Amir Tsarfati: Climate Change: A New World Religion?

AMIR: How much do you think from what we talked about is going to be restricted by social media?

YONATAN: I hope as little as possible, but I honestly don’t know.

AMIR: Is there really a climate crisis?

YONATAN: That’s THE question…

AMIR: That causes poverty?

YONATAN: Yes, and people will die.

Right? Because we need to kill 7 and a half billion people.

You’re going to make the list, not me.

And how can you search for truth without expanding

and without questioning the existing knowledge?

AMIR: Shalom, Professor Yonatan Dubi.

I’m so glad that you’re here with us today here.

We are in Jerusalem below the Jaffa Gate, bustling street as everybody can hear already.

Can you introduce yourself to our viewers, please?

YONATAN: Thank you for having me and inviting me.

It’s always a pleasure to come to Jerusalem.

I’m professor of theoretical physics and chemistry at Ben Gurion University in Israel.

I’m also a member of Ben Gurion University’s School for sustainability and climate change

and the school for Nanoscale Science and Technology also at Ben Gurion University.

I’m also one of the founders of the Israeli forum for rational environmentalism,

which is basically a think tank,

advocating for rational thinking in topics of climate, environment and energy.

AMIR: So you are not a climate expert, are you?

YONATAN: Right, so you need to define an expert.

So climate science is a huge, huge thing.

And I’m not an atmospheric scientist,

I don’t do dynamics of clouds or things like that.

What I do is theoretical physics.

And what I really do for a living

is I look at physical systems, natural systems

and then I construct models for these systems,

but typically mathematical models and then I compare the two.

And I try to say:

Did they catch the essence of the real system with my mathematical model?

And I’ve become pretty good at this.

I’ve been doing this for the last 20 years.

I also do have an expertise in the physics of solar panels,

and energy transport specifically.

This is something I’ve been doing for the last 10 years,

both in academia and industry, so I know a little bit about that.

And these are the set of skills that I took here to this topic

that we’re going to frame – Climate Environment and Energy.

AMIR: The headlines, a few weeks ago, were:

A third of Pakistan is under the water…

Unprecedented number of earthquakes, and eruption of volcanoes.

While I was in London not long ago, they said,

the temperatures are at record high, asphalt was melting …

For a common person it sounds like, within few weeks, we’re doomed.

We’re done. It’s over.

Now, is there really a climate crisis?

YONATAN: That’s THE question.

And we need to first understand that crisis is not a scientific word.

It’s a word from the realm of human experience.

So what we need to do when we’re addressing the scientific facts,

and the evidence and the data,

is to try and quantify what we mean by a crisis.

And let’s think … first of all, what we know?

What we do know that the temperatures of the globe have been rising.

Now, the globe is a big place,

the world is a big place, and it doesn’t have a temperature, right?

It varies, the temperature varies over day and night, winter and summer.

Different places around the globe have different temperatures…

AMIR: You’re quoting the Bible right now,

because in Genesis that is what it said:

When God created it, it was day and night

cold and warm … winter and summer, you’re just quoting …

go ahead … I love it…

YONATAN: Well, I know the evidence supports this.

AMIR: Yes, I know that.

YONATAN: And you can cook up a number, an average number

taking all sorts of these things into account

and ask what happened to this number, right?

And as far as we know from the data, that number has indeed risen.

In the last 120 years or so, it has risen by about 1 – 1.1 degrees centigrade.

Now, is this a crisis?

That’s not a well-defined question, right,

because we hardly feel it in our lifetime

because the change is so a slow – 1 degree over 100 years.

We don’t really feel it personally.

So you need statistics.

So let’s try to quantify crisis.

What’s the worst thing that can happen?

People talk about – sea level rise?

AMIR: Correct, that’s their major concern.

YONATAN: That’s a major concern.

AMIR: The melting, the glaciers and icebergs and that’s where they go with it.

YONATAN: Right and you see pictures of Manhattan underwater,

and in Hollywood – you see movies,

and but, what the data shows,

and we have pretty good data about sea level rise – is two things.

You look at the sea level, the height of the sea level,

and you see two things – first of all –

the sea level has been steadily rising since the mid 19th century.

So long before humans started emitting anything into the atmosphere …

AMIR: Is that the 1800’s?

YONATAN: Yes, 1850-1870, we were coming out of a little Ice Age.

Europe was frozen and as Europe started to de-freeze,

sea levels are beginning to rise.

Now sea level rises due to two things.

One is the thermal expansion of the oceans.

And second is the melting of the icebergs.

And it’s constantly rising, regardless of what we did,

because it started long before we started emitting anything.

Now the second thing you can do is look at the rate of sea level rise.

And when you look at the numbers,

you see that the rate of sea level in the past 100 years,

is three millimeters per year.

That’s three centimeters a decade …

AMIR: A little bit more than an inch … in a decade …

YONATAN: A little more than an inch.

and 30 centimeters a century … that’s, you know,

AMIR: 22 Inches

YONATAN: 22 Inches right, now …

AMIR: In a decade.

YONATAN: In a century…

AMIR: Oh, 22 centimeters in a century, in 100 years.

YONATAN: In 100 years.

That’s not an immediate imminent catastrophe.

It’s just, you know, something to take into account, build a small seawall,

or put some sandbags near the ocean front, and you’re done with it.

We have examples of nations who dealt with this pretty easily.

The Netherlands has been underwater for centuries.

And they basically solve this problem with canals and sea walls.

That’s easy technology.

During high tides, 50% of Netherlands area is underwater.

And they had no casualty from a flood since 1953.

It’s also not uniform across the globe.

And many of the places which have high sea level rise

is actually due to the land sinking.

In Israel, the sea level rise is 0.7 millimeters a year.

That’s seven centimeters in a century.

AMIR: That’s less than three inches.

Wow.

YONATAN: Yes, that’s it’s just, I do not see why is this a catastrophe?

Now, people will talk about this as a catastrophe, they say:

Oh, we’re going to wait in 100 years,

we are going to see the sea somewhere else.

And really, people are just going to wait.

No one is going to do nothing, if they see the level rise.

That’s just not how people work.

They’re going to build a seawall, maybe move a building a few meters back.

People are going to adapt to this problem.

It’s very slow. It’s not frightening.

AMIR: But the question is, first of all,

there’s always extreme weather events.

YONATAN: This is the second theory, right – extreme weather events.

