Category: News

For decades, American Jewish institutions have made it a priority to teach kids about Israel. Learning about the Jewish state is a key part of the curricula and programming at schools, camps, and community organizations around the country, with Israel often depicted as a miraculous entity locked in righteous battle with irrational Arab foes.

Given that the vast majority of American Jews never end up living, or even spending much time, in Israel, early and incomplete lessons can have a lasting effect on the political positions of the students who soak in them.

Rabbi Jill Jacobs was one such kid, although many of the lessons her instructors tried to instill in her didn’t quite take. She is the executive director of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, a group of social justice-minded Jewish clergy who, among other goals, seek better treatment for Palestinians.

As a member of Generation X, she grew up at a time when many Jewish educational establishments treated Palestinians either as nonexistent or — especially during the Palestinian uprising of the late ’80s, known as the First Intifada — as vicious anti-Semites. During her college years, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization entered the so-called Oslo process, a series of agreements that seemed to bring peace and Palestinian self-determination tantalizingly close. The process was not to last, but Jacobs holds on to the dream of a Jewish state coexisting alongside a Palestinian neighbor-state.

This month’s bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians has prompted many, Jew and gentile alike, to reconsider the situation and give more credence to the Palestinian cause. Social media has been filled with American Jews denouncing some of the institutions that claim to represent them, often for the imbalanced Israel education they received as children. Vox spoke with Rabbi Jacobs to discuss the past and present of such education, as well as how she’d like to see it change in the future.

What kind of Israel education did you get when you were growing up?

I’m 45, so I graduated from high school in 1993 and from college in ’97, just to situate what was happening when I was a kid. I remember certainly that Israel was a place that could do no wrong. My first trip to Israel was when I was 6, with my family, and I remember coming back with my photo album, and I brought it into Hebrew school to show off.

I remember being a kid during the First Intifada and really not knowing what was going on, but watching it on the news with my parents and being told, “They’re throwing rocks at us because they hate us because we’re Jewish.” I remember in Sunday school during my middle school years asking about Palestinians in our Israel history class, and being told, “There’s no such thing as Palestinians; they’re Jordanians.”

I remember also, I was maybe 12 or 13, and I was just thinking to myself, There’s something wrong with that answer, but I don’t know what it is. I had enough information to know that there was something odd going on, but not enough to actually know what it was.

Some of my real Israel education happened at rabbinical school. I did my rabbinical school year in Israel in 2000, 2001 which was the first year of the Second Intifada [another Palestinian uprising, which lasted until 2005]. During that year, I was balancing both being terrified for my life and the life of my friends — which was a real terror because buses and cafes and restaurants around us were blowing up, people were being killed — and also starting to learn a little bit about what the situation was for Palestinians, hearing about West Bank closures and learning about what occupation actually meant. I don’t remember one a-ha moment when I figured out about occupation, but I knew about it at that point; I was learning.

I came back the next year with the Jewish Theological Seminary, where I studied, and the intifada was continuing. A friend who was a year behind me and I decided that we wanted to offer a day where people who are coming on this mission could see what the situation was for Palestinians.

So we did a day with [Israeli human-rights watchdog] B’Tselem in East Jerusalem. Certainly, it was not the first time I had been in East Jerusalem, but it was the first time that I had spent time in a Palestinian neighborhood. Then, in the next year or so, there was this big rally on the [National] Mall in DC to support Israel and some rabbinical students — it ended up being over 100 — decided to go as Rabbinical Students for a Just Peace, to be able to stand there and say, “Yes, of course we support Israel, and we also support an end to occupation, human rights for Palestinians.” We wrote a letter to major American Jewish institutions and had negative reactions.

One program that we started at T’ruah a few years ago is for rabbinical students and cantorial students spending their year in Israel. We have a year-long program where, once a month, we’ll take them to see something and to talk to people either inside of Israel or in the West Bank or East Jerusalem.

They will go to Hebron with Breaking the Silence [an Israeli veterans group that seeks to educate the public on the occupation], they’ll go and plant trees in a Palestinian village in the South Hebron Hills and talk to leaders there, they’ll meet with Bedouin Israeli citizens and asylum seekers and Palestinian human rights leaders and Israeli human rights leaders and get a really on-the-ground sense of what’s happening there. Then we do a lot of work with them on, “How are you going to use your voice as a rabbinic or cantorial leader to tell these stories?”

It’s definitely been a big shift from when I was in rabbinical school, when, certainly, we never spoke to a Palestinian as part of our Israel education. They certainly never would have taken us to the West Bank or really given us anything besides the rah-rah-Israel voice.

What do you think the state of the union of Israel education is like in America now?

My experience mostly comes from my kids’ Jewish summer camps, that’s the most personal experience. And also, more broadly, talking to rabbis in our network and educators and seeing what people are putting out publicly in terms of the education they’re doing. There’s still a real fear about talking about occupation.

Some things have changed since I was a kid. Of course, there are some that are better than others, but I think, from what I’ve seen, there is acknowledgment of Palestinians. There’s talk about peace. There’s also a desire to bring in voices that show some kind of coexistence or partnership. Very often there’s an attempt to bring in things that are to show off: “Here’s Jewish and Palestinian doctors working together, or the children’s choir.” Those are real, but they don’t necessarily get into the deep issues. There’s particularly sometimes a fear of even just saying the word “occupation.”

Or, God forbid, mentioning the Nakba [Arabic for “catastrophe,” which refers to the 1948 war that uprooted 700,000 Palestinians from their homes].

