Rachel Fink Feb 12, 2025
Dov Khenin, former Knesset member and chair of the Israeli Climate Forum, warned against underestimating the danger the Trump administration poses to the movement against global warming. Yet, Khenin believes preserving hope is crucial to the effort
Speaking at this year’s Haaretz’s Israel Climate Change Conference on Tuesday, Dr. Dov Khenin, chair of the Israeli Climate Forum, examined the role environmental issues played in U.S. President Donald Trump’s resounding win against Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. According to Khenin, American indifference to the current crisis ultimately worked in Trump’s favor. “Climate change is ever present in America’s reality,” he said, “and yet, it was barely acknowledged in the run-up to the election.”
Referencing Hurricane Helen, a deadly storm that tore through the southeastern region of the United States less than two months before Election Day, Khenin noted the irony of a staunch climate denier using a climate disaster to his advantage. “Trump was able to shift focus onto blaming the Democrats for the humanitarian failures of the storm rather than the environmental ones,” he added.
Khenin warns against the mistake of underestimating the danger Trump poses to the fight against climate change, given the speed and efficiency with which he has already begun to deregulate environmental protections.
Less than a month into his second term, the president has already pulled out of the Paris Agreement, frozen grants to the Environmental Protection Agency, removed critical climate data from the official White House website, and begun rolling back Obama-era regulations. “And he’s done all this with enormous financial backing provided by a coalition of fossil fuel producers, AI-powered energy producers and crypto investors,” Khenin said.
Despite the bleak outlook, Khenin refuses to give himself, or anyone else, permission to give up. “Despair is a bridge that leads good people to surrender, and then terrible things happen,” he told the audience. “This is exactly what they are hoping will happen.
“And just as we should not underestimate their power,” Khenin said, “let us not underestimate ours either.” As he sees it, the best weapon for fighting climate denial is reality. “But reality does not act alone,” he added. “It needs to be communicated.”
Khenin outlined the tangible forces working in our favor – the concrete aspects of reality that make action possible: a worldwide community of scientists who are united in their recognition of the climate crisis as an undeniable and urgent threat, our own set of economic incentives, and a shifting political landscape in which the fight against climate change is no longer confined to progressives but has gained broader bipartisan and global support.
In recent years, the climate movement has found religious backing, Khenin said, including within Judaism. Jewish leaders and scholars have connected environmental responsibility to two important religious directives: the prohibition against wasting food, water, energy, money, and other resources (bal tashchit) and the overarching Jewish commandment to save lives (pikuach nefesh).
Returning to the subject of Trump, Khenin stated that while the president likes to project a strongman image, he is not all-powerful. In the weeks following the election, states and major cities have already passed ambitious climate regulations.
Nor is the United States the only country taking action. The European Green Deal is already making a positive impact. Last year, for the first time in its history, Europe generated more electricity from solar power than from coal. More surprisingly, China – once one of the world’s largest polluters, whose government had long obstructed efforts to address the climate crisis – recently announced that it had already met its 2030 emission reduction targets.
Finally, Khenin turned his thoughts to Israel. “The question is not what our role is in the global climate crisis,” he said, “but what our role could be in its solution.” He believes that for Israel to play a significant role in climate issues, the country must address its day-to-day challenges – not despite the ongoing war, but because of it.
This includes reducing reliance on foreign fuel sources, rehabilitating an agricultural industry that has been decimated by the conflict, increasing efficient and affordable public transportation options, and decentralizing electricity production through localized grids rather than a single, centralized system.
Khenin concluded with a hopeful declaration: “The challenge is immense, the time is short, but we have no intention of giving up without a fight.”