This is the first time that a government ever started this type of environmental publicity campaign, when we live in a world that admires capitalism. When you want to see if an economy is working well, most of the time you look at the country’s gross domestic product because it’s easy to measure. Then you take this year’s GDP minus last year’s, and if, for example, you have a growth of 4% and another country has 2%, you say, wow, we have a strong minister of finance who runs the economy very effectively.Well, that is not necessarily true. Why? Because it is important to evaluate the quality of life that the people receive in the country, and measuring growth alone doesn’t amount to anything… If you compare us to a European country, for example, even if that country doesn’t have 4% growth but does have a mass transportation system and is not dependent on oil and has mostly renewable energy, then its economy is more sustainable and competitive than ours.One of the problems of accounting only for growth is that we are stuck in a cycle of encouraging ourselves to buy things. That’s the world we live in, and that’s how we measure success. We conducted a poll recently that showed how the average Israeli family throws out approximately NIS 350 worth of food per month... So we provided some tips on how to buy in smarter way. It’s the first time that we are asking the people to reduce their shopping – exactly the opposite of our government’s DNA.Who is the target of your campaign?We created a campaign that is talking to everyone, not just to those who are crazy for the environment… We didn’t want to preach to the choir; we wanted to get new people to be active for the environment.Any other new upcoming plans for the Environmental Ministry?We are considering working on a campaign to promote tap water, because first of all, mineral water is contained in plastic bottles. In Israel, you have 1.5 billion big and small bottles sold each year, and while a portion of them are recycled, we measured how much water and gasoline is wasted transporting the mineral water on trucks all over Israel. That is before mentioning what must be done with the plastic, which damages the environment. You also pay about 100 times more than you do with tap water, we calculated.Now that the Egyptian natural gas pipeline has been interrupted again, what’s the best course of action?It’s not the first time that the natural gas has stopped from Egypt… Of course, we need to be realistic and keep the company running because we don’t want the electricity to stop. But still, when you have priorities – sometimes [the Israel Electric Company] wants to use fuel oil or coal because it’s cheaper, and we want to make sure that the argument will be based on air pollution and not on costs. This is the conflict that we have with them all the time.According to the current terms, if the system is stopped, for the first 10 days the IEC can use whatever they want, and after 10 days, if the same problem still persists, then we [the ministry’s air quality department] can tell them which power plants to use first, second and third... But now we’re changing these terms because I think that even during the first 10 days, [the IEC] shouldn’t be able to choose the most polluting energy.Last time when the gas flow stopped from Egypt, in the first days we demanded they use natural gas from Yam Tethys [the Mari-B gas reserves]...My commitment is to the air pollution, and I have said all the time that we cannot rely only on Egypt and we must develop Tamar [gas fields off the coast of Haifa] as fast as we can – there’s no other choice. That’s why I didn’t like all the fight among the investors of Tamar and Noble Energy, because I was afraid that it would delay the development of Tamar. We need Tamar as we need air to breathe. If Tamar isn’t ready in 2013, then we will rely much more on polluting energies.So should we continue to buy from Egypt when Tamar is developed?It’s worth buying from them, and it’s quite cheap… It’s not that we should rely on Egypt – we cannot rely on them at all. We should try to buy, but ensure that we’re not dependent on them.Once Tamar is developed, it will be able to fulfill Israel’s energy needs for the next 20-25 years. And together with that, hopefully in 2013 – and we pushed a lot for this – we will have liquefied natural gas in the port of Hadera… [But regarding Egyptian gas,] we also want to maintain competition, because we don’t want the owners of Tamar to get the highest price that they can get from Israel.”Will the Hamas-Fatah unity agreement have any environmental impacts?We are trying to help the Palestinians – both Hamas and Fatah – with their environmental protection issues. In Judea and Samaria, we are working very hard to build pipes... for the treatment of sewage. In Nahal Kana, for example, we invested NIS 35 million to build pipes to which all the Jewish settlements were connected. We offered connection to 24 Palestinian villages along the pipe, free of charge, and they refused. They don’t want any relationship with us, even if it is going to damage their environment and pollute their aquifer. After that, it spreads to our coast as well… In Gaza about a year ago, there was a group of experts who came here to the Shafdan [waste treatment facility] to learn about sewage treatment because there was a danger of a crisis in their water infrastructure – it was supposed to be so bad that the sewage risked entering the sea and spreading as far as Israel’s desalination plant in Ashkelon.We are helping them in anything we can, and we understand that pollution has no boundaries and that we are suffering together, but unfortunately they are still not cooperating with us. I personally tried to meet the Palestinian environmental minister to work together on environmental issues, and he refused. Now at the end of this month, on May 31, there is going to be a big conference in Paris hosted by France’s Minister of Foreign and European Affairs, Alain Juppe, and he is supposed to attend, but I don’t know if he will agree to meet me bilaterally.So with the Hamas-Fatah unity agreement, I don’t think there will be any change for the environment, but of course there is a change more broadly – because now even those who believed we had a peace agreement with Abu Mazen [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas]... understand that any kind of agreement with him will also put Hamas in the picture.
