and dewy topics.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Jewish Independent podcast Ash. Shame to Admit.
Speaker 1:Hello everyone, I'm Tammy.
Speaker 2:You're also the 2004 Mariah College Vice-Captain.
Speaker 1:Thank you for reminding our listeners.
Speaker 2:And I'm Dash Lawrence.
Speaker 1:For first-time listeners. Tell them what you do at the Jewish.
Speaker 2:Independent. I am the executive director, and what do you do at the Jewish Independent?
Speaker 1:I come to the headquarters in Sydney sometimes and I help myself do some complimentary tea. That's what I do at the Jewish Independent.
Speaker 2:How is our tea collection?
Speaker 1:I do at the Jewish Independent. How is our tea collection? You've got a great tea collection there. I also write content, I make this podcast and I am the Jewish Independent's agony aunt or cousin with their new sex dating relationships. Column Sex and the Shtetl Dash. Last week I sent you a text a little bit out of the blue.
Speaker 2:On a Saturday night at about 10 o'clock.
Speaker 1:yes, it's on a Saturday night around 10 pm. I sent you a text and the text read hey Dash, what keeps you up at night?
Speaker 3:And you said I did.
Speaker 1:What did you reply?
Speaker 2:I think I said not much. I fall asleep within seconds of my head hitting the pillow most nights.
Speaker 1:Were you being facetious, or is that true?
Speaker 2:No, it's true.
Speaker 1:Are you serious?
Speaker 2:I can count on one hand the number of times that I have been awake longer than a few minutes in the last 12 months.
Speaker 1:What's that about?
Speaker 2:I am literally out within seconds. I'm also getting up at 4.30 in the morning, so swings and roundabouts.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:In answer to your question, I'm not lying in bed worrying about a long list of worries and concerns and anxieties.
Speaker 1:Okay, so what time of day do you ruminate, then, or cogitate, which is a word you taught me recently. When are you at peak cogitation?
Speaker 2:The commute, sometimes in the car, can be a time for cogitation rumination. Those are the moments where you actually finally have to stop during the middle of a day and you don't get the opportunity to fall asleep, and so your mind is still running at a million miles. That can be a time for the worries to pop up.
Speaker 1:What fears are at the foreground and what's in the background. Let's start with foreground. Treat this as a therapy session.
Speaker 2:Great. You and the rest of the ashamed to admit listeners. Just give me dot points. Give me a list. Five things that make you anxious. Oh look, it could be anything from did I order milk in the Woolworths order that I've then got to pick up later in the day? Have I overstayed my park and do I have to go move the car now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, big one, important one, yeah.
Speaker 2:Have I uploaded the show for the week? Because Tammy's going to come down on me like a ton of bricks and there's only so many times I can deal with her disappointment. You know, is the planet going to overcome the imminent climate crisis?
Speaker 1:I'm so glad you mentioned that, because I was really worried that we had absolutely nothing in common and we clearly have very different spiral styles. Yours waits until you have a moment. My spirals don't wait, they're just 24-7 rumination. So I do find it hard to fall asleep at night and some of the things that keep me awake upcoming elections, international elections, the war there are a few, but you know which war is? You know, at the forefront of my mind AI, artificial intelligence. It's coming for my job, my kids and their education and their schooling. I was going to say my marriage, but I guess now it's my divorce. That's quite often just in there playing over and over again. And then, on top of that, there's climate change. I think that's the one area where our fears overlap.
Speaker 2:In a time when so much attention and focus has naturally been on Israel and its war seems counterintuitive to talk about, or to be thinking about these bigger existential questions facing the entire globe.
Speaker 1:You're right. A lot of Jewish people who care deeply about the climate and climate change feel like they have these two competing existential threats right now. Existential threats right now. There's the existential threat of you know the Jewish existence and having a safe place to live, a Jewish homeland, and then worrying about the earth and what climate change is doing to our safety in that context as well, and so that's why we decided to interview Joel Lazar, who is the CEO of the Jewish Climate Network. He's been the CEO for the last four and a half years. Joel is a powerful storyteller. He's a thoughtful collaborator and passionate mentor. His skills and experience are diverse. They span commercial law, educational program design, jewish youth leadership and script writing.
Speaker 2:Joel's passion for Judaism runs deep. He was born and raised in the Melbourne Jewish community and has held various leadership positions in Jewish youth movements and synagogues. Above all, Joel firmly believes that the Australian Jewish community has an important role to play in addressing the impacts of climate change that are now unfolding, while also enjoying the social and economic benefits flowing to those who are taking swift and effective action climate network before.
