The 2024 Paris Olympics Olympic flame flies in the air. It looks great, but it does not include one traditional feature of flames—fire.

The environmentally-friendly floating, hot-air balloon-style cauldron structure tethered in the Tuileries Garden was designed by French designer Matthieu Lehanneur. Instead of fire, it features 40 LED spotlights and 200 misting nozzles that create a cloud of mist and beams of light resembling flickering fire without the use of fossil fuels.

The renewable energy-powered cauldron, aims to reduce emissions while adding an air of mystery and spectacle to the display, accessible for public viewing.

The cauldron's design is a departure from the traditional Olympic flame, typically fueled by fossil fuels.

Sources: NPR, Fast Company, Business Insider, New York Times, The Sun, Barron's, France24, Economic Times, RFI, Surface, Live Design, Gulf Times, Architect's Newspaper.

This article was written in collaboration with Generative AI news company Alchemiq.

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Dubai opened the doors Friday to an architecturally stunning building housing the new Museum of the Future, a seven-story structure that envisions a dreamlike world powered by solar energy and the Gulf Arab state's frenetic quest to develop.

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The torus-shaped museum is a design marvel that forgoes support columns, relying instead on a network of diagonal beams. It is enveloped in windows carved by Arabic calligraphy, adding another eye-popping design element to Dubai's piercingly modern skyline that shimmers with the world's tallest tower, the Burj Khalifa.

The Museum of the Future projects Dubai's ambitions and its desire to be seen as a modern, inclusive city even as its political system remains rooted in hereditary rule and hard limits exist on the types of expression permitted. It is the latest in a stream of feats for Dubai, which is the first country in the Middle East to host the World's Fair.

The museum envisions what the world could look like 50 years from today. It's a vision that crystalizes the United Arab Emirates' own 50-year transformation from a pearl-diving backwater to a global interconnected hub fueled by oil and gas wealth.

"It was an imperative requirement to develop so fast because we needed to catch up with the rest of the world," said Sarah Al-Amiri, UAE minister of state for advanced technology and chair of the UAE Space Agency. "Prior to 1971, [we had] no basic road networks, no basic education, electricity network and so on."

The UAE last year announced it would join a growing list of nations cutting greenhouse gas emissions, shifting away at least domestically from the fossil fuels that still drive the Arabian Peninsula's growth, clout and influence.

However, the museum's focus on a sustainable future brings to the forefront the inherent tension between the push by Gulf Arab states to keep pumping oil and gas and global pledges to cut down on carbon emissions, including the UAE's 2050 net-zero pledge.

Moreover, the museum invites visitors to reconnect with their senses and disconnect from their phones, but digital screens and experiences flow throughout its installations. The museum also encourages visitors to think about the planet's health and biodiversity in a city that celebrates consumption, luxury and consumerism.

Al-Amiri said the museum's ethos is that the drive toward a sustainable future and healthy planet should not prohibit progress and economic growth.

"It needs to not be prohibitive, but rather an opportunity to create new opportunities out of this challenge that we're all facing," she said.

The museum's creative director, Brendan McGetrick, said addressing climate change "doesn't mean that you have to return to like some hunter gatherer lifestyle."

"You can actually mobilize and continue progressing and continue innovating, but it should be done with an awareness of our relationship to the planet and that we have a lot of work to do," he said.

The museum's goal is to inspire people to think about what is possible and to channel that into real world action, he added.

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Visitors to the Museum of the Future are ushered by an artificial intelligence guide named "Aya." She beckons people to experience a future with flying taxis, windfarms and a world powered by a massive structure orbiting Earth that harnesses the sun's energy and beams it to the moon. The so-called "Sol Project" imagines the moon covered by countless solar panels that direct that energy toward nodes on Earth, where humanity thrives and the planet's biodiversity includes innovative plant species resistant to fire.

"What we tried to do is create a sort of compelling vision of what would happen if we imagine space as a shared resource," McGetrick said.

The museum envisions that humanity's collective energy project is directed by a space station called the OSS Hope, the same word in Arabic the UAE named its real-life mission gathering data from Mars' atmosphere. Last year, the UAE became the first Arab country to launch a functioning interplanetary mission.

The museum's imagined future also draws from Islam's past with a mesmerizing display of the planets in our solar system mapped by astrolabes, the complex devices refined by Muslims during the Golden Age of Islam to aid in navigation, time and celestial mapping.