But when you look at the data,

and amazingly enough, the data has been accumulated

by none other than the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change.

This is the body chartered by the UN together everything we know about the climate crisis,

and we can talk about the IPCC, and its origins.

AMIR: we will talk about the Paris agreement

and the Glasgow Pact in a few seconds.

YONATAN: Yes, we will … The IPCC sends out a report every few years,

the last one came out in 2018.

And these reports are built in several parts.

One, the first part is the scientific report.

That’s not a bad report, it’s huge, 2800 pages long.

I’ve read most of them.

AMIR: And let me guess, very few people read it.

YONATAN: Very few people read it.

It’s a daunting, an extremely boring task.

AMIR: And you read almost 2000 pages?

YONATAN: Yes, it’s been … it’s very hard to do.

Yes, and it’s very technical, it’s not an easy read.

And so out of these papers, they dilute a summary for policymakers.

That’s about 40 pages long, not written by scientists,

written by bureaucrats and politicians,

and even this no one reads …

So it’s diluted, a summary for policymakers, about 40 pages long.

This is not written by scientists.

It’s written by bureaucrats and politicians

AMIR: So 2800 pages written by scientists.

diluted to 40 pages for policymakers that were not written by scientists.

YONATAN: Not written by scientists.

And even this, no one actually reads,

they dilute this to a few pages of bullet points.

And this they hand out to politicians and news outlets.

AMIR: And how far are those bullet points from the 2800 pages?

YONATAN: Amazingly far.
Amir: Far?
YONATAN: And extreme weather events are the example for that,

because if you read the summary for policymakers, or the bullet points,

you are for sure, you know that we are facing extreme weather events.

But as you look at the statistics …

AMIR: Of their report?

YONATAN: Yes, black and white,

you see that there is no evidence whatsoever,

that there was a rise in extreme events in the last 100 years,

where the temperature has already risen by one degree centigrade.

There was no rise in floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, cyclones,

winter storms, hailstorms, thunderstorms …

AMIR: No rise!

YONATAN: No rises whatsoever.

AMIR: So the fact that I’m seeing more of that,

it’s because somebody wants me to see more of that.

YONATAN: You’re not seeing more of that;

you’re being reported more about this.

Think about the droughts in Central Europe

that we’re now hearing about in the news.

It turns out that droughts are very well documented,

because it’s easy to know if there is… These are documented …

AMIR: Droughts were documented in the Bible also.

YONATAN: For sure …

AMIR: That far …

YONATAN: Droughts, you know,

is one of the drivers of many of the biblical stories, we know this.

AMIR: Exactly.

YONATAN: And they’ve been documented throughout history in Central Europe, for sure.

And the last droughts do not even enter the worst droughts.

It turns out, droughts in Central Europe are actually connected to cold weather,

rather than warm weather.

No one knows this, just read the data

and read the science and you see that, but it’s very hard,

you know, you need to dig into the data.

AMIR: You’re saying, it’s the cold that kills the plants,

rather than the sun, that is actually giving it a lot of live.

YONATAN: Oh, for sure.

And, of course, this changes from place to place around the globe.

In Central Europe, we know for sure, the mega droughts,

you know, the drought that gave rise to the great hunger in Ireland,

for example, there was a huge mega drought,

this was caused during an extremely cold time.

AMIR: So you read models, you read data.

and you see a huge gap between

what we’re being told to what the situation on the ground is.

YONATAN: Yes.

And, again, the amazing thing is that you just need to read the original reports.

Let me give you another example coming from the realm of economics,

not science, because we tried to quantify crisis, right?

So you can ask, okay, maybe extreme weather events are not rising,

but we are going to pay so much for the warming, right?

So you can ask what would be the effect

of a temperature rise on the GDP, on how materially wealthy we are?

Right, which is an important thing, because most of the world is poor.

And we want them to be wealthy,

we want them to live a fruitful and flourishing lives.

And you need wealth for that.

And it turns out, people did that.

Not only people, a very specific person named Professor William Nordhaus,

won a Nobel Prize for a constructing exactly models to calculate this.

And there have been generations of models.

Now, if you look at the IPCC report,

AMIR: They quoted it.

YONATAN: It’s there, the data is there.

You see that for a three degrees centigrade rise,

which is maybe something that’s going to happen within 100 years from now,

we don’t know but maybe we can talk about this.

The total loss of GDP will be about 3 to 5%.

Now, this is …

AMIR: I know what you’re going to say –

you’re going to compare the total loss of GDP now

to the implementation of all of these agreements.

YONATAN: Well, exactly.

Now, you look at the rise of the GDP in the next 100 years.

It’s going to be 450% because we’re going to grow as humanity.

So instead of being rich by four and a half times,

we’re going to be rich by 4.36 times.

That’s a six-year delay.

That’s an eminent crisis?

AMIR: And I have a question.

So we talked about 2015 Paris agreement,

that at the time President Trump left,

and in 2021, America rushed back into it.

What would have the implementation of this agreement …

First of all, what is this agreement trying to say?

And what would be the damage to world economy from the implementation thereof?

YONATAN: The Paris Agreement is unbelievable.

The Paris Agreement is not a legally binding document.

It’s kind of a voluntary agreement, or a statement of intentions,

signed by countries in the UN in 2015, in Paris,

stating that they will reduce their greenhouse gas emissions,

mainly co2, but also other greenhouse gases.

And there are two important things about this agreement.

First of all, it cannot be done.

They cannot do it.

We cannot do this, and we can talk about …

AMIR: You’re saying we as much as we want …

we cannot change … cannot reduce temperature.

YONATAN: No, and we can talk about…

AMIR: Scientifically…

YONATAN: I believe so …

AMIR: As a professor …

YONATAN: Yes, it’s an engineering thing.

And we can talk about this a lot at length.

The second thing is the costs.

The costs of abiding to the Paris agreements are unbelievable.

A good few percent of the GDP of the US economy – every year.

7% of the Mexican economy – 9% of the Brazilian economy.

AMIR: They cannot afford it ..

YONATAN: Of course not! And the worst thing is that

if all countries would do exactly what they committed to do in the Paris Agreement

till the year 2070 at horrific costs, using the models of the IPCC …

AMIR: Their own models.

YONATAN: Their own models.

The change in temperature, the global temperature, will be 0.07 degrees centigrade, unmeasurable.

AMIR: But the life of hundreds of millions will be unbearable.