There’s also a lot of, I would say, substance-less Israel education. One of my favorite examples is my kid coming back from camp, and they had made [the group of Israeli-controlled mountains called] Har Hermon out of marshmallow fluff. She was very excited because she likes marshmallow fluff. What kid wouldn’t be excited, really? But what’s the educational content in that? They were learning about different places in Israel, or learning Israeli music or slang words — some of which come out of Arabic, which could also be an opportunity to talk about that. Just anything but occupation.

I love my kids learning Israeli music, and I love that people are showcasing different people doing these different kinds of great work in Israel, but there is that fear to talk about the real experiences of Palestinians and to really dive into occupation. There’s a sense that I’ve heard from educators and rabbis of, “Well, we have to make sure that kids love Israel and then we can introduce the hard stuff.”

But the actual experience, I think, of kids, is that nobody tells them anything and then they’re not actually prepared when they get to college and hear the hard stuff. Or they’re prepared with, “Here’s the hasbara [Hebrew for “explanation,” but also used colloquially to describe pro-Israel talking points], here are your copies of [Mitchell Bard’s pro-Israel book] Myths and Facts, here’s your answers to questions people will ask.” But that’s not really deep education.

No, definitely not. I remember Myths and Facts being perpetually on display in the main foyer at my childhood synagogue. I flipped through it once when I was maybe 11 or 12 to see what it was about, and even at that young age, I felt like it seemed janky and propagandistic. I don’t remember a ton about the details of my Israel education, to be honest. But we were definitely only told Israel was beautiful and our ancestral homeland. It was pretty cartoonish.

I contrast that with the way that we do US education. When I was growing up, my US history education was terrible because it was, “America is always perfect, and here’s some great men.” Right? That was the story. Then I remember getting to junior year of high school and having this phenomenal AP US history teacher who was the first person to inform us that the US is not always right and every history book has a bias and we should read for it.

I see how my kids are learning US history and — from second grade, even — they know about the genocide of Native Americans and they know about racism. They talk about police violence in school. Thank God. And it doesn’t make them hate America.

I just think that we need to be more sophisticated and understand that kids can feel connected to a place and connected to people from that place and also understand that not everything about that place is perfect, that it is not always easy. My kids are 7 and 11, and, for sure, my 11-year-old could explain occupation to you and also cares a lot about Israel because she has relationships with Israelis and has been there and probably feels about Israel very much how she feels about America. There’s a lot of very bad stuff in both countries.

The other piece that’s really important to understand is that people look at the educators and the rabbis, but there’s serious pushback by the parents and by donors. That’s probably even more serious. A lot of our experiences are that rabbis and educators are maybe more progressive than their communities. This was a number of years ago, but I went to speak at a Jewish day school. I wasn’t actually speaking about Israel, I was speaking about something else, but when Israel came up, I talked really honestly.

One of the kids had just come back from their 11th- or 12th-grade trip to Israel. They gave me their talking points, and I was able to just explain what the situation was. Two things happened. One was, afterward, a girl came up to me and she said, “I’ve been at this school since kindergarten, and you’re the very first person who has ever talked to us who has said anything about Palestinians other than that they’re terrorists.”

I grew up in an ostensibly liberal Chicago suburb, so they just sort of avoided discussing the Palestinians in any way, but I know lots of other Jews who had the lessons she’s talking about.

I think she was really thinking about that. She wasn’t mad. She was definitely working it out in her conversation with me. The other thing that happened is that a couple more right-wing students organized some kind of petition — I didn’t see it until much after the fact — and some parents got mad about the fact that I had been invited in. So there’s definitely a ton, just really a ton of pushback there.

I’ve heard this from camp staff, from other kinds of educators: that they’re willing to push further, but their real fear is that they know the kids can manage, the kids can handle difficult information, but the parents and the donors cannot.

The generational divide in the community is wild.

Yeah.

How do you think this sort of circle-the-wagons mentality in Jewish education has shaped Jewish and non-Jewish American attitudes about Israel? Do you see those seeds flowering in later life?

Well, I think that the approach has been disastrous, to be honest. Essentially, what happened is, you teach kids hasbara talking points. Maybe they like falafel and the latest Eurovision song and have some Israeli counselors, but they also have the talking points. And then it’s like a house of cards.

As soon as somebody says almost anything, as soon as there’s a crack, one of two things happens: Either they also circle the wagons and they are not able to question it at all and they just kind of put up a wall, or it all comes crashing down and then they feel like they can’t have any relationship with Israel at all. There are also some people who are placing themselves in the T’ruah, J Street [a center-left American lobbying group that focuses on Israel] kind of camp of human rights for all people, for both Israelis, for both Jews and Palestinians both in Israel and in, God willing, a future state of Palestine.

If the goal is to actually create lasting and strong relationships such that people feel like they actually want to be committed to working for a better future for Israelis and also Palestinians, you end up with a situation where people feel like they have to choose one end of a dichotomy. There’s not a lot of space that’s opened up in between.

There are those who would argue that the time for in-between is over, that you have to pick a side.

There’s a lot of scorn for liberal Zionism out there, and there’s a sense that you have to choose between being an anti-Zionist or a Zionist and that being a Zionist has to mean that you 100 percent agree with Israeli government policy. First, that’s just not true, that you have to pick one or the other. But second, I actually am on the side of saying that we should not be talking about Zionism anymore, at all. Zionism was a movement that created the state of Israel, with all of the footnotes that you need. Yes, the creation of the state of Israel was also the Nakba, and Jews and Palestinians experienced that extremely differently.

