Enter Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Paris climate summit broke the ice between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Netanyahu, with their first handshake in five years. Netanyahu made the rounds among key world leaders, leveraging the atmosphere to advance security and diplomatic matters.<\/p>\n
There are two competing Israeli narratives for Paris, depending on one\u2019s audience. There is the blessing of the Jewish state\u2019s culture of innovation as the so-called \u201cStart-up Nation.\u201d Israel is the only country whose founding visionary, Theodor Herzl, predicted it would be powered by green energy. Israel\u2019s founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, was a solar pioneer, imagining that the young country\u2019s hot water would be heated with the sun. I am in Paris, in part, to wave the green Zionist flag.<\/p>\n
Yet my heart broke when the president of the Marshall Islands, the most loyal ally Israel has ever had at the United Nations and whose Pacific island nation sits barely 6 1\/2 feet above a rising sea, pleaded for the world to move quickly to reduce carbon emissions before his people literally drown.\u00a0Do I have the heart to tell him that only 2 percent of his beloved Israel\u2019s power comes from renewables?<\/p>\n
German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that Germany will be at least 40 percent powered by renewables by 2030 and is already at a whopping 27 percent.\u00a0Standing in the shadow of death, Germany is choosing life, while Start-up Nation, with double Germany\u2019s sunlight, can only dream of reaching 17 percent renewables by 2030.\u00a0Israel\u2019s electric company, regulator, Finance Ministry and Energy Ministry all mistakenly declare that what Germany has achieved is actually not really possible. The truth is, Israel\u2019s decision makers overwhelmingly are intoxicated with natural gas \u2014 as if somehow energy security is achieved by having 70 percent of your power dependent upon a water gas pipe more than 90 miles deep in a war and fault zone.<\/p>\n
Curses.<\/p>\n
And what of Jewish organizations?\u00a0I know of not one Jewish endowment or foundation that has decided to divest from carbon, even as college funds, pensions, sovereign wealth funds and mainstream foundations are actively divesting trillions. Not even the Reform movement, the conscience of American Jewry, has made a decision to divest; we are light years behind our mainline Christian friends.<\/p>\n
Curses.<\/p>\n
By the way, the Palestinian leadership is no better. Abbas blamed the Israelis for his lack of climate action. Yet it is mainly his own pen that refuses to sign solar licenses, rezoning requests and internationally bankable power purchase agreements with Palestinian solar entrepreneurs \u2014 condemning his people to ever-lasting dependence on dirty power from Israel.<\/p>\n
Curses.<\/p>\n
And what of Daesh?\u00a0I was probably the only schmuck at the conference this week lugging around my Israeli gas mask in my backpack, having heard the warnings of the French leadership that chemical and biological attacks may be possible.\u00a0Don\u2019t judge me; I have a wife and five kids, and, as an Israeli, own a gas mask. Daesh is the best-financed terror group in history because it sells oil.\u00a0Iran is the best-financed terror state because it sells oil. Saudi Arabia is the biggest exporter of fundamentalist Wahhabi Islam because it sells oil.\u00a0Oil is greasing the wheels of terror and somehow we grieve as if we are innocent.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the Israeli prime minister, the one whose visionary fuel-alternative initiative promises a world without oil. Yet his government grants licenses for oil drilling in the Golan, killed the national network to charge electric cars and can\u2019t even admit to an international climate audience that Israel is failing at home.<\/p>\n
Curses.<\/p>\n
As part of the Israeli delegation, this is what I\u2019m supposed to say: Israeli innovation and technology can save the world, and please forgive our low targets on renewables because we live in a tough neighborhood.<\/p>\n
As a Jew, however, I must curse and provide hope.\u00a0And here it is: Despite the Israeli government, the Arava region \u2014 stretching from Eilat to the Dead Sea \u2014 is now powered 60 percent from the sun during the day and will achieve 100 percent daytime power by 2020. This is the model for Israel:\u00a0 daytime sun and nighttime natural gas.\u00a0And this could be the model for the Palestinians, for our Arab neighbors, for Africa, for the world over, and could drive development and really fight climate change.<\/p>\n
I only wish the prime minister said this and not me.<\/p>\n
(Yosef I. Abramowitz serves as CEO of Energiya Global Capital, a Jerusalem-based solar and social development enterprise. He was named by CNN as one of the six leading Green Pioneers worldwide, and won a Covenant Award for Excellence in Jewish Education.\u00a0He\u2019s on Twitter at @KaptainSunshine.)\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n![\"Share](\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\")