Words by Liel Biran, a volunteer community organizer with Israel-based group, Green Course. In 2020, through our partnership with 350.org, Global Greengrants Fund awarded Green Course $12,000 to support “Strike for Future ISRAEL”: a youth-led movement of Jews and Arabs who are mobilizing their peers and leading school strikes and activities to protest against the lack of government action to stop the climate crisis.
If you would have told me 15 years ago that today I would be spending half of my waking hours as a climate activist and organizer, and the other half as a teacher I wouldn’t have believed you. Nor would I have accepted as even remotely possible that I would be a vegan, a bicycle and public-transit commuter who shuns the use of automobiles whenever possible, and that I’d insist on installing solar panels on the roof of my home.
My path from the fast-paced rat race of high-tech software development and a consumer lifestyle to the no less hectic, but much more humane world of education, civil involvement and more sustainable living has been long, gradual and never obvious. Although I’ve always cared about nature and the environment, this usually translated in practice into recycling, being mindful not to litter and being upset with others who weren’t. An important milestone in my transition was when my teenage daughter Chen suggested that we begin composting our organic waste at home. I took up the challenge, obtained a compost bin, set it up in our garden, and we began separating our garbage. Within 6 months I was applying home-grown fertilizer to the garden and sowing the seeds of my own activism, albeit still at the individual level.
Not long after this I gave up driving our second car in congested traffic to work and moved to riding a bicycle to the train for my commute. This started purely from a financial motivation after calculating that I’d cover the cost of a new bike within half a year. It didn’t take me long to realize that the real personal gains were in quality of life. We soon sold that car and I began going pretty much everywhere by bike, with or without bus or train. Eventually I realized that this was not only an immediate personal win, but yet another step in reducing my harmful impact on the environment.
Next came my involvement with a community of wander-gatherers – young folks mostly, who got together for nature hikes of 3-8 days without cell phones or other modern distractions, and with all food and drink obtained en route from wild plants or abandoned produce such as fallen fruit or already harvested orchards. These trips helped me connect with nature, my fellow travelers and, most importantly, with myself. Having already become a pescatarian by this time – a story for another post sometime – these wander-gathering trips, where I happily subsisted solely on fruit, leaves and nuts for days on end, proved to me that I did not need animal-based products in order to thrive. I discovered the variety and plenty of a wholly plant-based vegan diet, which I’ve stuck to now for over a decade.
Around the same time as this reconnection with nature, my frustration and disillusionment with my career peaked. I began to feel that the work I did on software tools in the internet advertising domain, which contributed to the already rampant consumer culture, was increasingly in conflict with my growing environmental ideological orientation. I was developing an understanding of how disconnected we, the children of modern western societies, have become from nature, from the nourishing earth, from our true selves. I felt that I could no longer go on helping to advance the system that was greedily destroying natural treasures meant to be enjoyed and shared by all – people and all other life forms – in order to improve the bottom line of shareholders. With lots of help and coaching I managed to break free and, at the age of 51 began my new career in education. I enrolled in a teachers’ college and began a 2 ½ year science teaching certification program.
It was at college where I met two unique and inspirational educators whose influence guided my ongoing environmental transformation. Liad connected me with crucial knowledge about global crises and the mindset for sensitively guiding students to awareness and involvement. David invited me into activist circles, where I met other like-minded people and sources of inspiration. Liad’s and David’s influences worked on me in parallel. I learned about the IPCC, the yearly COP climate conferences, listened to discussions about the Paris Agreement, and became more aware of the climate goals of my own country, Israel (laughable at the time, and sadly still very unambitious). I began attending local events organized by the growing climate coalition of organizations such as a climate march and a climate conference. I must have left my contact details at one of these events, for one day, out of the blue, I received a phone call from an activist inviting me to a meeting of the Green Course climate team. This was nearly 5 years ago, and I’ve been a fixture of the group of volunteer activists coordinated by Green Course ever since.
While spending many of my off-work hours in activist circles, since I became a teacher, I’ve also been working on ways to connect my students with the global processes and events that are shaping their future. With the younger kids I began focusing on awareness and caring for nature, respect for the environment, and encouraging sustainable practices (e.g. muti-use utensils rather than single-use plastics). With the older high-schoolers I’ve been teaching courses on the crisis of global poverty and more recently on climate change, and encouraging them to get involved and become active members of civil society so that their voices and concerns about the world that they will inherit are heard by policy makers.
The “12 years” report in October 2018 (IPCC’s special report on 1.5 degree warming) shocked me and many others to step up our involvement. I was inspired by new civil society movements – Fridays For Future led by Greta Thunberg, and Extinction Rebellion with its call for non-violent direct action to effect rapid policy changes through participatory democracy. These gave me the final push to where I am today, where most of my waking hours are devoted to climate activism. I still hold my teaching position where I express my obsession with the climate crisis and civil action through courses and interactions with students and staff.
In November 2019 I launched the creation of an Israeli “Teachers for Climate” movement (inspired by Teachers for Future in other countries), which is working to educate teachers, influence national educational policies and programs and to support the climate youth movement. I currently co-lead a teachers’ training course about the climate crisis. I’ve been an active member of Extinction Rebellion, giving lectures to recruit adult audiences. I participate regularly in non-violent direct actions. And finally, I’ve recently taken on the role of community organizer for the same climate team at Green Course that I joined nearly 5 years ago. As such, I’m responsible for recruitment to the team, caring for leadership development of its activist members, managing weekly planning meetings and driving our campaign forward.
As part of the broader struggle in Green Course to steer Israeli energy policies away from fossil fuels and implement a just transition to 100% renewables, my team is focusing its efforts to prevent the construction of a new gas pipeline project called EastMed intended to export huge amounts of fossil gas from Israel to Europe while destroying natural habitats in the Mediterranean and risking political destabilization of the region.
With the clock ticking on our last hopes of saving ourselves and future generations from the hellish impacts of runaway climate change I feel a sense of personal moral commitment along with an urgency that drives me to keep going. My mentors, fellow activists and especially the climate youth that I meet inspire me. Finally, helping to execute public actions that challenge the “business as usual” attitude of policy makers and increase public awareness and involvement fill me with a feeling of hope and possibilities for the future.