The museum's Arab thumbprint flows throughout, including in a meditation space that is part of a larger sensory experience guided by vibration, light and water. These three elements underpinned life for tribes in the Arabian Peninsula.

The oil-fueled cities of the Gulf that have emerged from the desert over the past few decades unearthed seismic changes in the ways people in the region live, interact and connect with nature.

"It's always important to continue to evolve and develop and understand what parts of the culture actually push development forward," said Al-Amiri. "Creating new norms and new ways of living and new ways of coexisting is OK."

A stunning centerpiece of the museum is a darkened mirrored space illuminated by columns of tiny glass cylinders with the illusory DNA of animals and species that have gone extinct, including the polar bear whose Arctic habitat is currently threatened by warming temperatures. In this dreamscape future, the health of the planet is monitored like a person's pulse, temperature and vitals are.

The Museum of the Future opens to the public Friday with tickets costing the equivalent of $40 a person. An official launch ceremony Monday evening took place in the presence of Dubai ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, whose poetry wraps the building in Arabic calligraphy.

The building was conceptualized by Killa Design, a UAE-based architecture firm. Killa Design says the building, which overlooks Dubai's main thoroughfare, has achieved LEED Platinum status, a worldwide rating reserved for the world's most energy-efficient and environmental designs.

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Deep in the South Pacific, scientists have explored a rare stretch of pristine corals shaped like roses off the coast of Tahiti. The reef is thought to be one of the largest found at such depths and seems untouched by climate change or human activities.

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Laetitia Hédouin said she first saw the corals during a recreational dive with a local diving club months earlier.

"When I went there for the first time, I thought, 'Wow – we need to study that reef. There's something special about that reef," said Hédouin, a researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research in Moorea, French Polynesia.

What struck Hédouin was that the corals looked healthy and weren't affected by a bleaching event in 2019. Corals are tiny animals that grow and form reefs in oceans around the world.

Globally, coral reefs have been depleted from overfishing and pollution. Climate change is also harming delicate corals – including those in areas neighboring the newly discovered reef – with severe bleaching caused by warmer waters. Between 2009 and 2018, 14% of the world's corals were killed, according to a 2020 report by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Project.

The newfound reef, stretching 2 miles (3 kilometers), was studied late last year during a dive expedition supported by UNESCO. Unlike most of the world's mapped corals, which are found in relatively shallow waters, this one was deeper -- between 115 feet (35 meters) to 230 feet (70 meters).

Exploring such depths posed a challenge: the deeper a diver goes underwater, the shorter amount of time can be safely spent at each depth. The team was equipped with special tanks and did 200 hours of diving to study the reef, including taking photographs, measurements and samples of the coral.

The reef is in a spot where many researchers haven't spent a lot of time in, said former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oceanographer Mark Eakin.

"We'll be seeing more of these discoveries as the technology is applied to these locations," said Eakin. "We may find some bigger ones somewhere, but I think this is always going to be an unusual reef."

The recent volcanic eruption in Tonga that triggered tsunami waves across the Pacific has not affected the reef off Tahiti, said Hédouin.

Hédouin hopes the research can help experts understand how the reef has been resilient to climate change and human pressures, and what role these deeper corals might play in the ocean ecosystem. More dives are planned in the coming months.

"We know very little about the ocean, and there's still so much that needs to be recorded, needs to be measured," said Julian Barbière, the head of UNESCO's marine policy and regional coordination.

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Among Israel's 16 largest cities, Jerusalem has the worst quality of life according to the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).

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A CBS study evaluated residents' life expectancy, the density of housing, satisfaction with the cleanliness of the area, satisfaction with parks and green areas, and general confidence about the residential neighborhoods.

Kfar Saba, a city in central Israel with a nearly entirely Jewish population of over 110,400, scored the highest overall in the 51 areas that were assessed.

Tel Aviv, Israel's second-most populous city and the world's most expensive metropolis, ranked sixth. However, ,Tel Aviv led in terms of job opportunities as well as access to computers among schoolchildren.

According to the business daily Globes, the CBS divided up the cities in the study into three categories.

Above-average cities included Kfar Saba, Rehovot, Ramat Gan, Rishon Lezion, and Tel Aviv – all in central Israel – and the "capital of the Negev," Beersheba.