But now we’re in a situation where the movement ended; now we have a country. There’s some language on the far left that says Israel isn’t a real place. But Israel is an actual country, it’s a member of the United Nations, whether you like it or not, whether you think it should have been created or not. It’s not an idea, it’s not a movement.

The US is a country that was also birthed in bloodshed, that has 400 years of the sin of slavery in its past, as well as the genocide of Native Americans. I don’t think anybody is seriously suggesting that everybody in the United States who is not Native American or descended from people who were enslaved get up and leave.

I think the question is: What kind of reparations are possible and what kind of reparations are necessary in order to achieve that path? I think that’s the same question we should be asking about Israel: How do we move forward in a way that will guarantee the human rights of everybody in the region, including Jews, including Palestinians? And human rights include citizenship in a country. How does that include reparations? How does Israel come to terms with the Nakba without telling 7 million people to get up and go back to Poland or Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever they came from?

How do we effect change here? What are the best ways to get to a world where, at least within the United States, we have better Israel education?

The major funders of Jewish education are on the center right to far right. That means that major educational institutions and organizations that are producing materials for Israel education are either producing material that is center right to far right or that is trying to avoid politics altogether just by doing culture and things like that. That’s a huge problem. Then you have groups which run these educational programs for high school and college students that inculcate a kind of laissez-faire, right-wing, conservative approach to the world — not only about Israel.

For people who actually care about more progressive politics in general, on Israel, and inside the Jewish community, we need the funders. We need to not have a situation where some major funder is going to threaten to withdraw their money from an educational institution because, God forbid, they bring in an Israeli human rights leader or a Palestinian human rights leader or somebody from T’ruah or J Street.

It’s not about blaming the educators. This is where there’s funding. It’s not like the whole Jewish community got together and voted on how the funding is going to be allocated. There are certain people who have both a laser focus on Israel and also the money to put into it. It’s not that the money isn’t on the left, but the people on the left are not as laser-focused as the people on the right.

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When Germany and Hungary play each other in the Euro 2020 soccer tournament on Wednesday, the match will be viewed as much more than a game. It’ll serve as another front in the war for the future of a more accepting Europe.

On one side stands Hungary, led by autocratic right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose government passed a law last week banning gay people from appearing on TV shows or in educational materials for citizens 18 years old and under. On the other is Germany, the European Union’s leading nation, which alongside other countries has condemned the law as discriminatory and emblematic of Hungary’s democratic backsliding under Orbán.

The week-long political standoff has spilled over onto the continent’s marquee soccer tournament, the quadrennial UEFA European Football Championship, which is taking place this year after it was postponed in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic. While the games mainly show which nation’s team is strongest, they occasionally serve as a platform to express political grievances — and the timing of the Germany-Hungary match has provided such a stage.

The city of Munich, which will host the game, sought permission from Europe’s governing soccer body (UEFA) to light the stadium up in rainbow colors as a clear rebuke of Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ law. But the nominally apolitical UEFA declined that request on Tuesday.

“Given the political context of this specific request — a message aiming at a decision taken by the Hungarian national Parliament — UEFA must decline this request,” the body said in a statement. And then on Wednesday, in response to the backlash to its decision, UEFA tweeted that “the rainbow is not a political symbol, but a sign of our firm commitment to a more diverse and inclusive society.”

That hasn’t stopped the Germans from expressing their displeasure with the decision. Rainbow colors will illuminate the town hall and Olympics tower in Munich during the match, multiple stadiums around the country will light up with those colors, and around 11,000 Germany fans will hoist pride flags inside the Allianz Arena. Germany’s captain, goalkeeper Manuel Neuer, will also continue to wear his rainbow-colored captain’s armband.

The Hungarians — namely Orbán and his supporters — feel differently. The prime minister canceled his initial plans to attend the match and blasted officials in Munich for their request. “Whether the Munich football stadium or another European stadium is lit in rainbow colors is not a state decision,” he told German news agency dpa on Wednesday. “In communist Hungary, homosexual people were persecuted. Today, the state not only guarantees the rights of homosexuals, but actively protects them.”

Clearly, then, the law has sparked a disagreement that extends far beyond the soccer field. It’s fueling the core, long-running argument about what the European Union stands for.

Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ+ law is “a dangerous moment” for the EU

Back in March, the European Union’s Parliament declared the bloc an “LGBTIQ Freedom Zone,” meaning all 27 countries should serve as a safe space for anyone and everyone in that community.

On the surface, the EU’s legislature made the declaration in response to a law in Poland declaring 100 ‘‘LGBT-free zones” and the worsening situation for LGBTQ+ people in Hungary. But Nicolas Delaleu, a press officer for the Parliament, told me the measure was about something larger. “It’s a more general reaction that [those laws] weren’t representing European fundamental values,” he told me. “They’re going against what the EU stands for.”

By passing the law last week, then, Orbán’s government has affronted the EU’s sense of inclusivity that it’s more recently cultivated. It’s why leaders in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Ireland, and more have spoken out so forcefully against Hungary’s new rules.

“I consider this law to be wrong and incompatible with my understanding of politics,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday. “It’s a very, very dangerous moment for Hungary, and for the EU as well,” said Thomas Byrne, Ireland’s minister for European affairs.

Tensions are also high on Twitter, with Hungarian and German officials reprimanding each other for their stances. After Germany’s openly gay Europe Minister Michael Roth said the Hungarian law went against EU values, Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga responded that “it is not a European value to carry our sexual propaganda on our children.”

Now a punishment for Hungary may be in the works.

