—Systemic change begins with personal change—
Professor Alon Tal’s career has been a balance between academia and public interest advocacy. Between 2021–2022 he was a member of Knesset, Israel’s parliament, where he served as chair of the subcommittee for environmental and climate impact on health.
He has an appointment as professor in the Department of Public Policy at Tel Aviv University. Tal has held faculty posts at Stanford, Ben Gurion, Hebrew, Michigan State, Otago and Harvard Universities.
He has also founded several Israeli environmental organizations including Adam Teva V’Din, the Israel Union for Environmental Defense, and the Arava Institute. He has served as deputy chair of Keren Kayemeth L’Yisrael, where for many years he oversaw national forestry policy in Israel and is currently co-chair of Zafuf, the Israel Forum for Population, Environment and Society.
He plays fiddle and mandolin in the Arava Riders, a leading Israeli bluegrass band.
Last month I read Hamas-Israel story from an angle few will touch, but is critical: overpopulation, which I wrote about in my post Overpopulation in Israel and Gaza. The population in Israel and Palestine have both more than quintupled since 1950. There are plenty of sources of problems there, but not many places can handle that kind of growth, especially when mostly desert. The article led me to read Alon's book The Land Is Full: Addressing Overpopulation in Israel. You can't understand the situation there without including population---including human violence and environmental degradation. Alon isn't only a professor. He also served in the Knesset, Israel's parliament. He's one of the few politicians to talk about overpopulation. In Israel it's impossible to miss, though many people still want to keep growing it. In our conversation, we talk about population, participating in politics, the meaning of his book title The Land Is Full, and Hamas.
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