The Greening of Hezbollah: Nasrallah Fights Climate Change

 

With a shovel in hand, Secretary General of Hezbollah Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah appeared on television screens, planting and watering a small tree outside his home in the southern suburbs of Beirut. His message to the whole world was save the environment: go green.

Hezbollah’s Jihad al Binaa foundation has led a campaign to plant one million trees in Lebanon. Sayyed Nasrallah’s tree was the millionth.

These actions come in line with other campaigns throughout the world. Tomorrow environmental activists around the world will make the date 10-10-2010 a day of action, with more than 7,000 community organizations partnering to dedicate the day to environmental work.

Any day would be appropriate for global environmental work. But this day, which is full of events, is an easy-to-remember date.

“Circle 10/10/10 on your calendar,” read an invitation from environmentalist Bill McKibben that’s posted on the climate crisis Web site 350.org. “That’s the date. The place is wherever you live. And the point is to do something that will help deal with global warming in your city or community.”

Also in Lebanon, a series of activities are organized in more than one area. Musician Habib Alberto is organizing a concert where donations will be collected to buy a solar heater. The heater will be provided to the Ministry of Environment, to be installed on the roof of its headquarters in a building in Azarieh.

Fashion designer Jean Fares chose to celebrate this day by planting olive trees in his atelier garden near Jdeideh road, Beirut.

Climate change, polluted air, acid rain, depletion of the ozone layer, global warming — all are the reasons for our global crisis that nobody knows when our world would revolutionize against us.

Imagine you are coming out of your home and all you see is black smoke with no trees, all you hear is cars’ uproar not birds, all you smell is gasoline rather than flowers. So come out from your houses now before it’s too late and answer Sayyed Nasrallah’s call: go green.


This article was first published by Al-Manar on 9 October 2010; it is republished here for non-profit educational purposes.  Cf. “In his speech, Sayyed Nasrallah will reiterate that ‘the resistance is for the environment and against desertification, which is on the way to invading Lebanon and the region on the natural as well as intellectual level'” (“Sayyed Nasrallah Plantará Hoy el Árbol Un Millón; Pronunciará Discurso,” Al-Manar, 9 October 2010).