Speaker 1:they're a growing network of Aussie Jews stepping up to the climate challenge. They're motivated by Jewish tradition and values and their mission is to harness the capabilities and creativity of the Australian Jewish community to accelerate the transition to a zero emissions world. If you're someone like me who gets really overwhelmed by all of this, I can assure you that this conversation with Joel Lazar will help ease some of that overwhelm and you'll leave the conversation feeling more equipped with tools of how you can take action.
Speaker 2:Joel Azar. Welcome to the Ashamed to Admit studio.
Speaker 4:Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Joel, I think we should begin today's interview with the question most commonly presented to you, and that is why do we need a Jewish?
Speaker 4:climate network Precisely? Please tell us. Nice Look, it's a question I get a lot probably the most asked since I started in this role four and a half years ago and it's a fair one. We have hundreds of climate groups already, and we have hundreds of Jewish groups already, so do we need another Jewish climate group? And I think the answer I often give to that is based on what Sir David Attenborough tells us now, which is that climate change is really no longer a scientific problem.
Speaker 4:We've known the scientific issue for decades. Now it's actually a communications problem and knowing that our community and every community that has the opportunity to get involved in climate change action need the right messengers. They need people they can trust to give them information that's credible, from people who they have an affinity with, who they like, and that's just basic social science. It's the tribalism of human beings that we don't accept the same message, no matter who gives it to us. We accept it from people who we feel closeness to and connection to. So the JCN was founded because our board and our team and our volunteers, our entire ecosystem is seeping with Jewishness, and that's one of the key tools that we need in order to cut through to the Jewish community and give our community everything they need to get active.
Speaker 2:Joel, how does a good Jewish boy from the Bagel Belt, an alumni of Yavna Liebner, a graduate lawyer, end up becoming involved in climate advocacy?
Speaker 4:Well, I would say, a couple of years into corporate law, I started to scan for opportunities that would feel more, I guess, aligned for me, where I felt purposeful, getting up every day and spending a huge chunk of my day on whatever it was I was working on. And about five, six years ago, I just dove deeper into the science. I read books, watched a bunch of YouTube videos and just very quickly realized, hmm, we're halfway through possibly the most important decade of the millennium for the human species and for the Jewish people and for Israel. If we don't turn this ship around on climate change and emissions and nature loss and biodiversity loss, we won't have a chance, basically 10 years from now. And so I just kind of imagined myself sitting in a rocking chair.
Speaker 4:I'm 85 years old, I'm looking back at my life and I'm thinking am I happy with what I did, the choices I made? And I kind of had this feeling that I would regret having not gotten involved in doing something about climate change when I learned what I had learned. I would regret it. I don't know what I would tell my kids if they said oh, you found out in the early 2020s that shit was hitting the fan and you just continued on with your life. That wouldn't be a very nice feeling. So yeah, I scanned around and JCN had just been founded by an amazing group of community leaders and they were looking for their first CEO. And I just thought let's do it. You know, time is of the essence. Let's go.
Speaker 2:Was it a classic social justice or environmental orientated family that you grew up in?
Speaker 4:I think we always had good values. My mom was always a member of the teachers union. I went to Hineni where I learned how to be a good mensch. Union I went to Hineni where I learned how to be a good mensch. Yavner gave me great values also, but none of us were environmentalists. None of us strapped ourselves to trees on the weekend. That's not in my history. Me getting involved in climate was just a very kind of objective realization, looking at the science, looking at the solutions, looking at the speed at which we were going and just kind of piecing it all together and then looking at how the Jewish community could be leaders on this and we weren't, and it was just kind of a natural conclusion. So there's nothing embedded in my family, necessarily, but I think it's a kind of it's a cholent of values that kind of ushered me towards this direction.
Speaker 1:A cholent of values. That is amazing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know, there's the beans and there's the. I don't know, I don't make chocolate very often. I don't know what else goes into it Some potatoes, some meat.
Speaker 1:Clearly you're quite Jewish, Joel. You mentioned Hineni, which is a Jewish youth movement. We have some listeners who aren't Jewish. So clearly your Jewish identity has influenced your approach. Are there any kind of Jewish teachings or traditions that align with climate responsibility?