Mr. Green
Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan is thinking globally and acting locally.
This is the first time that a government ever started this type of environmental publicity campaign, when we live in a world that admires capitalism. When you want to see if an economy is working well, most of the time you look at the country’s gross domestic product because it’s easy to measure. Then you take this year’s GDP minus last year’s, and if, for example, you have a growth of 4% and another country has 2%, you say, wow, we have a strong minister of finance who runs the economy very effectively.Well, that is not necessarily true. Why? Because it is important to evaluate the quality of life that the people receive in the country, and measuring growth alone doesn’t amount to anything… If you compare us to a European country, for example, even if that country doesn’t have 4% growth but does have a mass transportation system and is not dependent on oil and has mostly renewable energy, then its economy is more sustainable and competitive than ours.One of the problems of accounting only for growth is that we are stuck in a cycle of encouraging ourselves to buy things. That’s the world we live in, and that’s how we measure success. We conducted a poll recently that showed how the average Israeli family throws out approximately NIS 350 worth of food per month... So we provided some tips on how to buy in smarter way. It’s the first time that we are asking the people to reduce their shopping – exactly the opposite of our government’s DNA.Who is the target of your campaign?We created a campaign that is talking to everyone, not just to those who are crazy for the environment… We didn’t want to preach to the choir; we wanted to get new people to be active for the environment.Any other new upcoming plans for the Environmental Ministry?We are considering working on a campaign to promote tap water, because first of all, mineral water is contained in plastic bottles. In Israel, you have 1.5 billion big and small bottles sold each year, and while a portion of them are recycled, we measured how much water and gasoline is wasted transporting the mineral water on trucks all over Israel. That is before mentioning what must be done with the plastic, which damages the environment. You also pay about 100 times more than you do with tap water, we calculated.Now that the Egyptian natural gas pipeline has been interrupted again, what’s the best course of action?It’s not the first time that the natural gas has stopped from Egypt… Of course, we need to be realistic and keep the company running because we don’t want the electricity to stop. But still, when you have priorities – sometimes [the Israel Electric Company] wants to use fuel oil or coal because it’s cheaper, and we want to make sure that the argument will be based on air pollution and not on costs. This is the conflict that we have with them all the time.According to the current terms, if the system is stopped, for the first 10 days the IEC can use whatever they want, and after 10 days, if the same problem still persists, then we [the ministry’s air quality department] can tell them which power plants to use first, second and third... But now we’re changing these terms because I think that even during the first 10 days, [the IEC] shouldn’t be able to choose the most polluting energy.Last time when the gas flow stopped from Egypt, in the first days we demanded they use natural gas from Yam Tethys [the Mari-B gas reserves]...My commitment is to the air pollution, and I have said all the time that we cannot rely only on Egypt and we must develop Tamar [gas fields off the coast of Haifa] as fast as we can – there’s no other choice. That’s why I didn’t like all the fight among the investors of Tamar and Noble Energy, because I was afraid that it would delay the development of Tamar. We need Tamar as we need air to breathe. If Tamar isn’t ready in 2013, then we will rely much more on polluting energies.So should we continue to buy from Egypt when Tamar is developed?It’s worth buying from them, and it’s quite cheap… It’s not that we should rely on Egypt – we cannot rely on them at all. We should try to buy, but ensure that we’re not dependent on them.Once Tamar is developed, it will be able to fulfill Israel’s energy needs for the next 20-25 years. And together with that, hopefully in 2013 – and we pushed a lot for this – we will have liquefied natural gas in the port of Hadera… [But regarding Egyptian gas,] we also want to maintain competition, because we don’t want the owners of Tamar to get the highest price that they can get from Israel.”Will the Hamas-Fatah unity agreement have any environmental impacts?We are trying to help the Palestinians – both Hamas and Fatah – with their environmental protection issues. In Judea and Samaria, we are working very hard to build pipes... for the treatment of sewage. In Nahal Kana, for example, we invested NIS 35 million to build pipes to which all the Jewish settlements were connected. We offered connection to 24 Palestinian villages along the pipe, free of charge, and they refused. They don’t want any relationship with us, even if it is going to damage their environment and pollute their aquifer. After that, it spreads to our coast as well… In Gaza about a year ago, there was a group of experts who came here to the Shafdan [waste treatment facility] to learn about sewage treatment because there was a danger of a crisis in their water infrastructure – it was supposed to be so bad that the sewage risked entering the sea and spreading as far as Israel’s desalination plant in Ashkelon.We are helping them in anything we can, and we understand that pollution has no boundaries and that we are suffering together, but unfortunately they are still not cooperating with us. I personally tried to meet the Palestinian environmental minister to work together on environmental issues, and he refused. Now at the end of this month, on May 31, there is going to be a big conference in Paris hosted by France’s Minister of Foreign and European Affairs, Alain Juppe, and he is supposed to attend, but I don’t know if he will agree to meet me bilaterally.So with the Hamas-Fatah unity agreement, I don’t think there will be any change for the environment, but of course there is a change more broadly – because now even those who believed we had a peace agreement with Abu Mazen [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas]... understand that any kind of agreement with him will also put Hamas in the picture.