Holon and Petah Tikva were ranked "average," as was Haifa.

Cities ranked "below average" included Beit Shemesh and Jerusalem, Ashdod, Bnei Brak and Bat Yam.

While Jerusalem – Israel's largest city – ranked last overall, it scored higher than average in 18 of the measured areas. The capital's unemployment rate, residents' level of satisfaction with their neighborhoods, and access to computers drove its ranking down.

i24NEWS contributed to this report

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Nearly 2.5 million tons of food waste was thrown away in Israel in 2020, amounting to 19.1 billion shekels ($6 billion), according to a report published this week by the Environmental Protection Ministry and Leket Israel, the country's leading food rescue organization.

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According to the food bank's sixth annual Food Waste and Rescue Report, the number amounts to almost NIS 3,600 ($1,140) per household and represents 35% of the food produced in the country. Half of it – 1.1 ton worth NIS 6.4 billion ($2 billion) – was thrown away when it was still edible and salable.

Just under one in five (18.7%) Israeli households reportedly suffered from food insecurity last year, Leket Israel said.

The food bank found that the coronavirus pandemic did not significantly alter food waste habits compared to 2019, but changed the way the waste was distributed. As more people spent time at home due to lockdowns, food waste increased by NIS 800 million ($255 million) compared to 2019.

The report takes a stand against the previous government's decision to give stipends to the entire population during periods of confinement, saying it would have been wiser to focus financial assistance on those in greatest difficulty.

"It would have been much more economically efficient to fund food distribution programs rather than leaving needy families to struggle on a daily basis," the report said. "The worsening problem of food waste and insecurity has only accelerated since the start of the pandemic, stressing the need to include halving waste reduction as a national cause, by the end of the decade."

Leket Israel President Gidi Kroch called on Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to implement an inter-ministerial food rescue plan.

"The findings of the Food Waste and Rescue Report illustrate the dire consequences and effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the social and economic aspects and emphasize the urgent need for action and recognition by the state on food rescue, which can provide a complete response to millions of people already suffering from food insecurity and the tens of thousands of people who joined them due to the coronavirus," Kroch said.

"The great advantage of rescuing food is the ability not only to close the entire food insecurity gap in Israel by a quarter of the budget but also higher utilization of resources and waste prevention. Additionally, food rescue helps reduce emissions and pollutants and strengthens the fight against the global climate crisis. Therefore, as recommended in the policy chapter of the report, the Prime Minister's Office should lead and promote the preparation of an inter-ministerial plan to advance the field of food rescue in a way that will holistically reflect the many benefits of food rescue."

i24NEWS contributed to this report.

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Tel Aviv has been named as the Israeli city with the best record of waste management recycling by the Tamir Recycling Corporation. It is followed by Givatayim, Kfar Vradim, and Emek Hefer.

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As part of the Israeli Recycling Day, which was marked by the corporation for the third time this year, President Isaac Herzog hosted on Wednesday the heads of winning authorities and councils, who received decorations from Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg and Tamir CEO Rani Eidler.

"The responsibility for protecting and sustaining our world lies with each and every one of us. Recycling always begins with the action of the individual, in his private home, office work, and vacation," Herzog said.

Eidler noted, "Local authorities have a great impact on the cooperation and trust of residents. I call on each and every one of you to make a small effort at home toward an enormous contribution to the environment."

Petah Tikva received a commendation for the progress it has made in the field of recycling since last year.

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Israel said Friday its hope was to reach zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, as thousands of protesters gathered in Tel Aviv to demand action ahead of next week's UN summit on climate change.

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As a small country, Israel contributes little to global warming, but officials say it has much to offer the world in terms of green technologies. Israel, which has already had to adapt to life in a parched region, is widely considered a world leader in areas such as solar energy storage, sustainable protein alternatives, agriculture technology, and desalination.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced the pledge in a statement Friday, saying it was a continuation of efforts already underway to combat climate change.

"With the new goal, Israel is lining up alongside the developed countries that are already taking action to attain the goal of zero emissions," he said. "We are responding to the global challenge, finding technological solutions and joining in to achieve this important goal."

Israel had previously said it would fall short of the goal of the international community to reach zero net emissions by 2050, expecting to reduce emissions by 85% by that time. Environmentalists have cited a lack of political will by previous governments and the country's reliance on newly discovered natural gas for energy for the lower target.