YONATAN: And this is already happening.

AMIR: I’ve seen demonstrations of Dutch farmers and now German farmers …

they’re being told to kill their cows, literally.

YONATAN: Yesterday, the Secretary of the EU,

announced that all EU countries are committed

to reducing private usage of energy during peak hours.

This means literally, that the citizens of European countries will not be allowed to use as much of electricity as they want.

They cannot heat their homes, or cool their homes

or watch TV, or use dishwasher and the fridge at the same time or drive their car.

These are restrictions which will come from the EU to the personal lives,

because they don’t have enough electricity.

And the reason the Europeans do not have enough electricity,

people will tell you; Oh this is all due to Putin and a crisis in Ukraine.

And this is a misleading statement.

Because the energy crisis in Europe started way before the Ukraine crisis.

It started from decision made 10 and 15 years ago, fueled by climate panic, and climate alarmism

because the Europeans: Oh, we’re so afraid of co2, we are not going to burn anything on Europe.

We are going to invest all our efforts into wind power and solar panels

in Belgium, which has 300 cloudy days a year.

But more than that, we will not invest in infrastructure for fossil fuel-based power.

So they did not build storage facilities.

They banned searching for new oil, gas and natural gas fields in the North Sea and in the mainland.

They banned fracking, which you know, we’re talking to mainly US listeners.

The fracking changed the economy of the United States. It’s an amazing thing.

And you cannot frack in the continental Europe.

They banned it completely.

And they put all the wheels on wind power which is intermittent.

Now, we need power not only when the sun is shining, not only when the wind is blowing.

We need power when we need power.

So in order to compensate for the intermittency, you use natural gas.

AMIR: And that’s when Putin gets into this …

YONATAN: And the Germans and the rest of Europe decided not only that they’re going to invest in intermittent sources,

which means investing really in gas, natural gas, they’re going to buy everything from one person,

the one person you can trust.

AMIR: And that Vladimir Putin is now showing them that he’s a very…

YONATAN: So the origin of the crisis is not Putin, it’s decisions.

Now, I have to say, I’m not a huge Trump supporter.

I’ve met, he has many flaws as president.

But he did some amazing things, honestly, he did.

One of the amazing things he did is pull out of the Paris agreements,

and there is a recording, it’s all over the internet, you can look it up,

where he is meeting with NATO delegates and he’s saying,

“What are we doing here? I’m paying for NATO to guard the European borders,

and you’re buying 40% of your gas from Russia!”

AMIR: The enemy of NATO.

YONATAN: And they were laughing at him. There’s the German and…

AMIR: Angela Merkel, she really laughed..

YONATAN: Yes, they were laughing at him.

And it turns out…

AMIR: They thought he’s the ignorant.

YONATAN: And he turned out to be amazingly correct. (AMIR: Of course!)

And this is the weakness of the Western free world, powered by climate panic.

That’s the origin of this energy catastrophe, and we’re facing an energy catastrophe.

And there are ripples effects, and you will feel them.

This is increasing, unbelievable rise in energy prices.

We see this in the US, this is a ripple effect.

AMIR: That causes poverty.

YONATAN: Yes. And people will die.

Because… and this is something maybe the audience should know.

Heat is a much milder …
AMIR: cause of death than cold …

YONATAN: And this is a well-known, well documented statistics.

In the Western countries, people die four times more from cold than from heat,

in the underdeveloped countries 20 times more

AMIR: From cold?

YONATAN: Yes,

in India, and in Africa, where you’re thinking, you know, the warm places,

still 20 times more deaths from cold than from heat.

Because the human body has evolved in heat, in hot places,

we are tropical species.

If it’s hot outside, 40 degrees centigrade,

you go to the shade, you drink a glass of water, you will be fine.

If you have three consecutive days of minus five degrees centigrade,

you will die.

And people will not be able to afford heating their houses in Europe.

AMIR: amazing…

Yonni, before we go to the heart of this interview, which is the spiritual side of this whole movement,

I have two questions for you.

First of all, is co2 really something that causes temperatures to rise?

YONATAN: Yes.

AMIR: And the second question is;

Were you once on the other side and then you saw the light and came to this conclusion?

Or were you always like this?

YONATAN: Okay, let’s first answer to the first question.

So, the central dogma, which now rules the climate science and the related policy is that

the entire heating of the last 50 years, the global rise in temperatures is all due to manmade co2.

Now, what do we know?

We know indeed, the co2 is what we call a greenhouse gas.

Meaning that it’s a molecule composed of three atoms,

it has what we call, you know, the scientific term is Soft Vibrations,

it indeed captures the heat that comes out in the form of radio waves from the earth,

absorbs in the infrared and some technical terms and heats up,

it’s a greenhouse gas.

So if you put it in a light bulb, and you shine light, it will heat up.

What we do not know…

AMIR: We’re not a light bulb…

YONATAN: We’re not a light bulb, that’s exactly the point.

We don’t know whether or not this is the main factor contributing to heating.

Now, this you need to contrast with the fact that we know for sure

that the Earth temperature has changed dramatically during all timescales

starting from the 20th century, as we discussed, going to the medieval warm period 1000 years ago,

and the Roman warm period, and the optimal hot period of the earth,

temperature of the Earth is fully capable of changing without changes in co2

due to changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun.

So we don’t know.

It’s a thesis.

Now, as scientific thesis is; go, we need to prove it.

Now. It’s a very extreme thesis that

the system as complicated as the Climate,

which is one of the most complicated physical systems known to science, is controlled by a single knob?

That’s an extreme statement. And extreme statements require extreme proofs.

If I may quote Carl Sagan, which is one of the most prominent physicists of the 20th century,

AMIR: one of the founders of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, Canadian guy, very sharp guy, once said,

when two things happen at the same time, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re connected.

And then he gave a great example, he said,

summertime, there’s more shark bites and there’s more consumption of ice creams.

It doesn’t mean that shark bites cause a larger consumption of ice cream.

And do you hold the same opinion that

people are linking two things it’s not necessarily proven to be accurate?

YONATAN: It’s unproven. (AMIR: unproven)

Correlation is not causation.

This is a founding principle in science,

specifically, in statistical science like climate.

There is no what we would call in science, a smoking gun evidence that

co2 is related even to the majority of heating.

We simply do not know.

Now, this is something, you know, you won’t hear a lot of scientists say, right?

