Climate crisis is not here

Opinion: The Israeli public's indifference to the global climate crisis inevitably leads to indifference on the part of decision-makers on the issue.

Ran Levy, Angle - news agency for science and the environment

Israeli citizens are not indifferent. In recent years, they have embarked on struggles against racism, for individual rights, for equal rights and against governmental corruption. What these struggles have in common is their inability to formulate a justified sectoral claim in terms of a broad public interest. The reasons for this lie in the political culture and discourse in Israel and a narrow concept of active citizenship as thematic mobilization.

Struggles in the field of the environment are also often thematic or local (Emek Sassegun or Emek Al-Emadim, for example). This does not detract from their value, but they failed in placing them within a broad social and environmental context. The fight over the gas plan had the potential to connect various issues, and this was done to some extent, but for the above reasons it was difficult to connect the blatant preference of a narrow economic interest and the decision-making in violation of good governance with the colossal failure to formulate an energy policy that would be relevant to the reality of Israel and its international obligations .

Israel, like the entire world, is threatened by a crisis that cuts across sectors and interests, which is already disrupting the environmental, social, and economic balance with increasing violence: the climate crisis. Perhaps because the climate crisis is so broad, unrelated to a specific group, and not perceived as a concrete threat, it fails to rise to the socio-political agenda. However, the public can no longer remain indifferent to it.

The facts supporting the very existence of the Climate Crisis and its intensification cannot be refuted. The risk it poses to humanity occurs daily in natural disasters: the floods in Venice and the huge fires in Australia are examples from the very last few days. The dispute, ostensibly, over the scope of the catastrophe is raised by supporters of conspiracy theories or agents of ignorance and by those who exploit the inability to discern reality through discourse, in favor of political capital and short-term economic interest.

According to a survey in the UK, most young voters (about 75 percent of those aged 18-25) see the climate crisis as the factor that will most influence their vote in the upcoming elections, and most respondents agree that it is the most important issue facing humanity today (similar results were also recorded in other countries). In contrast, the Pew Research Center found that the Israeli public sees the climate crisis as a minor threat at most.

Awareness of the threat is leading to public support and action on the ground by decision-makers: more than 60 countries have pledged to reach net zero emissions by 2050, and their greenhouse gas emissions will be offset through technological means, carbon trading, absorption (e.g., tree planting), and more. Even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – a business lobbying organization that until recently advocated a consistent climate change denial policy – ​​has changed its approach and called for cross-sectoral cooperation in the fight against the climate crisis.

Moreover, as the Trump federal administration abandons the Paris Agreement and adopts policies in favor of the outdated energy sector, local governments (along with the business sector) are taking independent and long-term steps to promote the opposite policy (for example, over a hundred cities and districts have pledged to promote zero emissions). In Israel, the absence of the climate crisis from public discourse also reflects on local government policy. Thus, just recently, the mayor of Netanya canceled public transportation routes and the mayor of Haifa promoted the expansion of an airport, two steps that are not consistent with a desirable climate policy.

To combat the climate crisis effectively, we must change the direction of economic development and the management of national assets such as agriculture and public health. Above all, we must perceive differently the nature of the existential threats that Israel faces: not only rockets and tunnels, but also climate change.

These issues and many others were discussed at the 4th Israeli Climate Conference, which dealt with various aspects, local and global, of the Climate crisis. However, for talk to become action, someone needs to listen to the voices coming from there and around the world.