Speaker 4:Look there are. I'll answer that in two ways. The first is actually through a story. I just can't help myself but tell a story?
Speaker 1:No, we love stories.
Speaker 4:But there's this famous story, famous story in the Talmud, in the Jewish Talmud, where our sages tell of a man called Choni who's walking I don't know somewhere through the fields and he sees this other guy who's planting a carob tree. And Choni looks at him and he says mate, like what are you doing? It takes about 70 years for a carob tree to mature. You'll be long dead before you see the fruits of this tree. What's the point? And the man says the honey. He says look around. And he sees all these other mature carob trees that are all their beautiful, fruiting, and he says you know, my ancestors planted these carob trees and they didn't see the fruits of them. And I now get to enjoy them. So I too will plant a carob tree for my kids and generations to come, and for me that epitomises the real depth of what Judaism has to say about this climate change challenge, that where the Jewish people are fundamentally a people who have the long view. We have a long collective memory into the past and we have a long view to the future. We don't just think about the day to day and climate change is inherently a long term problem, a multi decadal problem. So that's really inspiring, and there's a whole list of other Jewish lines that you know. Oblige us not to waste, which includes not wasting energy, not wasting resources, cruelty to animals. The Sabbath, which is all about resting and letting the earth rest. There's, you know, a massive list of these things and and they're all beautiful and I draw on them from time to time, but I think that multi-generational story is a real powerful one.
Speaker 4:From Judaism, the second part of Judaism, which is more about Jewish lived experience than Jewish texts, that inspires, that can inspire us around. Climate is around like the idea of the status quo versus change, and, like the jewish people, we never accept the status quo. That's just not who we are right. If we had accepted the status quo, we'd be long gone. We look at the societies around us, especially when we're in times of turmoil and strife, and we say, like this isn't inevitable, we're not fatalistic, we can have agency in changing the course of history, and that's been part of our ingenuity, I think, over time, and I think that's the exact spirit that we need in order to overcome climate change problems.
Speaker 1:On the topic of status quo, then, and not accepting it, are you able to tell me something a little bit off-brand, maybe that you've learned about climate change over the past four and a half years in your role as CEO? Anything that surprised you, that may, in turn, surprise our listeners.
Speaker 4:I will answer the question with another question, and that is it's a technical nerdy question which is how much renewable energy to either of you think is in the australian electricity market, like all the electricity that comes into our light bulbs and our heating, etc. All different types of sources of energy. What percentage comes from renewable energy, do you think?
Speaker 1:I'm gonna go with 18 high 18. What do you think, dash? I'm ashamed to go with 18, high 18%. What do you think, Dash?
Speaker 2:I'm ashamed to admit I don't know how much currently we have that is generated by renewable energy.
Speaker 4:Take a punt. There's no shame.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think the potential is huge. Obviously, we've got vast, vast resources, natural resources, and we can be utilising the sun much better than what we currently do. I'm going to say 8%, no half of high, I'm going to say 9%.
Speaker 4:Okay, we've got a 9% 18%. In the quarter ending December last year, 46% of our electricity came from renewable energy 46.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 4:Pretty good. Tammy's not that impressed, doesn't seem that impressed. She's like okay, if you say so, things have come a long way. Things have come a long way, yeah, and the average last year was 42%, and there was a time in November last year where it was 75%, 75%, right.
Speaker 1:Wow, what happened.
Speaker 4:It's a very sunny day, basically Sunny, windy day yeah, perfect combination of huge amounts of sun, huge amounts of wind, all being captured by wind farms and solar farms and things like that. So I mean, that's something that continually amazes and surprises me. For people who feel a bit despondent, like are we going to get there? One of the main things we have to do is get to as close to 100 renewable energy as possible. We've got to get off fossil fuels, and the fact that we're already at about 42 is just phenomenal. So we're track. We're getting there already. We just need to go a lot faster, and I think that might surprise a lot of audience members that we're actually that far along already and we shouldn't do anything that kind of takes us off track. So that's pretty cool.