Ursula von der Leyen, chief of the European Commission and one of the key leaders of the bloc, said on Wednesday that Orbán should expect action soon. “The Hungarian bill is a shame,” she told reporters in Brussels. “I have instructed my responsible commissioners to write to the Hungarian authorities expressing our legal concerns before the bill enters into force.” However, Hungary’s president is expected to sign the bill and make it law imminently.

It’s not the only time Hungary has tested the EU on its values. Orbán continues to thwart the EU’s aims to accept asylum seekers and refugees, even as the bloc wants to be a more accepting destination for those in need. And facing an election next year, it’s likely Orbán will proceed to bolster his ultraconservative bona fides by backing other similar measures that are detrimental to LGBTQ+ people, asylum-seekers, and others.

With his anti-LGBTQ+ initiative, then, the premier is once again trying to pull the EU toward his rightward vision of a less multicultural Europe. But Tuesday’s soccer game against Germany will be another reminder that he faces stiff opposition.

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In late June, Canada’s minister of infrastructure and former minister of environment and climate change, Catherine McKenna, raised eyebrows when she announced she’d be leaving politics to spend more time with her family — and work on ending the climate emergency.

“This is a critical year for climate action in the most important decade that will decide whether we can save the only planet we have. I want to spend my working hours helping to make sure that we do,” McKenna, a member of parliament (MP) in the Liberal Party, announced at a press conference.

But McKenna’s supporters might argue she was already doing exactly that.

Since Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed her minister of environment and climate change in 2015 and then minister of infrastructure and communities in 2019, McKenna has represented Canada in negotiations on the Paris climate agreement, launched a Just Transition Task Force to help coal communities switch to renewable energy, and helped establish Canada’s climate plan, including a price on carbon pollution.

Which raises an interesting question: What does it say about the politics of climate change that McKenna, who spent the past six years in government working on climate change, doesn’t think she was doing enough to address climate change?

While McKenna achieved a lot during her time in office, she has also faced misogynistic attacks. In 2017, Conservative MP Gerry Ritz called her “climate Barbie” on Twitter, which McKenna called “sexist.” (Ritz later apologized.) She’s also had to put up with her office being defaced with a vulgar slur and men shouting abuse at her office.

But McKenna has dismissed this. “I have had my share of attacks, but that’s just noise. People want you to stop what you’re doing, and they want you to back down. We doubled down,” McKenna told reporters at the press conference in late June announcing her decision not to seek reelection.

McKenna’s record has also been criticized. Since signing the Paris Agreement, Canada’s emissions have grown — the only G7 nations to do so. McKenna has also faced tough questions about Canada’s expansion of carbon-intensive tar sands oil projects.

I called McKenna to learn more about her decision to move on from politics, her outlook on Canada’s future on climate, and how other young women can rise above the noise to lead.

Our discussion, edited for length and clarity, is below.

Jariel Arvin

You said you’re leaving because you want to spend your working hours making sure that we save the planet. Why do you think you can be more effective on climate as a private citizen than as minister of infrastructure and communities?

Catherine McKenna

Because Canada has a climate plan, we raised ambition and announced our new target at President Biden’s Climate Summit. We’re moving forward.

Jariel Arvin

But what do you say to people who think that you’d be best suited to help implement the plan?

Catherine McKenna

There’s never just one person. Lots of people play a role, and there’s a lot of opportunities for new people, too. Right now, internationally, supporting developing countries and supporting international momentum on climate is critically important. We have to look globally because pollution doesn’t know any borders. Some of the lessons we have learned here in Canada include how to land a price on pollution and phase out coal while thinking about workers in communities; those are important things that can be shared.

Canada is one part of the puzzle, but we’re not tackling climate change alone. It has to be everyone. It’s tough out there now. It’s not 2015 where we got the Paris Agreement, where you had countries working together and momentum. I think about how climate change impacts Indigenous people or small island developing states that could one day be underwater. There’s no end of ways to contribute.

Jariel Arvin

How have your colleagues, and Prime Minister Trudeau, responded to your decision to quit?

Catherine McKenna

Quitting makes it seem very dramatic. I’m staying on as long as the prime minister wants. I’m a Liberal, and I will always support and be proud of what we’ve done and keep pushing us to do more.

But, you know, it’s time to move on in life. There are other things I want to do, and there are different angles on climate. But I’m always going to be there; I’m not leaving my party, nor am I leaving climate action in Canada. I’m just looking at the other ways that I can contribute. Some of the lessons from Canada could be useful for the rest of the world.

Jariel Arvin

So is it incorrect to say you’re quitting politics? How would you describe what you’re doing?

Catherine McKenna

People say I’m retired, and I’m not even 50 yet! I’m just looking at other ways to serve. I also want to spend time with my kids. When I started, they were 4, 6, and 8. Now they’re teenagers. I want to do things with them, too.

Jariel Arvin

I hope you get the time with them. But you didn’t answer my original question — how are your colleagues reacting?

Catherine McKenna

People have been very gracious.

Jariel Arvin

By people, do you mean those within your party, or is it also people from across the political spectrum?

Catherine McKenna

In my party, and Canadians. I think people in my community know that I worked hard. Some people were not very happy about the misogynistic treatment I got from opponents of climate action. I’m not leaving because of that. We’ve got to fight it, and it’s not okay, and I see it everywhere. Katharine Hayhoe, the climate scientist who’s Canadian but working in the US, also gets it. Politicians, in particular those working in climate, get it.

Jariel Arvin

In the past, you’ve dismissed these attacks as ”noise.” What advice do you have for how women considering politics can rise above such attacks?

Catherine McKenna

Get into politics. It matters. We will change things if we have more women in politics, and I will support you.

