Feb 11, 2025
The Israel Climate Change Conference, which is sponsored by Haaretz, Ben-Gurion University and the Israeli Climate Forum and will take place on Tuesday, is a reminder of the need to continue addressing this issue even in Israel’s current difficult and bloody reality
The climate crisis creates risks for all of humanity. Shortages of water, problems with food supply and a rise in sea levels, which could result in coastal areas being flooded, are among its anticipated side effects. These will make it even harder to solve conflicts in regions like the Middle East, which is warming even faster than the global average.
Israel is a negligible factor in global terms with regard to the quantity of its carbon emissions, which cause the climate crisis. Nevertheless, it must do its share to reduce these emissions. The government must urgently enact an effective climate law that will set binding targets on this issue.
At the same time, it should accelerate construction of infrastructure for producing electricity from solar power. Today, Israel produces just over a tenth of the electricity it needs from solar energy. To achieve the government’s target of 30 percent by the end of the decade, further steps are needed to encourage the construction of solar facilities.
In addition, suitable facilities must be built to store power and transmit it from the places where it is produced to the places where it is consumed. Another urgently needed step is reducing the amount of garbage we bury. Landfills emit a significant amount of methane, a warming gas. Shrinking landfills will also produce broader environmental benefits, since burying garbage prevents it from being recycled, creates pollution and constitutes an inefficient use of land.
By the same logic, we need to encourage a transition to electric vehicles that are charged by renewable energy. Such a transition would also bring environmental benefits in the form of lower air pollution, which causes thousands of premature deaths every year.
As with the future of the Gaza Strip, U.S. President Donald Trump may well influence Israeli policy on the climate crisis. His utter contempt for the battle against climate change has given a tailwind to carbon-based energy industries and tycoons in several countries that are interested in backtracking on their commitments to reduce carbon emissions. The trend will presumably be the same in Israel, especially when the Environmental Protection Ministry is headed by Idit Silman, who mocks environmental activists.
We need to fight these dangerous trends diligently. We must not postpone the mothballing of coal-fired power plants, which is slated to happen in another year. We must not allow Israel to become a corridor for moving oil from the Gulf States to Europe via the Europe Asia Pipeline Company’s pipeline, which runs through the Negev.
Israel must remain a country drenched in sunlight, which provides electricity, rather than becoming a country drenched in oil that will leak into the Gulf of Eilat or the Negev.
The above article is Haaretz’s lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.