Speaker 4:There's a commonly misunderstood idea around, like what global heating even is. You might have heard this idea that we can't go above 1.5 degrees of warming since the industrial revolution, or people talk about 1.5 degrees or two degrees. You might see this in the news and there's a misconception that this is like the weather outside, like oh, we can't go from 27 degrees Celsius to 28 and a half, but obviously like that's not so bad. Why would that be a problem? And I often tell people to think more about the predicament we're in, as though the planet is like a human body and our human body is very carefully calibrated to correct me if I'm wrong like 37 and a half degrees or something like that, and we have a very severe temperature. If we go a couple of degrees above that and a couple of degrees more, we're dead. We're brain dead, it's, and so the system is. The planet system is like that as well. So when you think 1.52 degrees, every fraction of a degree increases extreme weather events by many folds, and so that's why those little micro degrees are really important. So those are kind of like some nerdy things that people might not have known.
Speaker 4:And then I'll say something off brand, which is about recycling. Okay, I talk to people who ask me what do I do? I say I work for the Jewish Climate Network, and then they tell me about all of their recycling practices. They tell me, oh, it's so hard, and my neighbor puts it in the wrong bin. You know, I'm okay putting this on record, but I did a little back of the envelope calculation last night and I figured out that if you spent a minute a day agonising about your recycling.
Speaker 4:You'd spend about six and a half hours per year on your recycling practices six and a half hours and I'm giving permission to our audience to use half of that on highly effective climate action. If you spent three of those hours meeting your local member of parliament three times a year doing the next thing on your home if you can afford it, like whacking on solar panels or the next bit of electrification, or, if you can't, switching your bank account or your superannuation funds to one that doesn't invest in fossil fuels, or just signing up to the JCA newsletter so you continue to be inspired and read it for five minutes a month, that will be a hundred times more impactful. The truth is, we don't have infinite amounts of attention and brain space to do all the things, so you have to choose. And if you're spending six and a half hours on recycling and nothing else on highly effective climate action, I would encourage you to just drop the recycling a bit and go and visit your MP and have a relationship with your MP. I'm going to get cancelled for that.
Speaker 3:As Australia heads to the polls, voters are focused on the usual issues health, education and the cost of living, but for the past 18 months, the conflict in Israel, Gaza and beyond has cast a long shadow over Australian society. Free Palestine Free, free Palestine.
Speaker 4:Thousands of police patrols have been deployed across Victoria's Jewish communities in a bid to stamp out racist intimidation.
Speaker 3:The surge in anti-Semitism has deeply impacted the Jewish community. The surge in anti-Semitism has deeply impacted the Jewish community. There is an evil at work in this country.
Speaker 4:No fire, no vandalism, no paint, no threats, no intimidation.
Speaker 3:The role of our political leaders in maintaining social cohesion has never been more critical.
Speaker 2:The awful anti-Semitism chanted by some of the protesters at the Sydney Opera House is beyond offensive. It is a betrayal of our Australian values.
Speaker 3:We are having rolling terrorist attacks in our community and the Prime Minister has been dragged, kicking and screaming. I'm Rob Caldor and Intentions Transplanted. Series 2 will explore a couple of key questions. Is anti-Jewish racism an issue of broader national significance and how will this election shape Australia's social fabric? Join me as I chat with journalists and contributors from the Jewish Independent. To unpack it all, we'll dive into the role of the Muslim vote, key battleground seats with significant Jewish populations, and how the major parties are positioning themselves on Israel, gaza and the future of social cohesion in Australia. New episodes drop weekly in the lead-up to the election. Subscribe now, wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2:What I am really interested in understanding from you is in climate change is considered, unfortunately, a cause of the left, primarily a cause of sort of woke left-wing politics. This is not my view, but I think this is the reality that we're facing, that it is unfortunately being bundled in with an issue that only the left is concerned with or the elites, and this is only going to get worse, I expect, with a Trump administration, and I think that the Jewish community is not immune, unfortunately, from falling into the trap of adopting that mindset. I'm wondering how you are able to kind of break free from this falling back into an issue that only left-wing elites, woke people should and are being concerned about. How are you able to and what are you doing to break free of that dynamic?
Speaker 4:It's a great question. It's possibly the question, the question of all questions. There's a lot of different ways I think about this and JCN thinks about this. I'll start the answer with some factoids about the history of conservative and Republican involvement in environmental action. Richard Nixon, republican President of the United States, was a huge environmental champion and he established the Environmental Protection Agency in America. Malcolm Fraser, liberal Australian Prime Minister, founded the Australian Conservation Foundation and passed a series of really important environmental laws.