I am working on a personal project called Running Like a Girl to support women and girls in politics at all levels. One of the girls said, “I’m going to run for my student council.” She just announced it because she felt solidarity with the group, and guess what? She won. Another woman announced she was going to run for mayor. She regretted it because it can be difficult for women to decide to get into politics. You have to be asked many times. She decided to do it even though she denounced it to the world by tweet and wanted to take it back. But she won.

I’m all for vigorous debate, I’m no shrinking violet, but it’s not okay to have to put up with some of the garbage women and other marginalized groups put up with. So I’m going to work to stop that and empower new voices in politics. That’s the only way it’s going to change, and it’s also how we’re going to tackle big issues from climate to social justice issues.

Jariel Arvin

On a scale of one to 10, how optimistic are you that Canada will achieve its nationally determined contribution under the Paris Agreement?

Catherine McKenna

I would say a nine. The government is all-in. The only reason I don’t say 10 is because we’re a federation in Canada. That requires the provinces to be all-in, too. We still have some provinces with politicians who don’t seem to understand the urgency of climate action or the economic opportunity it presents. We went to the Supreme Court, and we won in terms of the federal government being able to put a price on carbon pollution across the country. Even the Conservative Party now has said there should be a price on pollution, and it can’t be free to pollute. So we’re making some progress.

But most of all, I believe in Canadians. The last election was tough, but most Canadians supported a party that believes in ambitious climate action, including a price on pollution. I don’t think it’s possible anymore to have a government that isn’t committed to climate action.

Just this summer, the town of Lytton burned to the ground. We’re going to have forest fires across the country, especially in the west. Climate change is becoming an air quality and a safety issue for many of these communities. And so I think Canadians understand that climate change is real, and we don’t have time to waste.

Jariel Arvin

What about Canada’s powerful oil and gas industry? You’ve faced criticism because Canada is the only G7 nation whose emissions have grown since the Paris Agreement. Do you have faith that the country will be able to cut its oil production?

Catherine McKenna

That’s why we have a climate plan that is based on science and evidence. The oil and gas sector has to get with the program. The world is changing. And it’s about energy — not just oil and gas, but how we are powering our homes, schools, and cars and in our businesses. There are different opportunities to cut emissions.

Jariel Arvin

But what do you think will make Canada’s oil and gas companies finally get with the program?

Catherine McKenna

First of all, you have to regulate. We now have major pieces in place, from a price on pollution to a clean fuel standard to phasing out coal. Those policies must be in place.

But also, to do good business, you have to see where the future is going or you will not exist. That’s just the reality. When you have a major investor like BlackRock pouring trillions of dollars moving to a cleaner future, that is the signal. There’s been substantial work done on climate risk and climate disclosure and the risk to shareholders. I think that is really up to the government, but it’s partly up to business and oil and gas to understand that.

We need to drive all infrastructure investments from the climate lens of resilience, adaptation, and mitigation. When I talked to my American friends, including US climate envoy John Kerry, I realized how challenging it was internationally.

I don’t know what I’m going to do. I haven’t figured out whether I want to start something to build on things going on, but I think we must all get into the space of being very practical. And so that’s what I’m trying to figure out: How can I do something practical, probably on the international front?

Jariel Arvin

You said climate work has to be practical. Does that mean Canada’s climate politics are impractical?

Catherine McKenna

I think we’ve been super practical.

Jariel Arvin

So why not keep going?

Catherine McKenna

Internationally, I don’t think we’re as practical as we need to be. For example, figuring out a way to get Asia or Africa off of coal.

Jariel Arvin

But why not take care of Canada’s emissions first? Why work internationally? As one of the world’s top emitters, many might argue that you have enough on your plate at home.

Catherine McKenna

Canada has a plan and now needs to grind away at implementing it. And that’s what’s happening.

Jariel Arvin

So are you leaving in the toughest moment?

Catherine McKenna

The toughest moment was when we didn’t have a plan, and we had to fight for a plan, and I was getting attacked on all sides, including by premiers. Then, finally, we were able to land a price on pollution.

I faced something called “the resistance” — five or six white men who resisted the prime minister, our climate plan, and carbon pricing. It became a meme. It was a thing.

I wish we didn’t have to fight, but you have to fight on climate. But you also have to realize that people will support you if you are reasonable. We had a former prime minister, Jean Chrétien, who’s been a mentor to me. He said to me, “Canadians are reasonable, so be reasonable.”

I think that is the thing. People who care about climate have to be reasonable and practical. We have to focus on people, jobs, economic opportunity. Focus on reducing emissions.

I look at what’s going on in the United States and the Biden administration. It’s so nice that they’re back on climate because it was extremely hard, including internationally, with the Trump administration, to keep the momentum going and prevent everyone from giving up on climate action. And huge kudos to American states and cities, and the private sector, because they never stopped.

Jariel Arvin

But even though Biden has a climate plan, environmental advocates are having a tough time passing it and are now wondering if the infrastructure package will include climate at all.

Catherine McKenna

Now you have to do the hard work.

Jariel Arvin

But that’s what I was saying, that implementing the plan is the hardest part!

Catherine McKenna

But in Canada, we’re already implementing it. We’re beyond that — we’re moving forward. We got the policies. We got the investment dollars.

I don’t think the work is ever going to stop. By your logic, I should be working in politics on climate change until 2050. We’ve got a plan and a solution. People need to grind away. We need to increase climate ambition — that’s the whole point of the Paris Agreement every five years, increasing ambition. Now I can help other countries in other ways. And that’s always been my view. How do you contribute? The only thing that matters now is climate. But we need the whole world to have a plan. Lots of people have targets, but we need serious plans.