Thousands of people gathered in Tel Aviv on Friday to demand action.

International officials will meet in Scotland from Sunday to try to accelerate efforts to curb climate change, with more than one world leader saying humanity's future is at stake. Six years after the historic Paris climate agreement, carbon pollution from coal, oil, and natural gas is increasing, not falling.

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Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere reached record levels last year, the United Nations said Monday in a stark warning ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) about worsening global warming.

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The UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said that continued rising greenhouse gas emissions would result in more extreme weather and wide-ranging impacts on the environment, the economy, and humanity.

Economic slowdown caused by Covid triggered a temporary decline in new emissions but had no discernible impact on the atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases and their growth rates, the WMO said.

The organization's Greenhouse Gas Bulletin said the annual rate of increase last year was above the yearly average between 2011 and 2020 - and the trend continued in 2021.

As long as emissions continue, the WMO added, global temperatures will continue to rise. Given the long life of carbon dioxide, the temperature level already observed will also persist for several decades even if emissions are rapidly reduced to net-zero.

The COP26 is being held in the Scottish city of Glasgow from October 31 to November 12. "The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin contains a stark, scientific message for climate change negotiators at COP26," said WMO chief Petteri Taalas. "At the current rate of increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, we will see a temperature increase by the end of this century far in excess of the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels."

"We are way off track," the chief added. Taalas said that if the world kept using fossil fuels in an unlimited way, the planet could be about 4 C warmer by 2100 – but limiting warming to 1.5 C was still possible through mitigation effects.

This article was first published by i24NEWS.

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Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg has set some ambitious goals: She believes she can use her office to play an important role in the global battle against climate change while also promoting peace in the volatile Middle East.

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The Meretz lawmaker laid out her agenda in an interview with The Associated Press ahead of the upcoming UN climate conference in Glasgow. She says Israel, despite its small size and own inability to reach the global goal of zero net emissions by 2050, has the potential to be a key player.

Zandberg said the country is eager to share its expertise in green technologies. The country is widely considered a world leader in areas such as solar energy storage, sustainable protein alternatives, agriculture technology, and desalination.

"These are fields where Israel is already in the cutting edge frontier of global innovation, and we hope that this is something that small Israel can contribute to bigger countries than us to adjust better to the new climate reality," she said.

Major countries, including China and India, have become important markets for Israeli environmental technologies. Zandberg said she already has held a pair of meetings with her counterpart in the United Arab Emirates, which established diplomatic ties with Israel just over a year ago, and the two countries have teams working together on issues like agriculture and water in the arid Middle East.

Israel and Jordan last week held a signing ceremony on a new water-sharing agreement, and Zandberg said the two countries were holding "extensive talks" on various environmental issues.

"Our neighbors share our region and share our climate," she said. "So it's only natural that we will face them together. That can contribute to [the fight against] climate change but also to the regional stability and to our peace in the Middle East."

Zandberg acknowledged some frustration with the limitations created by the political reality of Israel's patchwork coalition government, but said environmental cooperation provides an opportunity to improve the atmosphere and lay the groundwork for future negotiations. She said she has met with her Palestinian counterpart, and professional teams meet regularly to work on issues of mutual concern, such as protecting shared water resources.

"We live here together and we share the land and we share the air and share the water," she said. "The better we communicate, the better our peoples will live."

Israel has acknowledged it will fall short of the goal of the international community to reach zero net emissions by 2050. It expects to reduce emissions by 85% by that time. Environmentalists have cited a lack of political will by previous governments and the country's reliance on newly discovered natural gas for energy for the lower target.

Zandberg said this figure was calculated based largely on a situation inherited from previous governments. She also said Israel's relatively high population growth is an obstacle. While Israel lags behind on its own renewable energy goals, she said the government is determined to help the world reach the zero-emissions target through its technology exports and by doing more on the domestic front.

"That's our goal to close that gap," she said. "We are working on new climate legislation for the first time in the Israeli parliament. We are working on the series of implementation plans, how to take the low carbon economy governmental declaration and make it a reality in sectors of energy, transportation, waste, agriculture. So we are serious."

There are other challenges. The Dead Sea is slowly shrinking. This is the result of years of water diversion from the Jordan River for drinking and agriculture and from damage caused by mineral-extraction companies. A secretive oil pipeline deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates has raised fears that an oil spill might one day destroy the Red Sea coral reefs, prized by scientists for their unique resilience against warming seas. Water resources that traverse Israel.