AMIR: They don’t know, it’s a confession of defeat.

YONATAN: Right?
AMIR: Yeah.

YONATAN: But that’s the honest truth. It’s a complicated system. We don’t know,

it might be correct.

It might be completely wrong.

The truth is probably, at least from my understanding of the physics, is that

it’s about, you know, maybe 20% or a quarter up to a third,

AMIR: It’s a contributor not a cause.

YONATAN: It’s not the cause. And that means we have a lot more time.

It’s definitely not the main cause, in my opinion,

but I might be wrong.

But the thing to understand is that we don’t know.

And there’s actually,

this is stated in the IPCC reports in something called the equilibrium climate sensitivity.

That’s the number that relates temperature to co2.

And it’s all over the place.

And the estimations of the contribution to co2 haven’t changed from 1979.

After billions of dollars were invested into climate science…

AMIR: It still hasn’t.

YONATAN: We don’t know the answer.

AMIR: I saw one of your interviews with a Princeton University professor, Bill Happer, exactly.

And he said something very interesting.

He said, when you asked him;

So, can you put a finger at where did it all start?

And then he mentioned something that…

I think for many of the listeners, he kind of went out right above them,

but it caught my attention. He said that

somewhere in one of the meetings of the Club of Rome things began to change.

The Club of Rome is the one of those gatherings of the elite, globalists.

YONATAN: Yes.

AMIR: Do you agree with that?

YONATAN: Well, I will take it slightly even before that.

During the 60s, there was the starting of the rise of the environmental movement,

AMIR: Okay.

YONATAN: And with prominent figures like Rachel Carson who wrote a very famous book called Silent Spring,

about the dangers of using DDT in order to extinct malaria,

which, you know, people follow that and it caused millions of deaths in Africa

before they, you know, recuperated and started using DDT again, because malaria is a terrible killer.

And people like Paul Ehrlich from Stanford University, who wrote a famous book called The Population Bomb,

where he warned us that that’s it,

we will have no food until the year 2000s and many millions of people will starve to death.

India will be a gone as a country, the UK will dissolve…

You know, all these crazy Malthusian predictions all turning out to be wrong.

Now, then, several things happened.

In 1984, the Berlin Wall fell down.

And all the people who are looking for a cause,

and they were fighting, you know, the separation of Europe

AMIR: The Berlin Wall?

YONATAN: Yes.

AMIR: You are talking about 1989?

YONATAN: Maybe 1989? (AMIR: Yes.)

And this is something I learned from Patrick Moore, which you mentioned

he was there.

And he tells about the lines of people coming from the demonstrations,

and then a signing up for Greenpeace.

So people were looking for a meaning, and then groups started forming.

You mentioned the Club of Rome, which is one group,

the Sierra Club, which is also one of the most strong environmental groups,

strong environmental NGOs,

which handles a budget of hundreds of million dollars per year,

the World Wide Fund, Greenpeace,

all these NGOs, all these groups started focusing on environmental issues.

And then two things happened.

The Communist Russia fell down,

there was no longer cause fighting communism.

And there were people who were, in a way, sentiment to the communist ideal

were suddenly lost.

Because they had nothing material in the world to say:

Oh, we can identify ourselves with this. And…

AMIR: So, socialism, Marxism, communism, suffered a blow?

YONATAN: Yes.

AMIR: And these people are now out there to find a different vehicle

to somehow spread their ideas.

YONATAN: Yes, and you can trace the beginning of the climate crisis to two events.

One of them is, as you mentioned, the Club of Rome,

which issued a report known as the limits to growth,

which turned out to be completely wrong.

You know, nothing what they said, actually came to be.

AMIR: But the one thing that remain is their hatred towards population growth.

YONATAN: Yes. And we will talk about this.

And the second thing is a testimony by a Professor James Hansen,

which was the leading climate scientists in NASA,

in a congressional statement, where he said;

Oh, the earth is warming.

And following an amazing series of predictions,

you know, Florida will be underwater,

Arctic sea ice will be gone by the year 2000.

Skiing in Aspen will be gone.

I went to skiing in Aspen in 2008, when I was a postdoc in the US,

and people were saying;

We should ski now because in a few years, it’s gone.

AMIR: And when did you go to ski again, after that?

YONATAN: Well, I go to ski almost every year when I can,

and you know, the snows in Aspen are still there.

And none of these climate catastrophe predictions have come true.

You know, we have a saying in the Talmud, the Hebrew studies of the Bible,

that since the fall of Solomon’s temple prophecy was given to fools and children.

And this is the honest statement of a scientist.

We don’t know enough about the climate system to make good predictions,

we simply can’t do that.

AMIR: So, as we hinted earlier,

somehow, the pointed finger is at humans, and at the alarming rate of population growth,

and humans become…

I’m following the system of these people the way they think,

we’re the enemy.

YONATAN: Yes.

AMIR: Humans are now the enemy.

YONATAN: I…

AMIR: Am I right?

YONATAN: I completely agree with this.

When you try to look at the root, philosophy, behind the climate alarmism,

what you find out is that the ideal is an un-impacted nature,

Gaia, the environment.

You hear people talking: We must save the environment.

What is the environment?

That’s an intangible thing.

What is it?

AMIR: So, it has evolved into a spiritual thing.

YONATAN: It is a spiritual thing.

AMIR: And a goddess, in a way.

YONATAN: In the real way.

And everything we do is first measured, not by how good it is for humans,

how does it promote human flourishing and human well-being?

But the first thing it’s measured by is it impacting the planet?

Is it impacting the environment?

Are we changing Gaia?

Of course, if you follow the logic of this ideal,

then clearly the cure is that there will be no humans on the planet, right?

Then the ideal is complete.

Of course, no one will say that.

So people try to say, oh, there are too many people in the world.

AMIR: They don’t… they’re not ashamed to say that.

YONATAN: No, no!

AMIR: They declare it even on the Georgia Guidestones which has been demolished in over the last few months.

It says: Limit world population to 500 million.

YONATAN: Yes. And when people tell me that in person then,

okay, but you make the list.

Correct? Because we have to keep it a half billion people, you’re going to make the list, not me.

This is an unethical, immoral, inhumane statement.

And this is where the clash of philosophies comes into play.

On one side, there’s this philosophy which says that humans are bad,

we are an intrusion, an interruption to the ideal.

