As climate science wanes under Trump’s influence, global …

At the third annual Israel Climate Change Conference, experts, business leaders and lawmakers urge Israel not to withdraw from global climate agreements, amid a highly polarized global political situation shunning academics and favoring energy-consuming AI

Amid rising global temperatures, the general politicization of climate science and debates about the ecological costs of artificial intelligence, the fourth Israel Climate Change Conference was held by Haaretz and Ben Gurion University of the Negev. The event, which took place at the school's Be'er Sheva campus in southern Israel, was held in partnership with the Israeli Climate Forum of the President's Office.

Haaretz Editor-in-Chief Aluf Benn, who gave the opening remarks, said that "there is no doubt that the key change we've seen this year regarding the climate was not seen in the forests or the glaciers, but the White House." Benn said that, as he sees it, U.S. President Donald Trump has been determined to dismantle the progress made by his predecessors in fighting climate change – withdrawing the United States from the 2016 United Nations Paris Climate Agreement, slashing research funding, halting renewable energy programs, and supporting the use and production of fossil fuels.

Benn also said that in an apparent effort to please the U.S. president, Israel's Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar are trying to withdraw Israel from the Paris Agreement as well. Silman, he said, has been adamantly denouncing international organizations fighting climate change, terming them anti-Israel. "Israel, of course, cannot stop global warming by itself.

But ignoring reality means being left unprepared for the oncoming disasters," Benn said. "This will inevitably lead to physical, economic, and health-related damage that will demand high costs in an attempt to fix and save whatever is possible." Xiao Junzheng, Ambassador of China to Israel, discussed his country's efforts to lower its emissions and champion renewable energy. Long the world's top carbon polluter, the key cause of climate change, by a wide margin, China has pivoted in recent years toward a more environmentally conscious approach.

Speaking with the ambassador, Haaretz's climate crisis correspondent, Nir Hasson, noted that some of the few causes for climate optimism in the past year have come from China, which increased its solar capacity by 43 percent in one year, surpassing its coal capacity with renewable energy sources. "China's official goal is to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030. Still, there are encouraging signs," said Xiao, referring to the point when less carbon dioxide (CO2) is emitted than it was before.

He cited a report from the U.K.-based Carbon Brief climate news website stating that the country's carbon emissions have been flat or falling for the past 21 months, "so there is a real reason for optimism." When asked by Hasson about the extreme energy demands posed by artificial intelligence data centers, which cause a strain on countries trying to meet their climate targets, Xiao said that "AI plays a growing role" in China's efforts to meet its goal of cutting net greenhouse gas emissions by seven to 10 percent by 2035.

China is now using AI to improve its power grids, to manage electricity demands and to raise efficiency in energy production, the ambassador said. Regarding the Israeli deliberation to withdraw from global climate agreements like the Paris Agreement, Xiao said that "history, just like a train, moves forward, not backward. Climate change is now a shared challenge for all countries, so if we fail to act, the major coastal cities like New York, Shanghai and Tel Aviv could face serious risks from the rising seas.

So this is not a distant problem; it affects our future directly." U.S. President Donald Trump recently revoked the greenhouse gas endangerment finding – a landmark Environmental Protection Agency determination that paved the way for regulating a range of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, after the agency concluded they posed a threat to public health. Xiao said that means the fossil fuel industry will profit, but "if nature is damaged, human society will suffer as well.

Economic growth without a healthy environment cannot last. Climate cooperation serves the common interests of all humanity." "In Israel, people often speak about the trauma caused by war," Xiao said. "But actually, at this global level, climate change is also creating a deep and lasting harm, although it does not always receive the same attention." The ambassador added that Israel's world-class research and innovation ecosystem could be leveraged through its cooperation with China.

"Solar energy is a natural starting point, so China and Israel could explore joint research on solar, plus models combining solar power with desert agriculture, precision agricultural water management, desertification control and sea water desalination projects" as well as electric vehicle and autonomous driving partnerships. President of Ben-Gurion University, Prof. Daniel Chamovitz, spoke of a respected American academic who interviewed for a position at the institution nine months ago, in the midst of Israel's war in Gaza.

"I asked her why she wanted to come here, and she said that she had lost all of her funding in the United States," because they no longer grant money for research using the word "climate." "She said that Israel might be a messed-up country, but at least it appreciates science," he recalled. Chamovitz explained that Israel is not immune to the polarization taking place around the world, as climate awareness and academia become increasingly politicized subjects.

When academia falls sway to political influence, he explained, "the damage is long-term, and not immediate. Universities don't close and students don't stop coming, but there is a change. There is no innovation. The best minds leave. Those who stay take fewer risks because they're afraid. States have risen and fallen based on the freedom they give their academics. We're the canary in the coal mine, and this is a cloud that threatens our ability to oppose climate change." Laura Paddison, CNN's senior climate reporter, gave a presentation on the challenges of covering the climate crisis as a journalist.

About 10 years ago, climate journalism was at its peak: "It was moving from something that had previously been seen as niche to something at the center of things. It was framed as the most important story of our time. Climate journalists were hired, money went into that kind of journalism, and it feels like we're maybe not in that world anymore." "The landscape is shifting," she said, explaining that there is a decline in consumption of climate journalism, and newsrooms and networks are slashing their climate teams – but the work is more important than ever.

"In the next few years, it's all but certain that we're going to breach the 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming. The planet is likely to cross climate tipping points, and people will continue to die from climate change-fueled extreme weather," she added. In a discussion with Haaretz journalist Neta Ahituv, Paddison noted that one challenge is that "people feel overwhelmed" about the enormity of climate change.

"I think people can feel like, 'what can I do in the face of this crisis? I'm just not going to act.' And that's quite a difficult situation to be in." She said that she was surprised at the public's response as the years went on. "I thought that when the impacts of the climate crisis became more devastating, when a broader range of people were affected by it, that people would sit up, engage, take more notice, but ironically, it almost feels like the opposite," she said.

"We're at a stage where if we want to meet those internationally agreed targets, we need to cut missions deeply and quickly. And in terms of politics, that's quite a hard thing to frame for your electorate – people are worried that's going to mean lifestyle changes, and it's often framed as a negative," Paddison added. As indifference grows, Paddison said that she and her colleagues have reframed how they report on the issue.

"When you cover the latest heat record falling over and over and over again, people can become desensitized." They still tell those stories, "but I think we've been thinking much more about how do you explain to people that they're already paying to live on a climate-changed planet?" She added that she is also concerned that "The worse things get, the easier it is for disinformation to spread. Every time we see a huge extreme weather event, now we are seeing a bubbling up of disinformation about weather manipulation, or people setting fires to claim it's climate change, things like that.

And so as journalists, we've got to keep telling those stories, keep getting those facts out, keep finding ways to engage people."

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This report covers the latest developments in artificial intelligence. The information presented highlights key changes and updates that are relevant to those following this topic.

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