Social Action Committee News

Having slogged through yet another overly hot New York summer, many of you have probably seen something (a series of articles in the New Yorker, the Senate debates, a virtual March on Washington DC) about the ever-growing concerns (environmental, economic, meteorological) of global warming. Even though there are a few, ahem, highly placed US of.cials who are still sticking their heads in the sand, virtually the entire world community has come to the realization that we are facing a dire threat to our very existence...and with the world’s energy use climbing every year, the situation is only going to get worse. That’s why our synagogue has decided to do something - something pretty incredible – in order to try and make even a small difference in the world we hope to leave to our children and grandchildren. People often say that a budget is the moral indicator of any organization, and at our most recent annual congregational meeting, our synagogue passed a budget which endorsed a monumental proposal from our social action committee: starting July 1, RSNS has committed to utilizing renewable energy for 100% of its electricity needs! How? Well, we’re not planning on installing a windmill in our courtyard (however appealing the miniture-golf dividends would be). Rather, RSNS has enrolled in a wonderful LIPA program called Green Choice. By adding less than 2 cents per Kilowatt-Hour to our monthly bill, we can chose from several LIPA-sponsored providers of wind, hydro and other forms of renewable energy, who then increase their green, clean power production by EXACTLY the amount that we use in electricity per month! We still get our electricity (and our bill) from LIPA, but we can potential reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses going into the atmosphere by the equivalent of taking a dozen SUV’s off the road for good!! This is pretty amazing, and we should all be very proud of our congregation’s blazing a path towards environmental responsibility (in fact, we are one of only two synagogues in the entire country to become an EPA Green Power Partner!). But of course, we wouldn’t be a Reconstructionist congregation if we just sat back and let the shul have all the fun, would we? That’s why, over the following months, we’re going to be making a big push for YOU to follow our lead: LIPA’s Green Choice program is available for residential customers as well, and we’ll be sending every congregant an application to join us in this crucial and historic effort. Five minutes, .ve dollars – that’s all it will take. Five minutes to check a few boxes on a form, and about $5 a month to subsidize the addition of even more wind, bio and solar energy to New York’s power grid and offset hundreds of tons of poisonous carbon monoxide and pollution that streams into our air, our water and and our soil. If you’re so inclined (and online), you can go to the following link right now to check it out: http://www.lipower.org/residential/green.html

And if/when you do sign up, please email the synagogue so we can add you to our list of RSNS Clean-Green households!