Over the course of the 2015-2016 academic year, the Mandel School for
Educational Leadership is holding a series of evening events on a range
of contemporary political and social issues. The series is being led by
Mandel School faculty member Dr. Yuval Evri.
The first event,
held in February, examined the Paris Agreement, signed on December 12,
2015 at the UN Climate Change Conference, which seeks to limit global
warming to a rise of less than 2 degrees Celsius by 2050 and less than
1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century.
Dr. Lia
Ettinger, the academic coordinator of the Heschel Center for
Environmental Learning and Leadership and a tutor at the Mandel School,
reviewed the state of the global environment and the central challenges
in the field. She believes that the agreement is of historic importance
because all the signatory countries managed to agree on realistic and
measurable targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, among
them the United States and China, the two main actors and most polluting
countries in the world.
In the second half of the evening, Dr.
Orly Ronen, head of the Urban Innovation and Sustainability Laboratory
at Tel Aviv University’s Porter School of Environmental and Social
Studies, explored possible environmental solutions and looked at the
role of individuals and civil society organizations in solving climate
problems.
The second event in the series will be dedicated to
International Women’s Day, and the third will deal with the proposals
for Israel’s exploitation of its newly-discovered natural gas reserves.