I did my part here. I’ve done what I came to do, and that’s just the truth. I wanted Canada to be in a much more positive place on climate. I wanted to be very practical. Some people think you should be in politics forever, but that’s never been my view.

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The assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moise has sent the country into shock and turmoil, sparking discussions in the international community on how to help bring stability. But Haiti’s long history of interventions by foreign powers can’t be ignored, nor can the fact that often, they have been made whether or not Haiti itself benefited.

On Wednesday, July 7, President Moise was shot 16 times when, Haitian officials allege, a group of “professional killers’’ stormed his home in a suburb located near Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. Prime Minister Claude Joseph assumed leadership and promptly declared a two-week state of siege in the country in an attempt to control rising tensions and violence. However, Joseph’s authority is being questioned by some, because Moise had declared Ariel Henry the new prime minister only two days before his assassination. Henry was meant to be sworn in this past week. Complicating the issue is that Haiti currently has two conflicting constitutions that give different instructions on what to do when the president is no longer in power.

Moise’s hunger for power defined his presidency

Moise himself had a tumultuous presidency beginning in 2017, marked by authoritarian tactics and inability to gain the Haitian people’s trust. Soon after he was elected, Moise revived the nation’s army, disbanded two decades before. This was a controversial decision in a country still dealing with the aftermath of its catastrophic 2010 earthquake, stoking fears that the army would drain already limited resources. Further skepticism came from the army’s history of human rights abuses and the multiple coups it had carried out. The decision to bring the army back set the tone for Moise’s presidency, as he continuously prioritized his interests and power over those of the people. In the absence of a functioning legislature, Haitian law allows the president to rule by decree, and in January 2020, Moise refused to hold parliamentary elections and dismissed all of the country’s elected mayors, consolidating his power.

Further exacerbating problems, in February, Moise refused to leave office despite legal experts and members of an opposition coalition claiming that his term ended on February 7. Moise claimed that his presidency was meant to last until 2022, due to a delay in his inauguration after the 2017 election, and his refusal to step down led to mass anger and frustration culminating in public protests and chants of “no to dictatorship.”

While the identity of the killers has not been confirmed, speculation seems to be determined by party alignment. Moise supporters have stated that he was shot by a predominantly Colombian group of hitmen, while some opposition politicians claim that he was killed by his own guards. Others have said that the Colombians were hired as personal guards to protect Moise from external threats. Fifteen Colombian suspects are currently in custody along with two Haitian-American suspects, and others are still believed to be at large.

Haiti’s current call for intervention is reminiscent of its past

Moise’s assassination leaves Haiti with an unstable government and an increasingly frustrated population. In addition to the current state of siege implemented by Joseph, Haiti’s interim government has formally asked the US to send security assistance to protect infrastructure including Haiti’s seaport, airport, and gasoline reserves as a precautionary measure. During a briefing Friday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki offered measured support, saying, “we will be sending senior FBI and DHS officials to Port-au-Prince as soon as possible to assess the situation and how we may be able to assist.”

It remains to be seen how the Biden administration will react, but if US troops are sent to Haiti it could begin to feel like political deja vu. Haiti has a long history of American military intervention.

Foreign intervention in Haiti has often worsened the situation

The United States’ involvement began as early as the 1790s, when it provided support to French colonists in an effort to subdue revolting groups of enslaved Haitians. As the revolution grew, so did US hostility toward Haiti, due to fears that the revolutionary discourse would spread to the enslaved population in the US. And although Haiti gained independence in 1804, the United States did not recognize it as an independent nation until 1862.

This attitude toward Haiti drastically changed in 1915, after President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was assassinated a few months after he entered office due to his authoritarian rule and repressive actions. In the face of heightened turmoil, President Woodrow Wilson sent US Marines into Haiti to build the nation back up and restore political and economic stability. But the military occupation lasted for nearly 20 years, during which time the US controlled parts of the country’s government and finances. In 1917 the Wilson administration tried to force a new constitution onto the Haitian government that would allow foreign land ownership, which had been prohibited as a way to protect domestic resources and prevent foreign powers from taking control.

A more recent intervention occurred in 1994, when the US sent troops to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the presidency and neutralize a militant group that had overthrown him and taken power. Known as Operation Restore Democracy, the intervention was ultimately successful, since Aristide returned to the presidency, but questions about the longevity of the operation and if US involvement was necessary linger to this day.

“The intervention in Haiti was a short-lived success,” James Dobbins, a US special envoy to Haiti during the operation, told Time magazine. “Haiti illustrated that these things take a long time — they don’t transform a society overnight.”

In fact, foreign interventions have a record of transforming Haitian society, but not necessarily in a good way. In the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake that struck Haiti and killed over 200,000 people, the United Nations deployed peacekeepers to assist with rebuilding efforts. The following October, sewage from a peacekeeping base contaminated a major water supply, causing a cholera outbreak. In an economy already weakened by the earthquake, and with health and sanitation facilities severely underfunded, the outbreak was disastrous, affecting almost 800,000 Haitians and killing approximately 10,000 people. It took the UN six years to admit its responsibility.

In the wake of Moise’s assassination, many questions remain about the role of the US, including how to successfully effect long-lasting change.

Robert Fatton, a Haitian-born historian and political science professor at the University of Virginia, spoke to Time about the harm that international involvement in Haiti has caused. “[After the intervention], Haiti became a country dependent on international financial organizations for its funding, its budget — it was and still is at the mercy of what the international community is willing to give,” he said.