Speaker 4:It has not always been the case that quote unquote the left or more progressive parts of society have championed environmental custodianship and stewardship. Weird shit happened in Australia, especially by the way, whereby it kind of got cordoned off into a left ideological issue. And it didn't have to be this way In the UK for a long time. It's perfectly bipartisan. Boris Johnson, very strong on climate, a Tory leader. So it's not inbuilt into left ideology that they get climate and the rest of the world have to deal with other right-wing conservative economic things.
Speaker 4:So I would just remind our audience that it kind of belongs to everyone and it kind of oscillates between who champions it over time. To that I would add Jewish tradition has held, like Tammy asked me before, has held these values for thousands of years, before the left even existed, even the concept or the political parties. So I feel like there's this opportunity to reclaim those parts of our jewish values and the songbook that we've sung from for so long and say wait a second, like this is our thing. How did we cede the territory to like a niche of society? And then the last thing I'll say is climate is not this appendix to the rest of life? Right, I had my appendix out when I was in kindergarten, so I actually don't know what it's like to have anything to do with an appendix.
Speaker 4:But climate is not an appendix to life. It impacts deeply the economy, it impacts public health. It impacts deeply the economy, it impacts public health, it impacts the most vulnerable. It impacts everything that we call life. And so for anyone who champions life, for anyone who champions as good, sensible economic management, for anyone who champions good public health outcomes, a climate lens is critical to doing all of those things really well. And on the Israel and Jewish community fronts and this is probably the cherry on top Israel is in a climate hotspot in the Middle East. It stands to suffer most from climate impacts, from extreme heat and from droughts more than many other countries. So people who care about Israel's long-term prosperity, particularly social cohesion in the Middle East, where droughts and extreme weather can exacerbate social collapse. And social collapse in the Middle East is never good for Israel and it's also not good for Jewish communities around the world. Again, there's an invitation to think about climate as a deeply Jewish issue, and one that our community should actually be spending a lot more time and energy preparing for.
Speaker 2:Joel, I totally hear all those things that you're saying, and yet I'm also wondering to what extent has the JCN suffered since October 7th, when I know, unfortunately, there have been segments that the climate, the wider climate advocacy network, has betrayed them or that they don't understand the position of Jewish members of their side.
Speaker 4:So there's a few really important elements here and I think it's important to separate them out into pieces. The first is that, on the whole, the majority of the climate groups and climate leaders in australia that we've interacted with or discussed climate policy with have been great. Either they have what I would, they've done what I would call staying in their lane. You know they're focused on their core mission of climate, because we can't all get involved in every social justice and global issue that arises every day, and I think staying in their lane has been important to maintaining their integrity and credibility as climate messengers. Some of them have also been incredible allies and reached out shortly after October 7. We've had deep, extensive dialogue about how their organizations will have Jewish volunteers, jewish staff, jewish board members, jewish donors and just general Jewish stakeholders who are in a lot of pain right now and have really welcomed the opportunity to hear from me, as someone with deep lived experience from within the Jewish community and who understands the climate world, also to share with them what that experience is, to increase their empathy and their understanding and their nuance, and I've seen a lot of really beautiful fruits come from that. And then there's been a, I would say, a vocal minority, as is and I've seen a lot of really beautiful fruits come from that and then there's been a, I would say, a vocal minority as is often the case with a lot of this stuff like a rabid vocal minority, where you sort of choose how much attention you want to pay to those, because you could easily spend all of your time and days focusing on the loudest and angriest and least empathetic people, and my general philosophy is more to embolden and strengthen and build ties with allies in order to increase the circle of friends that we have, who understand our experience, and that naturally they will then become the dominant force and partners.
Speaker 4:And then the minority who are the most destructive remain on the fringe. And the fringe still needs to be dealt with because the fringes can become the mainstream very quickly. That's been probably one of the lessons of jewish history that what appears to be a fringe idea about the jews suddenly is in the mainstream and, holy shit, how did we get here? So we've got to deal with the fringes, but we can't forget almost the silent majority in the middle who want to understand, who want to connect, who maybe just don't have the knowledge or the access to a Jewish voice who's willing to hear them out and share. So we've been doing a lot of that since October 7, and it's been really fruitful and quite encouraging to know that wait a second. There is a model here for partnering with people in different progressive and social movements, and I think that's probably led to what I believe is the climate movement becoming kind of the least outspoken on antisemitism, like the least antisemitic, shall we say, of many of the other progressive movements, except for Greta.
Speaker 4:Except for Greta, but also, let's set aside a moment for Greta, because I think that's what we all want to talk about.
