Tell us about your nominee. Why should he or she be recognized as a Jewish Community Hero?
For most of a decade between 1982 - 1988, Myron was an unpaid public servant working to change local, state, national and international energy policy so that he could help to save New Orleans from the devastating effects of global warming. This included initiating and running two city-wide referenda, leading the local and national Sierra Club, working within the State Attorney General's office, trying to educate and guide the Jewish community on this issue within the Jewish Community Relations Committee, and helping to found the Alliance for Affordable Energy. During the next 20 years, he took the lead professionally to become a home energy consultant long before there was any support locally, state or nationally. This is a relatively unprofitable business since until very recently almost no one has made a living doing this. He became the 3rd national president of National Energy Raters Association and conducted its first and only national conference in New Orleans, less than a year before Katrina. In the years since Katrina, he help to found and lead the strictly volunteer, New Orleans Energy Policy Task Force 2006 - 2008 whose mission was to forge an energy policy that will serve the whole community and help make Energy Conservation accessible to all citizens and help protect against the economic, societal and environmental side effects of wasting energy.
What problem did your nominee identify in the community that needed to be solved? How has your nominee's efforts made a difference for others?
This effect of Global Warming was already known in the 1980's. Myron led a successful national campaign within the Sierra Club to make Global Warming a national priority of the club in 1986. The Sierra Club at that time, and perhaps still, has the distinction of being the most respected non-profit lobbying organization to Congress. After decades of momentum we finally had a Congress willing to act on this serious problem! During the same time, Myron promulgated the proposition that Environmental Stuartship is not merely a good idea as a Jew but was a fundamental tenant of Judaism. To this end he help support the nascent at that time: national organization COEJL, working to transform the Mosaic Outdoor Clubs into a national organization and adopt a goal of adopting Jewish Environmentalism, worked as Gabbi within Chevra Thilim synagogue for a decade and helped to lead three Jewish Environmental Retreats, co-founded with Roger Kamenitz, a New Orleans branch of Jewish Renewal, helped to support the development of Jewish Renewal's national retreat Center in Accord, New York, and found text and documented the synergy between the Shema and Jewish Environmentalism. Myron continues to lead the Residential Energy Profession to promote the better application of science to help make Energy Conservation more accessible, less expensive, less confusing and ultimately adequately effective to save the city and region he loves from destruction, whether by hurricanes, sea level rise, subsidence or ignorance in construction that will cause buildings to degrade via their inability to suffer intense humidity and 60 plus inches of rain a year. This is done via invited talks at RESNET (residential energy services network), the Joint Engineering Society Conferences of Louisiana, published papers within the national journals, etc. Despite the suggestion that energy consulting makes some money, it has never generated enough money to live off. It has remained my profession since 1988. Thus I continue to describe myself with this profession and work to improve the industry through my efforts, it is much more and advocation than profession... Thus this activity is mostly a volunteer's devotion to a local, national and international problem that was DECADES AHEAD OF ITS TIME.