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In the late 1960s, the US saw regular, choking smog descend over New York City and Los Angeles, 100,000 barrels of oil spilled off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, and, perhaps most famously, fires burning on the surface of the Cuyahoga River in Ohio. These grim images sparked the modern environmental movement, the first Earth Day, and a decade of extraordinary environmental lawmaking and rulemaking (much of it under a Republican president, Richard Nixon).

From the ’70s through the beginning of the 21st century, the fight against fossil fuels was a fight about pollution, especially air pollution.

In the ensuing decades, the focus has shifted to global warming, and fossil fuels have largely been reframed as a climate problem. And that makes sense, given the enormous implications of climate change for long-term human well-being.

But there’s an irony involved: The air pollution case against fossil fuels is still the best case!

In fact, even as attention has shifted to climate change, the air pollution case has grown stronger and stronger, as the science on air pollution has advanced by leaps and bounds. Researchers are now much more able to pinpoint air pollution’s direct and indirect effects, and the news has been uniformly bad.

The evidence is now clear enough that it can be stated unequivocally: It would be worth freeing ourselves from fossil fuels even if global warming didn’t exist. Especially now that clean energy has gotten so cheap, the air quality benefits alone are enough to pay for the energy transition.

This conclusion has been reaffirmed by the latest air quality research, presented at a recent hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform by Drew Shindell, Nicholas professor of earth science at Duke University (and a lead author on both recent IPCC reports).

Shindell’s testimony reveals that the effects of air pollution are roughly twice as bad as previously estimated. That is a bombshell — in a sane world, it would be front-page news across the country.

“The air quality scientific community has hypothesized this for at least a decade, but research advances have let us quantify and confirm this notion, over and over,” says Rebecca Saari, an air quality expert who teaches in civil and environmental engineering at the University of Waterloo. “The air quality ‘co-benefits’ are generally so valuable that they exceed the cost of climate action, often many times over.”

Let’s take a closer look at the evidence for this extraordinary claim, and then we’ll consider its political implications.

Science keeps revealing that air pollution is more harmful than previously believed

Recently, I wrote about an ambitious and detailed new plan to substantially decarbonize the US economy by 2035 (primarily through electrification) and said that it would bring “transformative social and health benefits.”

Shindell and his team at Duke have attempted to quantify those benefits, drawing on the latest science. They began with the climate model used by NASA’s Goddard Institute and upgraded it “to represent air pollution at relatively high resolution,” Shindell testified, “making this model suitable for simultaneously studying the impact of climate and air quality.”

Using this all-in-one model, Shindell’s team mapped out a pathway from 2020 to 2070 that reduced US greenhouse gas emissions consistent with the world’s pledge to stay below 2°C and attempted to quantify the air quality and climate benefits.

(Note: Though the model and the techniques have been peer-reviewed, Shindell’s crunching of the latest numbers is currently going through peer review. He includes extensive documentation of his methodology in an appendix to his testimony.)

The numbers are eye-popping. Shindell testified: “Over the next 50 years, keeping to the 2°C pathway would prevent roughly 4.5 million premature deaths, about 3.5 million hospitalizations and emergency room visits, and approximately 300 million lost workdays in the US.”

All that prevented death, illness, and lost productivity adds up to a lot of savings:

The avoided deaths are valued at more than $37 trillion. The avoided health care spending due to reduced hospitalizations and emergency room visits exceeds $37 billion, and the increased labor productivity is valued at more than $75 billion. On average, this amounts to over $700 billion per year in benefits to the US from improved health and labor alone, far more than the cost of the energy transition.

Importantly, many of the benefits can be accessed in the near term. Right now, air pollution leads to almost 250,000 premature deaths a year in the US. Within a decade, aggressive decarbonization could reduce that toll by 40 percent; over 20 years, it could save around 1.4 million American lives that would otherwise be lost to air quality.

Of the potential yearly deaths prevented, Rep. Robin Kelly of Illinois remarked at the hearing, “That’s a huge number. That’s nearly three times the number of lives we lose in car accidents every year. It’s twice the number of deaths caused by opioids in the past few years. And it’s even more than the number of Americans we lose to diabetes each year.”

If the numbers are shocking, it’s because the science has been developing rapidly. First, says Shindell, “there’s been a huge upsurge in work in developing countries, in particular China,” which has produced larger data sets and a wider, fuller picture of the real-world effects of exposure.

Second, where scientists used to focus almost exclusively on pollution effects for which there is an established and well-understood biological pathway, the recent production of enormous data sets (for instance, the entire population of more than 60 million Medicare patients) has allowed them to uncover new statistical correlations.

With giant data sets, “you can control for socioeconomic status, temperature, hypertension and other existing conditions,” and other variables, says Shindell. “You can convincingly demonstrate that correlation is in fact causal, because you can rule out essentially every other possibility.”

For example, scientists now know that exposure to smog (tiny, microscopic particulates) hurts prenatal and young brains. Even though they don’t yet fully understand the biological mechanism, they know it reduces impulse control and degrades academic performance. Similarly, they know it hurts the kidneys, the spleen, even the nervous system.

“The well-understood pathways, things like strokes, lower respiratory infections, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, only seem to capture about half the total,” Shindell says. “When you look at the [new] studies, you find that air pollution seems to affect almost every organ in the human body.”

A recent study from the national academies of multiple countries, including the US, put it this way:

The scientific evidence is unequivocal: air pollution can harm health across the entire lifespan. It causes disease, disability and death, and impairs everyone’s quality of life. It damages lungs, hearts, brains, skin and other organs; it increases the risk of disease and disability, affecting virtually all systems in the human body.

