Israel must join the Jewish world and go green

[Middle East News Service comments: A ripple of the impact of climate change on the Middle East has reached Australian politics. New Opposition Leader Tony Abbot has attacked Prime Minister Rudd who had earlier told the Australia-Israel forum that “the greatest moral challenge of our time” was climate change. Abbott countered that no Israeli political leader would accept that view. But the arid region around Israel has much less of a buffer zone against climate change than the rest of the planet. If one accepts climate change, one must realise that Israel and Palestine would suffer the impact earlier and in a more severe way than most other countries.

But in one respect Abbott is correct. Most, if not all, Israeli mainstream politicians while not denying climate change invoke “Israeli exceptionalism” to seek special treatment for Israel. In preparing Israel’s stance Environment Minister Gilad Arden (Heb) argued that Israel was expecting to actually double its greenhouse gases production by 2030 but with suitable measures the increase could be cut down by about 75 per cent. One of the reasons Arden gave was the need to provide electricity for more people than in other developed countries. [Reminder: Israel’s population is seven million.]

There is a serious contradiction behind this exceptionalism. On one hand Israel claims to be a technological powerhouse. Israel21c and similar websites keep on reminding us of Israeli invention and technology. In one of the latest examples the hayadan (Heb) web site calculated three days ago that in the 21st Century Israel has topped the per capita Nobel Prize winners list with one winner per 1.5 million of population. All of these winners were in the sciences or economics. But when comes to Copenhagen, Israel wants to be treated as an underdeveloped country.

What makes this contradiction even more acute is Israel’s lack of practice in the very areas where it is a world leader in developing alternative energies. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) European Regional Director Christophe Bouvier has called it Israel’s Solar Paradox. The Jerusalem Post explained: Bouvier wanted [Israeli official Ron] Adam to relay to all the relevant government authorities that the UN was concerned about the fact that while Israel was the foremost exporter of solar technology in the world and an incubator for solar technologies, it was last in actual production of electricity from solar energy.

Bouvier cited specific statistics in megawatts which showed that Israel's solar production was not only lagging behind world leaders like Germany, the US, South Africa and Spain, but even fell short compared to countries like Senegal, Eritrea and Mexico and a host of others.

No wonder than that Arden was able to claim that “we a very limited supply of renewable energy resources.”

Below former Israeli cabinet minister Yossi Sarid puts the case why Israel must join the rest of the world and go green – Sol Salbe.]

So far there has been no official announcement: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may or may not travel to the Climate Conference in Copenhagen, but what does it really matter?

Israel is a small country and its carbon footprint on the planet is minor - less than one thousandth of total emissions.

And it is fair to assume that in the Danish capital they are not preoccupied with the question from Hamlet - will he or won't he come.

Even though for a small country Israel is a large polluter, and if other countries polluted like it, the world would go back to its primordial state; nonetheless, Israel is not at the center of the conference, as Netanyahu would have liked to think - and neither is he.

View the rest of the article here: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1132927.html

[The independent Middle East News Service concentrates on providing alternative information chiefly from Israeli sources. It is sponsored by the Australian Jewish Democratic Society. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the AJDS. These are expressed in its own statements]

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