The Death of the Pope Who Called for Climate Action

In 2015, the Association for Environmental Justice in Israel (AEJI) initiated a research project on climate justice with German funding that gained global recognition, and our position paper was presented on the UN Climate Conference at the end of that year in Paris.

The summer of 2015 was defined as the ‘warmest summer in the world’ since measurements began about one hundred and sixty years ago, and in Israel at the end of October, extreme rain events were experienced in their intensity and duration. Despite all this, the understanding of the meaning of living under the threat of extreme climate events that have become routine in our region, and the necessity of changing habits towards low carbon economy and reducing energy consumption had not yet penetrated then.

Discussing the map of interests, global and local, whose close familiarity with its topography can make it possible to address barriers effectively, such as dismantling monopolies, removing bureaucracy and opening the network to the flow of ‘clean energy’, literally; and moving towards better governance in politically dealing with the climate crisis and raising the climate issue high on the Israeli government’s agenda was our work routine.

At the end of that year, the climate agreement that has since become known as the Paris Protocol was signed, and in Israel, the dominant moves were of intricate map (today they would say “complex”) of petty politics woven together by the well-known interests of ‘capital and government’, considerations of election rounds, sequences of warfare, a short political horizon, and maximizing the exploitation of exhaustible natural resources, so the hope can had been drawn from the moves of other countries, including Obama’s USA. And on those days, one man stood tall and called in a clear voice on the South lawn of the White House to a large audience that the climate crisis is not an act of God, but of man, and requires urgent action. Pope Francis, almost ten years ago, September 2015.

The pope explicitly endorsed Obama’s regulatory program to fight climate change: “I find it encouraging that you are proposing an initiative for reducing air pollution. Accepting the urgency, it seems clear to me also that climate change is a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation,” he said. “When it comes to the care of our common home, we are living at a critical moment of history.”  In the US, Obama’s move that paved the way for the China emissions reduction agreement has since been rudely erased by Trump, thus giving up on the good of citizens, the environment and the well-being of future generations.

The Pope, in an extraordinary, historical mobilization that also seems one-off from a decade’s perspective, positioned climate change and the worsening environmental poverty resulting from climate change, i.e. the vulnerability of vulnerable populations that is immeasurably greater than their minimal share in warming, as a moral obligation, no less than a social and economic one that governments must deal with.

To expect a senior rabbinical halachic figure in Israel to declare that the climate is the most significant issue that the government must address seems like a hallucination in the reality of Israel, 2025. A decade later, and my field is still climate justice but working on regional scale, targeting EuroMed, within the framework of the Tahadhari Center, established in collaboration with Dr. Mark Causon. ‘Tahadhari’ means ALERT in Swahili, a choice that indicates that the Center focuses resources and knowledge development on social aspects of the climate crisis and its effects on countries at climate risk and vulnerable populations in the Mediterranean region, while calling for urgent action. The research activity is aimed at a better understanding of mitigate climate risks in order to try to create climate security adaptation against the background of broad geopolitical social and economic processes in the regional context of EuroMed, primarily forced migration processes from Africa and the Middle East and the political and social impact in real time.

That is, research that focuses on the interfaces of migration, refugees, environmental poverty, inequality – Subjects that were on Pope Francis’ agenda, and it is doubtful if a person in his position would choose to put a spotlight on and to do justice to the victims of the climate crisis in the politically chaotic world we live in in 2025.