When I am a humanist,

I long for human flourishing and human well-being,

I want to reduce human suffering as much as I possibly can,

on the personal level, on the community level,

and if I can, on the global level.

Now, the amazing thing is that

the statistics clearly show that the more people we have, the better off we are,

in essentially, every measurable quantity.

If you look at GDP, if you look at literacy, a percentage,

if you look at lifespan,

if you look at health, various parameters that

if you look at hunger, you know, the percentage of malnutrition children

in any measurable quantity, the more humans we have, the better off we are.

There’s an amazing book that came right a few weeks ago by two authors,

Marian L. Tupy and Gale Pooley, called Superabundance.

Where they actually do the statistics, and it’s unbelievable.

We are eight times more wealthy, materially wealthy,

our well-being is eight times higher than our young grandparents, 60 or 70 years ago.

It’s an amazing number.

We’ve basically eradicated world poverty,

if you look 100-150 years ago, 85 to 90% of the population were below the UN absolute poverty line,

2.9 dollars a day.

Now that number is 10%.

How did we do this?

We do this by innovation.

We did this by free thinking.

And we did this really, by allowing people to have kids,

more people need more brains that can think and innovate and make our lives better.

And we also did this, allow me to add, using fossil fuels.

AMIR: Yes.

We differ on many levels when it comes to, you know, spiritual things.

Because I think you said to me, you define yourself as an atheist, am I right?

YONATAN: Well, I am an atheist or agnostic, I’m not sure.

AMIR: You’re not sure.

I’m here, hopefully, to change it.

But I will tell you that I truly believe not only in creation, but I also believe that scripturally,

the Bible says that when God created the world, it was very good.

It was very, very good.

And it’s only from the moment sin entered the world, we are watching everything imploding.

And it seems like mankind is trying to find solution ever since

to recover from the problem that mankind could have, you know, could have easily avoided

if they only did what God told them to do.

Now, I will tell you that this… this drives to kill people,

YONATAN: And this is a strong statement that you’re saying… AMIR: Drive to kill.

YONATAN: I don’t think people are consciously thinking that.

But this is what their actions imply.

AMIR: Yeah, I’m telling you, there is a huge difference between what they say and what they mean.

And I can tell you, you don’t have to agree with me,

I can tell you that from a spiritual perspective,

when I even see how easily it is now in America and other places around the world to just decide:

I’ve got a baby, I’m nine months pregnant, I can kill it.

It’s okay, it’s my choice. It’s my body.

The loss of…

YONATAN: …valuation of human life.

AMIR: value for human life,

which is exactly the opposite of the cause for human as you just said

to actually do well, to do better.

And the more we kill people … first of all, it says a lot about us at our heart,

but also, it brings us even down, not up, in a way even scientifically.

YONATAN: Oh yeah. So, let me say a few things about what you said.

As I said, I’m not a religious person per se…

AMIR: But your mother is a teacher of Bible.

YONATAN: She is, so I know a lot of the Bible.

I read the Talmud and I read the Bible and…

AMIR: You were born where?

YONATAN: I was born in Be’er-Sheva in the Southern part…

AMIR: … in Be’er-Sheva where Abraham was.

YONATAN: Yes.
AMIR: Yes, so…

YONATAN: The well of Abraham, which is, you know, by tradition, this is the well he took his oath,

was less than a mile from where my childhood house is.

AMIR: You are a Jewish guy born where Abraham himself lived for a long time,

your mom is teaching the Bible.

It’s soaked into every fiber of almost every person lives, even in this city.

And I respect that you’re a scientist, and that you’re a professor

and you’re actually valuing life?

YONATAN: This is the point.

And this is what I wanted to say.

Although I am an agnostic, I do share the religious sentiment to the value of human life.

Yes, we were born “b-tsal’menu”, (AMIR: Yes) born in the image of God,

I truly believe that.

I think what you pinpoint…

AMIR: You are born in the image of the God that you don’t believe?

YONATAN: Well…

AMIR: No, I’m joking. It’s a joke!

YONATAN: You know, I’m not a practicing Jew.

AMIR: I’m trying to tell you that you believe in God without knowing.

YONATAN: That might be the case. Fair enough.

AMIR: Okay, good.

YONATAN: And you know, I’m not a practicing Jew.

AMIR: Okay, good.

YONATAN: But I definitely Jewish, by ethnicity or by nationality,

and I’m a proud Zionist, and I’m not a globalist, in that sense. And…

AMIR: Good!

YONATAN: Well, I’m what I am.

AMIR: See, I’m telling you, you’re getting closer and closer

YONATAN: Now, but I want to pinpoint something that you said and make it…

You pinpointed one of the paradoxes of modern progressive thinking.

Because modern progressive thinking is all about me,

and my rights, what I am entitled to,

and with this, what’s important to me,

we are losing in a way, what’s the value of others as humans.

The abortion issue is complicated.

And please don’t drag me…

AMIR: I’m not dragging you into it at all.

And everything I say about it, it’s my perspective of it.

But I can tell you that even through this,

you can see that the mindset of so many has been brainwashed to detest the life of a little baby.

YONATAN: What I can tell you about this is that

I do appreciate the moral stance of pro-life movement.

AMIR: Yes.

As a scientist, pro-life, what is the opposite of pro-life?

Don’t… let’s not talk politics, let’s talk Hebrew.

Let’s talk language.

What is the opposite of pro-life?

Pro?

YONATAN: Yes,

AMIR: Death!

So you cannot say pro-choice because in the Bible, life is choice.

That’s why you cannot say…

YONATAN: Only in the Bible, in the world, the more choices we have, the better off…

AMIR: But the Lord said to Moses, tell them,

I put before you today, death and life, choose life.

It was, it’s our choice, we need to choose life.

And when we… let’s leave abortion, back to climate.

YONATAN: Yes, please.

AMIR: Yes, I understand.

We’re now watching… And that’s the topic of this whole conversation today.

We’re watching the world becoming brainwashed with something that has no scientific backing,

with something that is being completely pushed by people that are not even scientists,

and it is something that causes people to actually value less human life and value more comfort of the moment.

But even by doing that, they cause the opposite.

YONATAN: Yes.

And this is an amazing insight.

The amazing thing about this insight is that people who share those beliefs, don’t see it.

They’re saying: No, we must protect Earth, Mother Earth,

we must protect the environment.

It’s for the better-ness of our grand-grandchildren,

we must protect it.