Speaker 1:We all want to talk about Greta Thunberg.
Speaker 4:Let's remember, greta is one human being. She's one human being with a large audience, but there are millions and millions of other people who do not get airtime, who are not in the news, who are shaping society, who are not Greta. So it would be unwise to kind of cast out an entire cause because there's an individual within that cause who we dislike. We wouldn't really do that. I would hope we wouldn't do that with kind of other causes. And the fundamental science of climate is still there, regardless of Greta right, greta or no Greta. We are getting close to 1.5 degrees of warming and we need to do something about it and it will impact us. So we have to find a way to kind of act in spite of Greta, potentially.
Speaker 2:Joel, I was interested in the fact that people have been so focused on what's going on in Israel and the war with Hamas that you know in some ways it must have made your job so much more difficult in the last 18-plus months because you know people are hurting and their thoughts with the hostages, thoughts with the conflict itself, must be very difficult to get a word in about. You know the other very big existential matter of the fact that the world is getting hotter and action is more needed now than ever before.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think it's harder for anyone in this community who is trying to bring attention to something other than the hostages and the war, which makes complete sense, Like the human brain can only hold so much and we are at this complete existential crisis right now, which is why I'm very careful to not overimpose or to ask people to think any differently, just because I happen to be thinking about this a lot as well, but just to meet people where they're at and find those gentle avenues towards doing more on climate.
Speaker 4:That feels like not an additional psychological burden but can be sort of just integrated into the current state of affairs. A couple of examples of that are you know, there were Israelis who were killed and taken hostage, who were real environmental champions for decades, and a way to both maintain our attention on the war and the hostages and also think about the substance of the life work of some of those people is a way to kind of honour both our attention on the war but also to bring attention to what's happening on climate and sustainability issues. And that's felt quite good to do that and affirming and I kind of just go where there is sufficient energy and I think the Jewish community is not monolithic. It's not like in a block. Every single person is 100% maxed out at all times, thinking about this one thing right, we ebb and we flow. Sometimes there are little pockets who feel like, oh, they can come up for air for whatever reason. There's a million different reasons why someone might feel they can come up for air.
Speaker 4:And so in those moments it's like, hey, jcn is still here, the climate crisis is still here. I mean, that's not like a fun message necessarily, like now you can turn your attention to another existential problem, but we maintain our presence. We continue to put out offerings of resources and events and opportunities for people to get involved so that when they can tap back in, they're ready, and I think that's been a wise approach so far you mentioned that the Jewish community is not a monolith and, and to me that's so true, especially as we lead into an election.
Speaker 1:So for our international listeners, here in Australia we're about to vote in our federal election and it's at this time where I see a lot of stuff on social media from all different parts of the Jewish community, people, you know, pushing different political agendas. So I'm just curious to know, as we approach this election in May, joel, what do you see as the most pressing climate challenges facing Australians, and how much influence do you think individual voters or faith-based communities have on shaping those government climate policies?
Speaker 4:Excellent question.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 4:I think the challenges we face as a country in the lead up to the election are the same, regardless of if we had an election in a month or not. Our emissions are rising. We need to get them down, Extreme weather is proliferating, so all of these things are just there. There are backdrops to the current election and, you know, the scientific reality doesn't care that we have an election in four weeks. So that's like one little preface. I would say that as we get closer to an election, our representatives and candidates who are vying for our votes are out and about more than they usually are. They're talking to people, they're hugging babies, they're kissing horses, they're doing all kinds of stuff, and this is a chance to speak to them more than we usually get a chance to speak to them, and I think we commonly underestimate the power of the average punter's voice in the life of a politician I often like to think about this is going to sound a bit strange, but the relationship between us and our politicians should be like a healthy, long-term marriage. A healthy, long-term marriage has two key parts to it. It starts off with the wedding. The wedding day. Very happy, very exciting Wedding day is election day. This is where we decide if we're going to be together for the next X period. Right, but no one is under any illusion that a marriage is the result of a good wedding.
Speaker 4:Wedding is part one. More important is part two, which is every single day that we cultivate a relationship with that partner, where we teach each other things, where we positively influence one another to become better versions of ourselves. And we don't relate to our politicians this way, and that's why many of us don't trust politicians. Trust in politicians is at an all-time low across most countries. But if we shifted our mindset to wait a second, I want to be in relationship with this person for the years to come. I want to go to their office. I want to share how I feel about things. I want to share ideas with them. They want to hear this because that lets them know this is what my voters care about.
