Your Advice: EPA Wallops God's Creation; Can We Respond on "Birthday of the Trees"?

A Prophetic Voice in Jewish, Multireligious, and American Life

 EPA Wallops God's Creation; 

Smacks down State Rules Protecting Earth.

Can We Respond on "Birthday of the Trees"?

Earth-lovers, tree-embracers, healers & activists - 

On December 19, the Environmental Protection Agency  denied California   and 16 other states the right to set their own standards for carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles.

Officials from the states and numerous environmental groups vowed to sue to overturn the edict.

WHAT SHOULD WE DO? We want to share our ideas and ask YOUR advice.

For a fuller story, see --

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/washington/20epa.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
 
The 17 states — including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut — had waited two years for the Bush administration to issue a ruling on an application to set stricter air quality standards than those adopted by the federal government.

The emissions standards California proposed in 2004 — but were never approved by the federal government — would have forced automakers to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent in new cars and light trucks by 2016, with the cutbacks to begin in 2009 models.

The states were trying to heal the earth and human civilization from the CO2 that threatens climate disaster. Big Auto and Big Oil don't care, and the EPA served their profits - not the needs of the poor, those vulnerable to flooded seashores and desperate water shortages, to asthma and environmental cancer, to diseases that move with the hotter planet from the tropics to the formerly "temperate" zones.

What can we do   -- if we care about God's earth and the endangered peoples of Africa, India, Bangla Desh, the US Gulf Coast, the drought-stricken State of Georgia, and the drought-threatened peoples of the Middle East and the Great Lakes?
 
Tu B'Shvat is soon upon us.  This midwinter Jewish full-moon festival focuses on the rebirthing of trees, by extension on healing all of earth, and according to the Kabbalists on rebirthing  of The Tree -- God's Own Self.
 
This year, it begins the evening of January 21, just as the official date for observing Dr. Martin Luther King's Birthday ends. King's nonviolent struggle for justice meets our Jewish earth day. What could we do?
 
The Shalom Center will during the next month be sending out some creative materials for celebration of Tu B'Shvat. We want to begin NOW to invite rabbis, teachers, activists, clergy of other religions, to begin exploring:  
 
SHOULD WE WRITE  LETTERS TO EDITORS ABOUT EPA'S  BETRAYAL OF GOD'S EARTH & HUMANKIND AS AN IMPORTANT PART OF THE TU B'SHVAT SEDER THIS YEAR? 
 
SHOULD JEWS INVITE PEOPLE OF OTHER FAITHS TO JOIN IN THE TU B'SHVAT SEDER THIS YEAR, FOCUSING ON HEALING THE EARTH?

SHOULD WE PLANT A TREE AT THE EPA HQ?
 
ARE THERE OTHER IDEAS THAT YOU WANT TO SHARE, ABOUT WHAT WE SHOULD BE DOING?
 
Please write us at -
Awaskow@shalomctr.org
Greenmenorah @shalomctr.org
 
Shalom, salaam, peace, and healing --  Arthur