Knesset passes 1st reading of climate bill without any clear budgeting
In what opponents see as capitulation to Finance Ministry, bill allows government to change climate goals and time targets, as well as base year for comparison
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
The Knesset passed the first reading of a controversial climate bill on Wednesday, by 49 votes to 32.
Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman said the proposed law would “protect the public, its health and welfare, and also protect future generations.” She added that the bill “sets targets and programs for the reduction of global-warming gas emissions and for preparing the economy for the effects of climate [change].”
But environmental groups and opposition MKs decried the bill as a capitulation to the Finance Ministry, which has fought against anchoring any climate targets in law, leading to repeated delays in presenting the bill to the Knesset.
Opposition MK and environmental activist Yorai Lahav-Hertzano (Yesh Atid) posted on X that “the worst government for the environment is passing a climate bill whose purpose is to defraud the public and the world.” He dubbed the bill amateurish, negligent, dangerous and a crime against the environment, and said it showed a “total cave in” to the Finance Ministry.
Last month, in a damning report on the failure of successive governments to address and act on climate change, the state comptroller noted that resistance to anchoring climate targets in law was motivated by a fear of facing legal repercussions for not meeting the targets. He said none of the targets set so far were likely to be met.
Israel is a climate hotspot, meaning its temperatures are rising much faster than the global average.
He also warned that the “declarative” climate law in the works would “serve primarily to present Israel to the world as having a climate law, nothing more.” The draft he saw — like the one presented Wednesday — lacked any mechanism to guarantee long-term budgeting.
“Indeed, the wording of the new climate bill proposal [approved by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation in September 2023] allows almost unlimited flexibility for the government in a way that could undermine Israel’s commitment to meeting its targets,” he went on.
He leveled particular criticism at the Finance Ministry, saying it was inactive on climate at best, and often obstructive.
In May 2022, then-environmental protection minister Tamar Zandberg of the Meretz party shepherded a climate bill through a Knesset first reading that sought to commit the government to cutting global warming emissions by at least 27 percent by 2030, compared with a 2015 benchmark, and to reaching net zero by 2050. (Net zero is achieved when actual emissions are offset by the amount of gases removed from the atmosphere.)
That was under the former government of Naftali Bennett.
When the government of Benjamin Netanyahu took over, Zandberg’s bill was trashed, ostensibly because the new minister, Silman, was going to introduce something more ambitious.
The presentation of Silman’s bill to the Knesset was then delayed repeatedly last year as the Environmental Protection Ministry tried — unsuccessfully — to fight the Energy and Finance Ministries, which insisted that the emission reduction targets be non-binding.
Wednesday’s bill increases the target for cutting emissions by 2030 from 27% to 30%, although it uses confusing language to do so. It says that from 2030, the annual amount of emissions will be “no more than 70%” of those emitted in 2015, the baseline for comparison.
The bill orders the preparation of national plans for emissions reductions and for dealing with the effects of climate change. Ministries will also be expected to create climate crisis preparation plans on different aspects of the economy.
The document calls for the establishment of various advisory bodies, among them a Climate Council, an independent committee of experts, and a climate and environment research institute.
And it seeks to make climate risk assessment obligatory for various programs brought for government or ministerial approval.
But the current draft of the bill specifies that the government “may change by decree the goals and the years set as well as the base year” pertaining to the climate targets.
A major role is given to the energy and finance ministries in the approval of the various plans, and there is frequent mention of the need to carry out cost-benefit analyses, or assessments of economic costs, on climate-related measures.
The government will be able to exempt ministries and corporations from the obligation to prepare plans for dealing with climate change.
The environmental advocacy organization Adam Teva V’Din has worked with successive governments to try to get an effective climate bill drafted.
Relating to Wednesday’s bill, its Executive Director Amit Bracha said, “Under the false and cynical title ‘Climate Law,’ Minister Silman seeks to advance her own narrow political interests, alongside the aggressive interests of the polluting industry in Israel.”
He continued, “For the first time in Israel, not only is the environmental protection minister supporting a law that allows the government, at any time, and without any parliamentary oversight, to lower the carbon reduction targets anchored within it, but Silman’s bill also leaves the final word on approving a national plan to reduce greenhouse gases in the hands of the ministries of energy and finance.
“Alongside the unrestrained power that will be given to the government to overcome the main goal of carbon reduction, under the pretext of ‘preserving and securing the vital interests of the State of Israel,’ the Finance Ministry will be able to halt any national carbon reduction plan under the pretext of high costs, without considering the huge costs expected to the economy if preparations are not made for climate-related damage.”
The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel said it was time the government decided whether it wanted to be part of the solution to the climate crisis, or part of the problem.