Speaker 4:So to some extent, yes, we have an election coming up. It's very exciting. Go talk to those politicians. Maybe there's a slim chance of influencing a policy in the last month before the election day comes. It's probably a little bit slim because a lot of these big decisions have already been made by the parties in recent months. But there is a chance.
Speaker 4:But I would encourage people to think more about the day after the election and to say it doesn't matter who you voted for. I've heard a beautiful phrase recently which was doesn't matter who you voted for. I've heard a beautiful phrase recently which was don't change who you vote for. Change who you vote for. It's not about the person, it's about changing the person you happen to vote for. So, whoever that person happens to be on the left of the spectrum, the right or the middle, see the opportunity to change that person to care more about climate. Every party has this amazing potential to be a leader on climate issues from its own unique philosophy and history, as I mentioned before, and see yourself as that marriage partner with your politician. Go propose to your MP and see what happens.
Speaker 1:I tried it in my own marriage and it didn't work. But you know what? I still have hope and I'm going to give it a go with my local MP. Joel, can you just like tell me who to vote for?
Speaker 4:Wouldn't it be so nice if someone could just make the decision for you. I'll make my little legal disclaimer we are a not-for-profit.
Speaker 4:We can't blah, blah, blah, so we don't tell people who to vote for. But what I will say, what I think is a little bit behind the question, especially that tension in people who care about climate and want to vote for parties that are going to do something about it, like the Greens, don't own climate. I'm just going to put it out there. I know it's in their name great branding but they don't own the issue I mentioned earlier. Richard Nixon, the EPA, malcolm Fraser, australian Conservation Foundation.
Speaker 4:Talk to the politician who you care about, who you want to vote for, to do more about climate change. That is the most potent thing you can do to get change in this country. And I will say what's so important about that is bipartisanship. We haven't used this phrase yet in this interview, but it's a really important one.
Speaker 4:I want listeners to take away no single party. What does it mean again? So bipartisanship is that all parties agree on a particular issue. Right, it is highly destructive when one party it doesn't matter who one party makes a decision on some awesome climate policy and then three years later, the other one gets elected and says we're canning the whole thing and every time we flip flop between them, we can't make long-term decisions. Investors can't build huge renewable projects that take decades to come to fruition. So the most important thing we can do, especially as a Jewish community, is to foster bipartisanship on climate change issues so that all the parties, like I said, greens, don't own this. We need to get all of the major parties on board with the key policies that help us shape the next 10 years, 20 years, 30 years into the future.
Speaker 1:Great, joel, we've asked you some really big questions. In fact, you even said we asked you the question. But don't peak too soon, because another vital question that I need to address is this one If you, joel Lazar, ceo of the Jewish Climate Network, could sit down with any historical Jewish figure to discuss climate action, who would it be and why?
Speaker 4:I've got the most nerdy answer that any person could possibly come up with to this question. Go for it. It's a guy called Simon Kuznets.
Speaker 1:Okay, what's his vibe?
Speaker 4:Kuznets' vibe. He was a Jew born in Russia in 1901, who fled to America in 1922 because of antisemitism, and he is he's also a Nobel Prize winner of economics. In 1971, he won the Nobel Prize for economics and he is the founding father of GDP gross domestic products. Okay, he was charged with the United States government with coming up with a figure during the Great Depression that would give them a reliable measure of national output you know how is this country faring and he came up with this concept called national income and that was ultimately used by the UN and the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, ultimately to become GDP. Now, GDP is like now, this number one figure that most societies use as the measure of whether or not the country is on track, prosperous.
Speaker 4:But Sir Nicholas Stern, who was the chief economist at the World Bank, would say that climate change is the greatest market failure the world has ever seen. Climate change is the greatest market failure the world has ever seen and that is because, as we proliferated fossil fuels, fossil fuel companies never paid for the pollution that they created while producing energy, and they put that out onto all of us. Basically, they externalized it instead of internalizing it, and that's why Stern says it's the greatest mark of failure. So the idea of GDP being this single measure of holy growth, telling know, telling us if society is on track. But clearly we have been growing for centuries now so in theory we should be entirely prosperous with no problems. But we obviously have big problems. We have prospered but we also have problems.
