A unique seminar on environmental issues involving prominent Jewish thinkers, environmental activists, businesspeople, academics and local politicians will be hosted by the University of Colorado at Boulder聮s Environmental Studies Program Oct. 17.
The seminar is the first event of a new project the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, or CLAL, has begun to bring together people with diverse perspectives on environmental issues for study and dialogue, said Rabbi Robert Rabinowitz, a senior fellow at the center. CLAL is based in New York City.
"We are launching this new project in the conviction that the task of increasing human prosperity and restoring our natural environment is one of the central challenges faced by humanity today," said Rabinowitz.
"This is a discussion that is long overdue," said CU-Boulder Environmental Studies Director James White, who helped to organize the seminar. "Two of the main drivers of human behavior are religion and money. Whether we realize it or not, our attitudes toward the environment are strongly influenced by our fundamental belief systems. It is time to open up a dialogue between people of various faiths, beliefs and economic and environmental viewpoints to talk about these issues."
Sponsored by CLAL, the event will be held from 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. in conference room 380 of the Benson Earth Sciences Building on campus. The event is free and open to the public.
Participants include Susan Barnes-Gelt, a Denver city councilwoman-at-large who co-chairs the council聮s Land Use Committee; Shari Cohen, a CLAL senior fellow who directs the Jewish Public Forum; Michael Edesess, chief economist of the Lockwood Financial Group and a senior fellow at the University of Denver聮s Center for Public Policy and Contemporary Issues; and Ross Jacobs, head of sales and marketing for Tetron Inc., a Farmington Hills, Mich., company providing process efficiency technology to the steel industry.
Other seminar participants are Melinda Kassen, an environmental lawyer who has worked for the Colorado Attorney General聮s Office, the Environmental Defense Fund and Trout Unlimited; Jonathan Lind, a senior projects engineer with Roche Colorado Corp. and co-chair of the Boulder County Clean Air Consortium from 1993 to 1998; and Peter Ornstein, an associate regional counsel with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency聮s Denver office.
The seminar also includes C. Joshua Taxman, an attorney involved in commercial real estate investment and development and a member of the board of directors of the Boulder Jewish Community Foundation, and Rabinowitz, who is spearheading the effort to bridge the gaps between different groups within the Jewish community to broad environmental issues.
Other panel participants include Dyan Zaslowsky, a free-lance writer who co-authored the Wilderness Society-commissioned book, "These American Lands: Parks, Wilderness and Public Lands," and Daniel Ziskin, a former NASA atmospheric scientist and community activist who established an "eco-Jewish" community from his Boulder home called Jews of the Earth.
CU-Boulder聮s White, who also is an associate professor in the department of geological sciences, a fellow at CU聮s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and one of the world聮s experts in studying past global climate change using stable environmental isotopes, also will participate in the seminar.
CLAL聮s faculty of rabbis from all denominations and scholars from various disciplines have developed a wide range of programs. The center holds seminars, courses, consultations and lectures across North America.
The seminar is supported by the Colorado Initiative, a project funded by the Sturm Foundation.