But when you do this, you are doing two things.

You are really subjecting yourself to a new form of mysticism, or even religion.

You know, many people have suggested that, you know,

climate alarmism or climate catastrophism is a new form of religion.

And when you’re doing that, what you’re really doing is

making yourself feel better by taking your own moral stance while causing harm and pain and suffering to other people.

Mostly people in the underdeveloped world and we can talk a lot about examples for that.

But now also suffering for people in the modern world in Europe,

which is going to suffer an energy crisis

and the working-class people in America

which need to worry about gas prices going up, and so forth.

AMIR: Now as a non-practicing Jew, you, yourself can even see the rise of a new religion.

YONATAN: Yes,

AMIR: And new religion with a goddess, with priests, with the faulty people and with sin.

Okay, I want to quote to you a verse from the New Testament that I believe in.

By the way, I want to tell you something.

When I became a believer in the New Testament, it was not because I read the New Testament.

I actually read Jeremiah, when he says that God will give the people of Israel a New Testament.

But I will tell you that it says in the book of Romans, chapter one, in verse 25,

about those people that are going to, it says,

“(They) exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature,

(the creation,) rather than the Creator…”

I think this verse is summarizing what we see today,

the hunger and thirst to worship creation, Mother Earth.

it’s something that I can trace back to the Babylonians.

YONATAN: It’s a pagan thing.

AMIR: Pagan thing, absolutely pagan thing.

So, now why am I saying pagan thing?

Because guess what,

few months ago Pope Francis just declared that he’s…

By the way, he’s way into this whole thing.

They got him, big time,

the Catholic church today is very determined to take an active role in this whole thing.

And I will tell you that because not long ago,we were shooting here inside the Old City,

a video that is talking about the rise of the One World Religion,

the One World Religion that will eventually be on everything but God.

It will be about…

YONATAN: Gaia.

AMIR: Yeah, it will be about nature, it will be about “you choose your own sexual identity.”

Now, we don’t go into this, but I will tell you that

we are watching a rise of a new world religion.

And this climate change is a huge factor in it,

because it creates the alarm that the world needs

in order to group around an idea that is not necessarily belongs to a specific religion.

YONATAN: Yes. First of all, let me say that this is not my own idea.

I mean, this idea of climate alarmism is a new religion was already raised by Patrick Moore, by Michael Shellenberger and other…

AMIR: Patrick Moore made a mistake in the way that he believes that Christians are the biggest propagators of this.

And I’m telling you, millions of people that are watching this or will watch this:

I agree with you more than what the Pope said…

YONATAN: And we can talk about why this, why this is,

and I have an idea.

When you think about religion, you can compare the climate alarmist movements

and you know, as we said, its roots in the green movement, in the environmental movements.

You can compare it to the Judeo-Christian principles,

you have a God, you have… it’s Gaia, right? –The ideal environment.

Now you have a sin.

Now the sin is no longer the Christian thing.

Now it’s the sin of changing Gaia.

AMIR: So the sin is consumption, the sin is co2, capitalism…

YONATAN: …building things, industry, you name it.

Impacting Gaia is a primal…
(AMIR: it’s a sin,) right?

Now, once you have the sin, you have the commandment,

Thou shalt not emit co2…

AMIR: Okay.

YONATAN: Thou shall build solar panels and wind turbines.

You know, these are… they look like commandments.

And you have prophets, James Hansen, Greta Thunberg,

you know, you have the prophets,

you have priests…

Priests, you know, spreading the word.

And you have believers of all spectrums, right?

You have people who say, okay, yeah, maybe it’s correct.

You have really passionate believers.

You have a Catholic hell, right?

We’re going to burn; Gaia will punish us.

And you know, they didn’t even invent the punishment.

They just took it out of the New Testament, right?

We’re going to be burn in hell,

AMIR: They take the lake of fire and borrow it for their own.

YONATAN: So it has characteristics of a religion.

And when I talk to people, and I try to talk to as many people as I can, from both sides of the aisle, so to speak.

And I see it, I see people that you talk to them about the data,

and they say, yeah, maybe this is correct, we don’t know you are so…

And then I ask them, so what do you think?

The situation is very bad, we are doomed.

AMIR: they agree with the data, but they are captured with this mindset?

YONATAN: Yes.

AMIR: Give me the main points where you see great hypocrisy in the ranks

In the claims of that movement of climate change.

YONATAN: There are numerous examples for that,

you know, the climate alarmist movement,

you know, these people are trying to say: Oh, we want the better the world and make everything great.

So they gathered in the last climate conference this COP26,

the climate conference in Glasgow,

of course, in light of the energy crisis,

there was no agreement in terms of co2.

And of course, there were no delegates from China, Brazil, India,

(AMIR: the main contributors,) yeah, Russia, none of them was there.

So there’s nothing to do.

But there was one contract that was signed

in a very glorious ceremony,

20 countries from Central Europe and the major development banks in the world sign the statement,

a contract that they will not invest money, lend money, or give collaterals to infrastructure construction based on fossil fuels in Africa.

AMIR: Wow,

YONATAN: Let me…

AMIR: They’re actually punishing Africa?

YONATAN: Now, who are the signatories?

Belgium, for God’s sakes,

the Netherlands, the UK, all these places which have sucked the resources out of Africa.

1.3 billion people who are living in poverty,

800 million people in Africa do not have constant electricity,

3 billion people in the world are living on the same amount of power of one American refrigerator.

And you are banning loans and investment for infrastructure in Africa

and condemning them to energy poverty,

and by that to lead poverty.

This is… I cannot think of something more hypocritical.

AMIR: But they will tell you, hey, only investment in fossil fuel not in…

YONATAN: But there is no renewable energies,

what we should really call them is unreliable energy,

wind and solar cannot provide us.

You know, if you look global, at the electricity market,

wind and solar provide about 8 to 10%.

If you look at the total energy humans are consuming,

it’s between 1 and 3%.

That’s how they want the Africans to live, in one to 3% power?

That’s an immoral, inhumane thing.

And this is a signed contract at Glasgow Climate Pact.

AMIR: Let’s look great and punish someone.

YONATAN: Exactly!

That we’re going to be the moral people,

we’re going to feel good about ourselves, no matter the consequence.

Let me give you another example.

We talked already about the crazy policy fueled by a climate alarmism,

which led to the energy crisis.

Now let’s talk about Pakistan,

not the wealthiest country, we can imagine.

