Shavuot, which falls this week, has been my favorite holiday since arriving in Israel in the 1980s. But four decades is more than enough time to understand the difference between delightful customs and what’s truly important: the future quality of our environment.

As we grapple with ongoing regional instability, it’s hard to find the time and energy to also deal with other vital issues. After all, the embers of Iran and Lebanon continue to smolder.

Observers outside Israel, however, might have difficulty understanding how issues that just a few years topped the local agenda have essentially dropped off the radar. I’m talking about the climate crisis, renewable energy, environmental justice, green public procurement, cleantech, recycling.

There’s nothing theoretical about this.

While we continue to fight unavoidable wars, dozens of countries gathered in late April in Colombia for talks focused on pivoting to clean energy and extricating themselves from the shackles of coal, gas and oil. From this distance, it appears that participants there are seriously bent on moving forward – without binding themselves to the intentions of the world’s leading polluting countries (they didn’t attend).

Chances are slim that those of us who consume solely Israeli media would have heard about the conference. That’s just the way it is here – i.e. “the situation.”

Indeed, in........

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