The Ministry of Environmental Protection today published a new report, as required under the UN Climate Convention, on the country’s progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Reading the government’s report evokes the opening line of Charles Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities — “It was the best of times…..”

However, graduate students in the climate studies program at Tel Aviv University simultaneously published an alternative report for Earth Day this week which evokes instead the continuation of that famous opening: “It was the worst of times.”

How can such dramatically different conclusions be explained? Is this just a classic case of “glass half full versus glass half empty” opposite perspectives? Or is it a matter of bias and selective reporting by the Ministry of Environmental Protection?

Full disclosure: I teach those students and supervised them during the writing of their independent and scholarly report. But even from an objective perspective, it seems there is a certain distortion of facts— whitewashing the reality that Israel has become a “climate laggard” in the international arena. Aside from a brief period when Minister Yuval Steinitz acted energetically to shut down coal-fired power plants, the Israeli government continues to treat the climate crisis as someone else’s problem, with performance that pales in comparison to the efforts of countries truly committed to the planet and future generations.

In practice, around 90% of Israel’s greenhouse gas emissions come from four sectors: electricity/energy, transportation, waste, and industry. Both reports rightly focus on these sectors. (It’s worth noting that if emissions from food — including imported meat — were counted, they too would make a significant contribution.)

So, what can be........

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