In preparation for Israeli election day, we present a series of posts with a summary of the environmental positions of the parties running for the Knesset on the following topics: Open Areas and Beaches, Green Energy, Radiation and Global Warming, Sustainable Development, Recycling, Water, and Air & Industrial Pollution and Enforcement.
RADIATION AND GLOBAL WARMING
Green Movement-Meimad:
1. Joining the planned Copenhagen accords planned for 2009 as a member state in the group of developed countries and preparing for the obligations of this commitment;
2. adopting legislation that will change the inappropriate rising trend in greenhouse gas emissions from various sources in Israel. Imposition of a “Carbon Tax” on a variety of the fossil emission sources in order to encourage efficiency and progress towards the increased utilization of alternative energies
3. An immediate stop to the construction of coal-fired power plants in order to switch from an increase in greenhouse gas emissions to a decrease.
4. Widening and deepening of the national network for monitoring air pollution, with transparency in transferring the monitoring results to all interested parties on the local and international level. Developing joint strategies with our neighbor countries in order to locate the producers of transboundary pollution and taking the necessary steps to eliminate or reduce these sources.
Hadash:
1. Cease the capitulation to the cellular telephone companies.
2. A prohibition on the construction of cellular antennas adjacent to residences, schools and kindergartens.
Likud:
Striving to prevent the establishment of another coal fired power plant and to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
New-Meretz:
1. Adherence to the policy of informing the public regarding the locations and danger of cellular antennas; establishment of a national monitoring network; dismantling antennas that were established illegally or without the proper permit, charging the operator with costs and fines
2. Re-examination of the “3rd generation” technology, and examining the possibility of limiting the technologies offered by the cellular companies in order to protect public health.
The platforms of the Green Party, Israel Betenu, Israel Hazaka, Labor, Kadima and Sha”s had no mention of the topic of radiation and global warming.
Note that many of the positions on GREEN ENERGY are also connected with GLOBAL WARMING
This summary was compiled in Hebrew ::Bar Ilan Environmental Clinic :: Chayim Usviva :: Translated by the greenprophet.com team.
I think it is extraordinarily ironic that the primary existential threat to Israel is natural and not military in nature:
“Few seem to realise that the present IPCC models predict almost unanimously that by 2040 the average summer in Europe will be as hot as the summer of 2003 when over 30,000 died from heat. By then we may cool ourselves with air conditioning and learn to live in a climate no worse than that of Baghdad now. But without extensive irrigation the plants will die and both farming and natural ecosystems will be replaced by scrub and desert. What will there be to eat? The same dire changes will affect the rest of the world and I can envisage Americans migrating into Canada and the Chinese into Siberia but there may be little food for any of them.” –Dr James Lovelock’s lecture to the Royal Society, 29 Oct. ’07
With all respect, you won’t find this essencial history in either the Bible or the Koran:
“We now have evidence from the Earth’s history that a similar event happened fifty-five million years ago when a geological accident released into the air more than a terraton of gaseous carbon compounds. As a consequence the temperature in the arctic and temperate regions rose eight degree Celsius and in tropical regions about five degrees, and it took over one hundred thousand years before normality was restored. We have already put more than half this quantity of carbon gas into the air and now the Earth is weakened by the loss of land we took to feed and house ourselves. In addition, the sun is now warmer, and as a consequence the Earth is now returning to the hot state it was in before, millions of years ago, and as it warms, most living things will die.” (The Revenge of Gaia)