Zandberg said her team is involved in negotiations to ensure that Dead Sea factories, which are among Israel's worst polluters, address environmental concerns as licenses are renewed in the coming years. The Israel-UAE pipeline is now under review by the government, "and we will express our concerns in those discussions," she said.

Zandberg has also been pushing for a new tax on single-use plastics to go into effect next year.

Gidon Bromberg, the Israeli director of EcoPeace, an environmental advocacy group, said it was too early to judge Zandberg's performance, but her appointment has raised hopes Israel can finally make some progress on long-festering issues.

"We're in a very unique position where we have a minister of environment who is extremely committed to the issue and wants to succeed," Bromberg said. "You have an environment minister who's an environmentalist."

Whether she succeeds, he said, will depend in part on her political skills, in particular her relationship with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. Despite their different backgrounds, Bromberg said that so far they appear to have a good rapport.

"It's still very early days. The issues are enormous," he said.

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Israel's government unanimously agreed on July 25 to adopt a low-carbon economy, "part of its commitment to the global effort" to reduce greenhouse gases. It is the first time that Israel has set a national goal to reduce carbon emissions. In doing so, it joins a host of countries that have made similar announcements over the last several years.

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Some praise the plan, saying Israel must act as the "science is in," and the world faces an imminent global climate crisis. Others scoff at the "so-called science" and say there is no justification for overhauling Israel's economy – that it will be "all pain, no gain."

The plan calls for an 85% reduction in carbon emissions from 2015 levels by 2050 and sets an intermediate goal of a 27% reduction by 2030. To hit those targets, it calls for major changes to the transportation, manufacturing and energy sectors.

There already appears to be disagreement within the Ministry of Environmental Protection about the plan. As presented on the ministry's website, the plan calls for natural gas to play an integral role. Natural gas has led to a "dramatic decline in local pollutant emissions," it said. "Thanks to these measures, Israel already meets about 75% of the target required for reducing CO2 emissions within the framework of its obligations under the Paris Agreements."

Yet Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg criticized natural gas on June 29 during a climate change panel at an Israel Democracy Institute conference. "I want to correct a common mistake … natural gas is as natural as coal. It is fossil fuel," she said.

Israel's timing was meant to coincide with a new report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which will underpin the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in November, where participating countries will likely undertake to curb their emissions more sharply.

"It was to show support of the IPCC and the UN in general and to say that we are concerned with climate change," Gideon Behar, special envoy for climate change and sustainability at Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told JNS.

The first installment of the IPCC's Sixth Annual Assessment Report, released on Aug. 9, lays the blame for global warming squarely on man-made emissions and for the first time (on the basis of what it says are improved models) links extreme weather to climate change.

"The evidence is clear that carbon dioxide (CO2) is the main driver of climate change," the IPCC said in a press release about the report, painting a bleak future for the planet if global warming rises above pre-industrial levels by two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

While stating that "the climate crisis demands from us immense changes to our lifestyle, to our economy," Behar said he sees opportunities for Israeli technology. "Know-how and technologies are very much needed. Israel is outstanding in its experience and capacity in the field of climate innovation," he said, noting Israeli advances in areas such as water conservation and desalinization, innovative energy technologies and alternative proteins, which could free up land areas currently devoted to raising livestock.

Behar said no one should question climate change: "There's no place for doubt anymore. We need to move forward and if skeptics need more examples, they should look at the huge firestorms in Siberia, Greece, Turkey."

Pinhas Alpert, professor emeritus in atmospheric sciences in the department of Geophysics at Tel Aviv University, told JNS that climate change is the greatest threat humans are facing. For him, the most dramatic evidence is his own research showing the Fertile Crescent has been drying up over the last 20 years. He also cited his 2002 study of extreme daily precipitation over the Mediterranean Sea.

Alpert says that, if anything, Israel did not go far enough given other developed countries have adopted 100% carbon reductions versus Israel's 85%.

'Demonizing carbon dioxide is just crazy'

Nevertheless, questions are being raised about the conclusions of the latest IPCC report, as well as the wisdom of Israel's transitioning to a carbon-free economy.

Richard Lindzen, a leading atmospheric physicist and professor emeritus of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been fighting the scientific establishment on climate change for 30 years.

