Is our drinking water contaminated with forever chemicals? (Moshe Shai/Flash90)
Academics and activists looking to win the hearts and minds of the public and politicians need to explain environmental hazards in language that most people can relate to, a conference heard Monday.
Panelists at an online confab organized by the Environment and Health Fund warned that academic reports and big-picture problems would fail to sway decision-makers or ignite grassroots pressure from the street.
“The average citizen doesn’t connect the macro-problems, [doesn’t link] the things in the atmosphere that are far away, with, for example, one’s asthma,” said Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg, an economist who served in the Knesset from 2015 to 2017 and now teaches at Tel Aviv University.