The most effective way for individuals to fight climate change<\/a> is not to recycle more or fly overseas less, but to ensure that one\u2019s pensions, provident funds, training funds and insurance policies are invested in ways that help rather than destroy the environment, Israel\u2019s first conference on financing the battle against the climate crisis heard this week.<\/p>\n \u201cThe climate crisis<\/a> is a political and macroeconomic issue,\u201d Oren Kaplun told the Tuesday event. Kaplun helped found and runs the\u00a0Clean Money Forum<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0ENVA,<\/a>\u00a0which rank institutional investors on environmental and social aspects of their spending.<\/p>\n Institutional investors in Israel manage some NIS 2.8 trillion ($745 billion) of citizens\u2019\u00a0long-term savings<\/a>\u00a0to guarantee them a secure future, Kaplun continued. Yet, 8.3 percent of the funds \u2014<\/a> the equivalent of a month\u2019s savings annually\u2013 were being invested in fossil fuels, deforestation and polluting industries, and sectors such as gambling, pornography, and tobacco.<\/p>\n The good news, he went on, was that half of current investments in these long-term savings schemes could be moved to cleaner, more ethical funds that would also generate higher returns.<\/p>\n It was critical to make people more aware of their ability to influence how their money was invested, added Noga Levtzion Nadan, who founded Greeneye and Value\u00b2, companies focused on responsible investment, and\u00a0ESG,\u00a0<\/a>a tool for measuring a company\u2019s environmental and social impact as well as the quality of its governance.<\/p>\n “There\u2019s a feeling that if I do nothing, I\u2019m neutral,\u201d she explained. \u201cBut if we don\u2019t move our money either to non-fossil fuel [investments] or to\u00a0responsible investments<\/a>, we are in practice doing the opposite. If we do nothing, our money is still somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n The confab, which is to become annual, was held at Ben-Gurion University in southern Israel and organized by the university\u2019s School of Sustainability and Climate Change<\/a>, in partnership with the Foreign Ministry and the state\u2019s climate envoy, Gideon Behar.<\/p>\n Environmental campaigner Yoni Sappir noted that nearly 4,000 climate change-driven extreme weather events between 2014 and 2024 had resulted in\u00a0cumulative losses to the global economy of some $2 trillion<\/a>. He cited recent research by the Network for the Greening of the Financial System (a group of central bank officials and financial supervisors) that warned of potential\u00a0global GDP losses of 30%<\/a>\u00a0by 2100 if business continued as usual.<\/p>\n State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman, who opened the conference, also highlighted fossil fuel subsidies, saying the Israeli government was spending roughly NIS 4 billion (just over $1 billion) to subsidize fuels whose burning is driving climate change<\/a>. This was far more than it was investing in climate-friendly endeavors, he pointed out. He added that the carbon emissions tax passed late last year was so weak that Israeli companies would end up paying additional\u00a0carbon taxes to the EU,<\/a>\u00a0benefiting Europe\u2019s coffers rather than Israel\u2019s.<\/p>\n Prof. Dan Amiram of Tel Aviv University said that if the government had the will to act, it could force banks to invest in greener companies with the determination<\/a> employed to fight terror funding and money laundering.<\/p>\n Yair Avidan, the former supervisor of the banks who now chairs the advisory committee of the Arison Center for ESG at Reichman University in Herzliya, joined warnings that businesses failing to address the risks of climate change proactively could face<\/a> significant financial losses and reputational damage.<\/p>\n