This past Thursday I went to a fantastic Earth Day event in Tel Aviv. The event, held in Rabin Square in the middle of the city, was a huge public concert, featuring the Balkan Beat Box, a hugely popular Israeli band that tours all over the world. This band seems to be the pride and joy of this country, as there's not much from Israel, culturally speaking, that makes a global impression (for instance, when Waltz With Bashir was nominated for the Oscar for best int'l film, it was huuuuge news here). The crowd at this show was PUMPED, to say the least, and it was great to be there.
Anyway, the whole thing was powered by left over felafel oil, which is SO perfect and Israeli it almost hurts, and about 20 cyclists off the the side of stage. The big kick off was with a crowd-wide count down at the end of which the office building behind the stage and a large part of the city shut off its lights for one hour.
With all of the bullsh*t that happens in this country, I have to say that the environmentalism here is hopeful. Traveling in other middle eastern countries, this awareness has yet to catch on. I remember one example of a cab driver in Jordan who I pleaded with so that he wouldn't throw his apple core out the window and his response was "Oh, you Americans!" then he laughed at me like I had made some kind of adorable joke, and proceeded to casually toss it to the side of the road. I didn't argue.
I suppose there are many reasons for this disparity in environmental awareness within this region- socio-economic, cultural, geographic, etc. Not to mention the American and European social and cultural presence.
Check out this link to read more about the event
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