But the Pakistani government is doing an effort.

And a few years ago, they spent a lot of money and effort building infrastructure for liquid gas

to power and generate electricity, reliable, cheap electricity.

And they signed long term contracts with Qatar and with other providers of gas to supply them with gas.

Now, because of the European policy, gas prices soared 6 to 10 times.

10x, unbelievable!

AMIR: They cannot even take that.

YONATAN: No!

So, the Qataris broke the contract with the Pakistani,

they’re paying a penalty 130%

AMIR: They can sell it now…

YONATAN: They can send it to the Europeans at 300%.

AMIR: Unbelievable.

YONATAN: And now, there are electricity outages, and no power in Pakistan.

And this, you know, ruins industry, and hospitals and universities, (AMIR: and agriculture) and schools, and agricultures.

Who’s going to pay the price for that?

Not the wealthy Europeans.

It’s the Pakistani.

Let me give you a third examples.

Sri Lanka, a nation of 22 million people,

a few years ago was considered one of the rising stars of Southeast Asia

with a growth rate of 7%. –They were doing really well.

And then they were persuaded to go to organic farming.

We are polluting the planet.

We must use farming like our ancestors did.

Within two years, the yield of planting Sri Lanka went down to 25%.

No food, food shortages in Sri Lanka.

AMIR: That’s why they kicked out their president now.

YONATAN: Riots in the streets, violent kicking out of the Prime Minister.

They’re bankrupt. And now they’re begging the World Bank for loans.

This happened in two years of irresponsible, irrational and immoral behavior

fueled by the idea that we are ruining the planet.

I have many more examples like this all over the place.

AMIR: Amazing. I have good news and bad news.

The good news is, you’ve seen the light when it comes to climate change.

Were you ever on the other side, by the way?

YONATAN: Of course, I was.

AMIR: Were you?
YONATAN: I was, yes, I was…

AMIR: Progressive?
YONATAN: Yes,

YONATAN: And I was worried as the next guy about climate change.

And then when I came back from the United States to Israel,

I spent a year and a half in industry, working about solutions to energy conversion,

using nanotechnology, whatever.

And part of this work was studying what solar panels really are.

And I know the physics of solar panels, really well.

AMIR: That’s your field,

YONATAN: That’s my field, part of my field. Yes.

And I saw that, and I was bamboozled by the contrast

between what these things really can do, and what people tell us they can do,

These things just don’t match.

And you know, I’m, this is what I do.

I fit models to real life.

And you know, these things, these things cannot power our society.

And…

AMIR: They can help, they can support but not be the main one.

YONATAN: it’s even questionable whether they can support, and if they can’t they’re really a parasite on an existing system.

And they are not renewable,

because in 15 to 20 years, you need to throw them all away.

Millions of solar panels which have some toxic and heavy metals in them which need to be dealt with, it’s not an easy problem.

So I looked at this, and I said: Well, you know, the data doesn’t add up,

maybe we’re told the wrong thing.

So I started looking into this.

And then you know, one thing led to the other,

I started thinking about the climate problem

and I looked at the data.

I don’t read the summaries, I don’t read the abstracts,

I just look at the data.

AMIR: As a scientist, valuing science, everybody’s telling us to trust science.

But then when science clashing with their agenda,

then science should be silenced.

YONATAN: And this is an amazing thing.

You hear statements like the science is settled,

you hear University boards, saying

that we should not allow people to express themselves if they’re not supporting the known consensus.

When was the last time we heard these things?

During the times of Galileo,

and the Catholic consensus that the sun is orbiting the Earth.

That’s a Catholic statement, the science is settled.

And you hear this from a university, which is bound to the search for the truth.

And how can you search for truth without expanding and without questioning the existing knowledge?

AMIR: So that’s the good news that you finally came to the realization

that there is an agenda here.

The bad news and you and I know that

we will not win here.

YONATAN: Well,

AMIR: Let’s face it, Earth will not adopt our beliefs in the fact that this is a scam,

Earth will fall deeper.

I’m talking about society

deeper into this deception, and into this new rising religion.

YONATAN: If you would ask me this question a year and a half ago,

I would be along with you, probably 95%.

However, I think we’re in a strange situation now

that this agenda has collapsed on the wall of reality and real life,

and the lack of abundance of power, electrical power,

and the rising prices of electricity, which lead to deaths from cold during winter in Europe,

and the rising costs of food.

And I have to tell you on the short term, I’m pessimistic,

we’re going to see food shortages.

We’re going to see famine In the developing countries,

because the manufacturing of fertilizer requires natural gas.

Now Europe has reduced by 50%

its fertilizer capabilities, fertilizer manufacturing capabilities.

No fertilizers, no food,

AMIR: And now with sanctions of Russia…

YONATAN: Sanctions of Russia and Ukraine.

And they’re banning the Dutch farmers from increasing the farms.

They’re telling them now to reduce production.

These are the most efficient farmers in the world.

A small country like the Netherlands, supplying a huge amount of food to Europe,

they are one of the largest exporters of food.

And they’re saying, no, you have to reduce your food production

AMIR: And the farms kill the cows.

Because God forbid, excuse me from a language,

they fart, and we are dying.

YONATAN: Yes. And these things will crash on the wall of reality.

And I think, I do think that

enough people are rational enough to understand and to value human flourishing,

AMIR: Yes.

YONATAN: and human needs over this ideal of the environment.

AMIR: I want to read to everyone that is watching us,

2000 years ago, really not far from here…

YONATAN: Really not far.

AMIR: Yeah. The disciples of Jesus, they left the temple, crossed Kidron, went up on Mount of Olives,

and the Bible says, (Matthew 24:3)

“as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying,

‘Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?’

And Jesus answered and said to them:

4 ‘Take heed that no one deceives you.'”

First of all, the first thing He said:

Deception will be rampant.

I mean, people will tell you lies all the time.

And after He talked about how many false messiahs will come, He says this,

6 “‘And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled;

for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

7For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.

8All these are the beginning of sorrows.'”

I believe that there’s coming a climate change,

but it has absolutely nothing to do with co2.

And it has nothing to do with the globalists effort to reduce that,

to me, everything that has been prophesied through Isaiah and Jeremiah and Hosea,

everything has come to pass.

So I have no doubt that there is coming a chapter in our history where things will be different.

But I can tell you that I agree with you 100%,

that what we see today is fake crisis to promote other agendas.

