Environmental Engineering Reference
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her religious feelings and intensified her commitment to her work. She
used to insist that there was no real connection between her childhood in
Donora and her crusade against environmental toxins. Now she is more
reflective:“I think some things happen for a reason, and sometimes, if we're
lucky, we figure it out.”
Davis's former office at WRI (she left in 2000 to become a visiting pro-
fessor at the Heinz School for Public Policy and Management at Carnegie
Mellon University) overflowed with publications, papers, and family pho-
tos. There were snapshots of ski trips with her daughter, then a student at
Oberlin College, a portrait of her son in uniform as a lance corporal in the
in US Marine Corps, and pictures of Davis mountain climbing with her
husband, who is now a senior economist and a chief negotiator on global
climate issues at the US State Department. Among her topics is a volume
by Rashi, an eleventh-century French rabbi and scholar famous for his
commentaries on the Torah and the Talmud, the collection of rabbinical
writings essential to Judaic studies. Davis often draws on stories from the
Talmud to communicate her ideas. One that she tells is about a group of
farmers and workers who are complaining to a rabbi that they have been
given too much to do. “We can't complete it. We'll never get the work
done,” they protest.“How can you possibly expect us to do this?”The rabbi
says: “Look, it's not for you to finish the task. But you must begin it.”
“That story really applies to the work we're trying to do now,” Davis
observed.“It's a very complex task. It involves rethinking how our lives are
organized and how we can do things better, more efficiently. How can we
de-materialize, do more with less, be smarter? Those are the challenges.We
won't finish it. But we need to start.” After a pause, she adds: “Sometimes
people face a task that looks hopeless. But I think, being a Jew, that we
always have hope.That's the lesson of the Bible, isn't it?”
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