Climate catastrophe

“Zimbabwe floods leave local traders destitute” (March 31) and “Iran faces crisis over massive flooding” (April 1) are the latest examples of the major increase in severe climate events. While a report last October by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an organization composed of leading climate experts from many countries, warned that the world may have only until 2030 to make “unprecedented changes” to avert a climate catastrophe, this issue seems to be largely ignored.

Israel is especially threatened. While we have had a blessedly rainy winter, climate experts predict that the Middle East will become hotter and dryer. Military experts warn that this makes terrorism and war more likely. The continued rapid melting of polar icecaps and glaciers increases the risk that the coastal plain that contains much of Israel’s population and infrastructure will be inundated by the Mediterranean Sea. Yet this issue is ignored by the Israeli political parties in their current electoral campaigns.

I hope The Jerusalem Post will use its excellent reporters and editors to spotlight this existential treat to Israel and to all of humanity.

As president emeritus of Jewish Veg and author of

Judaism and Vegetarianism, I want to stress that shifts to plant-based diets are essential to efforts to significantly reduce climate change. A 2006 UN Food and Agriculture report, “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” indicated that the livestock sector produces more greenhouse gas emissions in CO2 equivalents, than all the cars, planes, ships and other means of transportation worldwide combined, largely due to methane emitted from farmed animals! RICHARD H. SCHWARTZ, PHD.

Professor Emeritus, College of Staten Island