“About twice as many people die in total as die just from the pathways we understand,” says Shindell. “We’ve been underestimating all along.”

Alongside these updated estimates of air pollution impacts, Shindell’s team developed a new way of assessing the nationwide health impacts of severe heat, in order to quantify one of the best-understood effects of climate change. Combining them into one model, Shindell testified, “we find impacts roughly double those that would have been obtained using older evidence.”

While that may sound like a big jump, it is likely a lower bound. On both air pollution and climate change, the study omitted many effects that “are clearly present but cannot yet be reliably quantified.” The true numbers are almost certainly higher.

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The implications of this new air quality research are far-reaching. Though the benefits of the Clean Air Act were already thought to outweigh the costs, they may be twice as high as previously estimated. The costs of Trump’s rollbacks of Obama’s fuel economy standards and Clean Power Plan are up to twice as large as previously estimated.

It is no coincidence that Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is trying to exclude consideration of co-benefits (often the largest class of benefits) in its air quality rulemakings. It’s no coincidence that it is trying to exclude consideration of studies with anonymous participants, a category that encompasses all the latest research Shindell and others draw on. The fossil fuel lobby, which now includes the entire executive branch, has long understood that the science isn’t going its way. These rule changes are its last-ditch bid to blind the government to new research.

New air pollution research ought to break the climate policy logjam

Climate change has often been framed as an intractable problem for international coordination, a matter of shared sacrifice, with every country incentivized to be a “free rider,” reaping the benefits without taking on any of the costs.

But the latest air pollution research, coupled with the plunging cost of clean energy, should render that dynamic moot.

It is true that climate change can only be averted with the entire world’s cooperation; if the US reduces its emissions to net zero but the other countries of the world (especially China and India) continue on their current trajectory, it will make almost no difference in temperature. The health benefits of avoided severe heat will not manifest.

However — and this is the crucial fact — the air quality benefits will manifest, no matter what the rest of the world does. Shindell’s team ran a version of their scenario in which the US came into compliance with a 2°C pathway but the rest of the world continued with current policies. “We found that US action alone would bring us more than two-thirds of the health benefits of worldwide action over the next 15 years,” Shindell testified, “with roughly half the total over the entire 50-year period analyzed.”

The air quality benefits arrive much sooner than the climate benefits. They are, at least for the next several decades, much larger. They can be secured without the cooperation of other countries. And, by generating an average of $700 billion a year in avoided health and labor costs, they will more than pay for the energy transition on their own. Climate change or no climate change, it’s worth ditching fossil fuels.

And if this is true in the US — which, after all, has comparatively clean air — it is true tenfold for countries like China and India, where air quality remains abysmal. A Lancet Commission study in 2017 found that in 2015, air pollution killed 1.81 million people in India and 1.58 million in China.

Shindell’s research reveals that those estimates may be woefully low. (He hopes to do similar modeling on China at some point.) The true toll may be almost double that, which is why both countries have experienced mass demonstrations against pollution in recent years that have left their governments scrambling.

“Air pollution remains the leading environmental health risk factor contributing to premature death worldwide, as demonstrated repeatedly by the Global Burden of Disease studies,” says Saari. “Health care costs and lost worker productivity are direct economic impacts of air pollution so large they can exceed the costs of climate policy.”

Shindell ended with a call to Congress, testifying that it would be “unconscionable to realize these benefits could be obtained and not attempt to obtain them.”

Air pollution ought to be seen as a global civil rights crisis

The extraordinary level of suffering humanity is currently experiencing from air pollution is not necessary for modernity; it could be reduced, at a cost well below the net social benefits, with clean energy technologies on hand.

If they are not necessary, then the millions of lives ended or degraded by fossil fuels every year are a choice. And when suffering on this scale, that is this brutally inequitable, becomes a choice, it enters the same ethical terrain as war, slavery, and genocide. The effects are more distributed over time and geography, as are the decision-making and the moral culpability, but the cumulative impact on human well-being — on our longevity, health, learning, and happiness — is comparable, and every bit as much worth fighting.

US policymakers have a chance to kick-start an energy transition that could save 1.4 million American lives over the next 20 years, especially among the most vulnerable, even as it creates jobs and saves consumers money. As Shindell says, it would be unconscionable not to act on it.

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The reason we should care about refugees is because they are people.

But, unfortunately, for many people that is an insufficient moral claim. Even for the tens of thousands of Afghan people who put their lives in jeopardy working alongside the US military over the past 20 years. So let’s put it another way: Evidence shows that accepting refugees benefits the host country too.

That hasn’t stopped some from arguing that refugees are somehow a burden to the US, as the country watches the aftermath of President Joe Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan.

On Fox News, Tucker Carlson ended up blaming refugees for our existing housing crisis. After correctly diagnosing the problem as insufficient housing supply, he does not go on to explain what most every housing expert has clearly stated would be the solution (that America needs to build more homes to meet rising demand). Instead, he says the reason the country has rising housing demand is … immigrants?

“When the supply shrinks, the cost rises,” Carlson says. “One reason it’s happening is that America’s becoming a lot more crowded than it ever was and one of the reasons for that is that we’re living through the biggest influx in refugees in American history.”

This is false; rising demand is due to historically low mortgage rates and the largest generation in American history (millennials) entering the housing market in force. (This is all the more ironic since Carlson himself has railed against the actual solutions to the housing crisis on his show.) The claim that America has more refugees than ever is also false, as research from the Migration Policy Institute shows, the country is actually letting in record low numbers of refugees.