'If you want to save the planet, the planet doesn't need you'

"How many people are here because they want to save the planet?" Robert Watson, pioneer of the green building movement, asked a full audience at the 2009 Israeli President's Conference taking place these days in Jerusalem. Most hands are raised to the question.

"You can leave. The planet doesn't need you. It has survived for billions of years without us, and it will survive us. Saving the planet is not the problem, it is saving our own species," he said.

The panel of experts on environment and solution methods agreed: Disaster is upon us, and yet we stare in the face of death with utter disregard. Nobel Prize Laureate Israel Aumann said that in Israel, the environmental crisis second in significance to only to the conflict with the Palestinians. The challenges are aplenty and highly tangible:

* We are running out of water. 1 billion people are living without access to clean drinking water and 2.8 billion without sanitation. 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity by 2025.

* We are wiping out as many as 50,000 plant and animal species a year, things that cannot be reclaimed, and the extinction rate is speeding up.

* Leaders' promises to lower carbon emissions have a limited effect. It is believed that emissions will increase by more than 50 percent over the next 20 years.

Come December, thousands of people will gather in Copenhagen at the "Climate Conference" to establish a new protocol that will be more effective than its predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

Climate panel moderator, Israel Klabin, founder and president of the Brazilian Foundation for Sustainable Development and former mayor of Rio de Janeiro, had a dire outlook on the conference.

"Kyoto was supposed to regulate the outflow of carbon. It didn't happen. Actually the emissions grew. Kyoto was a failure," he said.

Klabin explained that climate is the effect, and that the cause was use of fossile fuels. We have a water problem, a biodiversity problem, something that the Copenhagen Conference, which is basically just a market device, cannot solve. The impact of climate change is coming faster, and sooner.

"Listen, I grew up as an anarchist. I hate governments. They will lead us nowhere. The governments that are represented there (at the Copenhagen Conference) will not give us the solutions. We will," he said.

With that, the panel takes to cutting the Gordian knot of global warming and environmental pollution. Baby steps ahead.

Israel Aumann, Professor at the Center for the Study of Rationality, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is a firm believer in the power of incitement.

"No amount of Kyoto protocols, no amount of guidelines of what levels we have to reach, will make people do what you want. It's the same as in economics, war and peace, in any area endeavour where human beings take part. You have to give people incentive."

Aumann delivered the Swiss solution. A simple one. In Switzerland, the days of throwing your garbage where you see fit are numbered. There are designated pick-up spots, and the garbageman will not accept trash that is not wrapped tight in a special bag, which costs a couple of Swiss Francs depending on size. You can still throw out as much garbage as you like, but at a cost. That has effectively made people pay attention and buy things that have less packaging.

Apart from a legally implemented incentive, Aumann believes in force. Western, developed countries still lack public transport to a great extent ? where is the subway in Tel Aviv? And the bus still gets stuck in the same traffic as your car, so why bother?

"During rush hours, you have emission all the time. Spread the hours when people work, or close the roads and make people take public transport. It has to be worthwhile for me, incentives for the world don't matter," Aumann said before giving the mic to Miriam (Miki) Haran, former Director General of the Ministry of Environment Protection. When she joined the ministry 13 years ago, no one would talk about the environment. "You tree huggers don't know anything," they said.

Haran quoted the Water Authority as saying that Israel is suffering a critical shortage in its water reserves, which are rapidly deteriorating due to evaporation exceeding renewal of the natural water sources.

"We need to realize that we are running out of water. The Middle East is the world's most water stressed region - most of the countries cannot even meet current water demand. Israel is one of the most densely populated countries in the world (even more than India), and when you have a country like that, you have a problem," said Haran and appealed to the bright minds of the country for assistance.

"Mitigation and adaptation are necessary, but it is more important to invest in research and development. Maybe not Israel by itself, but at least Israel can start," he added.

The panel's views were also concurrent on raising the price of oil, coal, electricity, and possibly water, as a means of reducing waste and giving people an economic incentive to develop ways and technology to harness solar energy, despite authorities' struggle against it. As Robert Watson, chairman, CEO and chief scientist of The EcoTech International Group, noted, the value of a dollar bill is nothing more than perception. So which one is cheaper:

* Fossile fuels: finite, limited locations, uneven distribution, dirty, dangerous?

* The sun: inexhaustible, everywhere, more even distribution, clean, safe?

In Watson's words: "Humans are going to suffer the most. The stuff that's bad for us is cheap, the stuff that's good for us is expensive. We are just one species of many. If we don't fit in, we get kicked out. The planet doesn't care."

Robert Watson called for a paradigm shift, in which we're not trying to rescue the utopian Earth, but that we take on a moral perspective and rescue ourselves, our successors, and the creatures we share the planet with.

"Our time on this planet is so fundamentally short. And we need a serious spanking from the planet to become aware."

Watson quoted a Titanic survivor as saying "Not until the last five minutes did the awful realization come that end was at hand." Five minutes of a catastrophe that lasted for hours. Otherwise known as the boiling frog syndrome.

"Yes, the Titanic is sinking, but it's our job to go out every day and build lifeboats and put people into lifejackets. We need a generation of heroes."

In short, Israel Klabin concluded: "Noah didn't talk about building the ark, he just did it. Noah knew, the disaster was coming, and even so he saved the species. Will we?"