Ahead of annual report, Climate Forum heads say even in wartime, they battle for change |
In October 2021, just before Israel’s delegation left for that year’s global climate confab in Glasgow, President Isaac Herzog announced that he would create a special climate forum.
The idea was to bring together civil society, academia, central and local government, and the economic and business sectors to lower global warming gas emissions and prepare for the effects of climate change — which include heatwaves, wildfires, intense rainfall and flooding, and rising sea levels.
The Israeli Climate Forum got its start under the so-called “change government” led by Naftali Bennett, with the president saying that “a state of emergency demands emergency measures.”
But the “change government” fell in June 2022, and elections in November of that year brought in the current government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, in which environmental and climate issues have been accorded low priority. Ministers are currently discussing a request by US President Donald Trump for Israel to follow his example and exit the UN’s landmark 2015 Paris Climate Accords.
On Thursday, the Israeli Climate Forum’s chairman, Dov Khenin, and CEO, Netta Galnoor-Tene, are due to present their annual report for 2025 to the president.
Prior to the release of the report, they spoke to The Times of Israel in their Tel Aviv University offices.
According to Khenin, a veteran environmental activist and former Knesset member for the Hadash party, it’s “not that people don’t understand that there’s a climate crisis, but they don’t understand what to do about........