Speaker 4:And Kuznets always cautioned people. He said do not use GDP as the ultimate measure of wellbeing because it's going to exclude important things like environmental impact, unpaid work, people in homes who don't get paid, quality of life, happiness, so all of these measures. So I want to sit down with Kuznets and I want to say you're warning people not to use GDP as the single measure of happiness. The secret is they ended up doing it, Sorry. Do you have any ideas about how to include in GDP an additional measure for long-term prosperity for human beings, so that that gets included in our measure for happiness, long-term?
Speaker 1:I think I now know why you're the CEO of the Jewish Climate Network.
Speaker 4:It's so dirty.
Speaker 1:I chose Grandma Yedta from the Nanny.
Speaker 4:I love Grandma Yetta.
Speaker 1:Maybe we could double date. How do you reckon Grandma Yetta would get along with your guy?
Speaker 4:With cousins. Yeah, I think after a few martinis they would get on like a house on fire.
Speaker 2:Joel, I'm sure by now our listeners would have recognised that there is an amazing capacity in you to reframe problems and to lean into positivity and into action, when I think for many people the instinct would be pessimism defeat anxiety. So perhaps, to finish up the conversation today, give us some idea of how you have been able to manage and contain your own anxieties about the climate change challenge before us, and perhaps leave us with some of the tools that you've learnt or that you think are worth considering, because I know there'll be people listening to this conversation who don't have that instinct for positivity or that instinct for action that you have.
Speaker 1:He's looking at me, but there are lots of people like me out there, so help Joel.
Speaker 4:Look the interesting thing I'll go back to. When you asked if I got this from my family, I don't think I have an instinct necessarily in the sense that it's innate in me to want to work on this issue all day. I think it's very much an everyday person problem and an everyday person opportunity. A few tools that I use to get by week to week. One is a phrase that I absolutely love, which is action is the antidote to despair. Action is the antidote to despair when we don't know how the future will unfold. Doing something naturally helps us feel like we have some control over that future. I have the privilege of being able to work on this all week, so I'm often getting that antidote, that little kind of injection in me, and I think a lot of people in our network have found that to be true.
Speaker 4:No matter how small having a conversation with a friend about how they put solar panels on their roof suddenly you feel that little injection of pride. Like I said, sending a letter to an MP or even just sharing your struggle, your anxiety with somebody else who also shares some degree of climate anxiety immediately kind of relaxes the nervous system, and the other thing is it's actually love, just loving people in your life I'll speak in I language. Loving people in my life reminds me about why it's important to just continue to do something. I have a young daughter she's two and a half, emmanuel, and I mean just like hugging her and checking in about how her day was at Kreisch like immediately softens my nervous system because I'm reminded of what life really is. It's not always up in the numbers of emissions targets and renewable energy targets. It's actually with the people that I love. And then I get to go back to my everyday challenge and work, remembering what I'm doing it for and that there are still many, many good, beautiful things right here in front of me. It's not just this big gargantuan existential problem behind it all.
Speaker 4:So, yeah, focusing on the things that I love, the activities that I love, the people that I love, is, uh, always me up. Oh, and I couldn't forget basically just Shabbat. I keep Shabbat and I just know that I'm only ever six days away from just chilling the F out no phone, no laptop, not busying about, like. That's part of why we got into this predicament is just the constant speed and the growth and the kind of voracious appetite for more, more, more and Shabbat comes and says you can relax. We can like restore the earth and existence to how it already is and it's fine the way that it is, and just to kind of bask in that slowness has been a really nice balm each week from the climate crisis and if all else fails, medicate.
Speaker 4:Amen.
Speaker 1:Joel Lazar, ceo of the Jewish Climate Network, and just general mensch, thank you so much for joining us today on A Shame to Admit.
Speaker 4:Thanks for having me Really fun to talk to you both.
Speaker 1:And if people want to leave a huge donation to the Jewish Climate Network in their will, how do they do that?
Speaker 4:For small donations, go to jcnorgau and click donate for large bequests. That's the word bequest. Sort of one million plus, you know, yeah, a million plus. You can just email me personally and we can discuss that Okay.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Joel.
Speaker 1:Thank you. That was Joel Lazar from the Jewish Climate Network and you've been listening to. A Shame to Admit with me Tammy Sussman and Executive Director of the Jewish Independent, dr Dashiell Lawrence. Give it up for Dr Dashiell Lawrence.
Speaker 2:This episode was mixed and edited by Nick King, with theme music by Donovan Jenks.
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