When asked his opinion of Israeli solutions to climate change, Lindzen said: "Solution implies there is a problem." The real question is if the plan's worth doing. To that, he replied: "Not at all."

"Demonizing carbon dioxide is just crazy," said Lindzen. "It means we have a population that's forgotten elementary biology. They don't remember photosynthesis. We've already benefited due to the increase in CO2 by probably over a trillion dollars increase in agricultural productivity. The earth is greening due to this."

"If you were to believe the worst scenarios of the IPCC," it still wouldn't matter what Israel did, he said, referring to Israel's tiny carbon footprint when compared to major polluters like China, the United States and European Union.

According to the reference website Our World in Data, Israel accounted for only a 0.17% share of global emissions in 2017, the latest year data is available.

Lindzen, who was the lead authort on the third report, dismissed the new IPCC report. "What people focus on is the 'Summary for Policymakers,' which is about 40 pages vs. the 3,500-page full report. He said politicians write the summary and "count on the fact that people won't read the report. It doesn't even have an index. But if you read the report, you realize it doesn't say what the summary says."

He pointed to recent tweets from Roger Pielke Jr., professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado who has gone through the full report, finding comments like, "No likelihood is attached to the scenarios assessed in this report," and "The socio-economic assumptions and the feasibility or likelihood of individual scenarios is not part of the assessment." (Lindzen likened this to what lawyers call plausible deniability.)

Pielke also found that "the scenarios IPCC admits are unlikely dominate the report" with the most extreme climate scenarios getting the most mentions (53%).

Lindzen argued that the field of climate science was politicized when it became flush with government funding in the 1990s. "Until then, it was a tiny field. In 1990, no one at MIT called themselves a climate scientist. You were a meteorologist, a geochemist, an oceanographer. Within those disciplines you had an interest in climate. Now they're all climate scientists."

'We have to pay the price of more expensive energy'

Nir Shaviv, a professor of physics at Hebrew University, told JNS that he feels many climate scientists are under pressure to produce alarming reports.

There is "such a large climate industry that people need to publish things that show a large effect [from man-made emissions], or they don't get grants," he explained.

Shaviv said the IPCC's scientists are not looking at all the evidence. "The thing that they're totally missing is the fact that the sun has a big effect on climate. We can simulate it in large-scale simulations. So I'm totally confident after 20 years that the link is there, the sun has a large effect on climate."

"It warmed between 1910 and 1940, then for 30 years, there was a cooling trend, and then it warmed from 1970 to 2000, and that explains a large fraction of the warming," he explained.

Asked by JNS about the feasibility of Israel's carbon reduction plan, Shaviv said: "These kinds of things are feasible if they're willing to pay the price. Obviously, you can fill the Negev Desert with photovoltaic cells if you want. But is it the smart thing to do? I think the answer is no."

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He noted the high energy prices in Europe, whose economy is just emerging from a decade of stagnation. "Industries are leaving Europe because they can't afford the price of energy and manpower. They always had the problem with expensive manpower. They now have energy price problems."

Bloomberg reported on Aug. 5 that "in Europe, utilities pay near-record prices to buy the pollution permits they need to keep producing power from fossil fuels."

Israel announced on Aug. 2 that it, too, will adopt a carbon tax that will go into effect in 2023. Paid by consumers, it is meant to act as a brake on fuel consumption. "The step we are taking today is historic and aligns with the developed countries struggling with the climate crisis," said Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

"They think the world is going to end. So we have to do something. We have to pay the price of more expensive energy," said Shaviv, who blames not politicians but scientists for pushing false scenarios. "They are fooling the media. They are fooling the politicians. They are fooling the youngsters who want to do good for the environment."

He said that most ignore a solution that is staring the world in the face. "If global warming was a serious problem – and it isn't – but even if it was, there's a clear solution which you can adopt which is cheap and can supply all the energy requirements, it's stable, it's everything you want, and it's called nuclear," he said.

If he could give advice to Israel's government, he would say "concentrate on real environmental issues," like smog in the Tel Aviv area. "There are a lot of things in the here and now as opposed to something which is mostly extremely exaggerated."

Lindzen agreed. His advice to Israel? "Ignore the climate crisis. Israel's already an outlier. Let the rest of the world commit [economic] suicide."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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