And what are those agendas?

Do they really want to kill people?

What is it that they’re trying to achieve?

YONATAN: Yes, let me first say something about what you said.

I don’t know about the end days, the biblical end days.

AMIR: I do. Yeah,

YONATAN: I don’t.
AMIR: Yeah, I understand.

YONATAN: What I’m saying is that

until we get there, we need to try to make the lives of people on earth as best as possible,

as flourishing as possible.

That’s the only thing I’m saying.

So there is no real contradiction in that.

AMIR: No.

YONATAN: This is the point I tried to say: There’s no real contradiction.

Now you asking me about the motives?

What’s behind this agenda?

And let me first say,

I don’t think there’s a real conspiracy per se.

AMIR: Not in the Club of Rome? You think they…

YONATAN: I don’t know? I don’t, I haven’t been to the room.
AMIR: Okay.

YONATAN: But I find it hard to believe.

What I think there is a collapse or a merge of various incentives and motives.

And there are a few.

One motive is of course, political power.

You can call this (AMIR: power) a conspiracy.

AMIR: I actually don’t call it conspiracy. I believe that they want power.

YONATAN: Yes, this I totally

AMIR: Absolutely. Go ahead.

YONATAN: That’s one, that’s a trivial, a motive.

One motive, huge motive is money.

AMIR: Money! I also…

YONATAN: The US government is going to spend $300 billion dollars on wind power and solar panels.

AMIR: So you better say yes, even you don’t agree with.

YONATAN: Oh yeah.

Huge amounts of money invested in renewable energies that will do nothing,

will only reduce the reliability of the grid,

will make people’s life worse, not better.

So tons of money.

In academia, there is the incentive, there are a lot of incentives in academia,

you know, people tend to hang on to their underlying beliefs,

and project them into the science.

This is a well-known bias in science.

And there are huge funds for research.

So people who tend to believe in the agenda, join the faculties and get research.

And now, you’re not going to do research which goes against the agenda of the funding, right? So…

AMIR: You satisfy your donor…

YONATAN: Right.

AMIR: and your academic institution.

YONATAN: Yes.

But why is there such a huge support of the common people?

Right? I would say, you know, people don’t belong to this group,

just people we see in the streets, and they’re really good people.

And they want to do good. They want to be moral people.

And they say we have to stop using a…

AMIR: So mankind of attempt to look righteous, to look good.

YONATAN: And I think there, there is a combination of the rise of secularity,

people are losing faith in traditional religions.

And this is accompanied by some feeling…

AMIR: It’s the rise of secularity, or the move into a new and better religion that…

because it is a religion.

YONATAN: That’s the result.

The underlying cause is the mixture of loss of meaningness or the rise of meaninglessness,

which you see, and it’s documented in psychology.

AMIR: Absolutely.

YONATAN: And the amazing material abundance that we live in,

we are living in a singular point in humanity, that is never been better.

It’s never been better.

And never in the history of humanity has so many people woke up in the morning, and didn’t have to worry about what they’re going to eat at night.

So this too made a vacuum for meaning.

And people need meaning.

I think, I truly think that’s a deep, you can call it, you know, spiritual,

I call it psychological,

but that’s a deep…

AMIR: it’s a void.

YONATAN: It’s a void, and it’s rooted into the human condition,

we need meaning. Now…

AMIR: I love hearing it from you.

I mean, you know that I know the answer.

But hearing from you…

YONATAN: …and I told you this when we talk in privacy,

I completely respect this.

And I, you know, I find meaning in other things,

I find meaning in my family and in my science and in my community,

and you know, doing other things.

But I completely respect the meaning that you find in faith.

There’s a difference between this new religion and organized or traditional religions, like the Catholic churches.

One is that the believers of this religion are unaware of the religiousness.

They are saying: No, we are moral, because we are moral, and we believe in the science.

They’re taking the higher moral ground.

And I’m saying: No, you’re being immoral, because the fundamental root of your religion is removing humanity.

AMIR: And death, kill, (YONATAN: Yes,) death, poverty, death, everything that is…

YONATAN: humanly… So you are not the moral account.

I have the moral account.

The second thing is that

in the name of this religion, they want to tell you and me how to live.

And they’re doing it already.

As we said, in Europe, they’re going to say you can’t use power.

In California, the Electricity Authority told people not to charge the cars,

and not to use electricity during peak hours.

In California!

AMIR: Wealthiest state in America.

YONATAN: It’s not going to be that long.

AMIR: I’m just saying…

YONATAN: So they’re already doing this.

So these are two central differences.

But the origin is the void that came out of meaninglessness.

And… well, now, I understand these people.

When I talk to people, and I talk to a lot of people and these are good people.

Honestly, these are, you know, they want to, they want to do good.

They don’t know how.

And what I tell them, you want to do good, you want to be an activist?

Fine but don’t be a global activist.

Don’t be a climate activist.

Because you’re concentrating a thing doesn’t exist, Gaia, the environment.

These are mystical beings.

You want to be an activist? Be an environmental activist.

That means pick a fight, pick a problem that is dear to your heart,

look at the main causes to the problem and fight to solve that problem.

But that’s much harder.

AMIR: Much harder to clean the beaches…

YONATAN: Because environmental activism is local.

And it’s hard.

You know, it takes a lot of time and effort.

It’s much easier, you know, to go to a rally, climate rally,

and say, oh, let’s ban fossil fuels and make the world a better place.

You’re making the world a worse place,

AMIR: Much, much worse.

Well, I think we touched main focus of our talk today,

which is how climate change becomes a new world religion.

And as you said, they don’t even know that,

they don’t even notice that

they are new recruits to a semi-organized religion

that has roots that goes back to Babylonian and Greek and other teachings of Mother Earth being the god

and anything that humans do that is interfering nature is actually the problem.

New set of commands, a new set of rules,

and they don’t value human lives as much as they think they do.

They don’t.

In fact, the direct consequences of most of what they do is the opposite.

In my eyes, and again, my belief is that sin is the root of problem,

rebellion against the Word of God.

The Bible says, in the book of Hosea, chapter five, verse 15,

“I will return again to My place
Till they acknowledge their offense.

…In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.”

I think that the affliction that this world will go through,

hopefully, will finally get people to understand that

God so loved the world, it’s not that He hates the world,

He loves the world,

He gave us a wonderful way to come back to Him by the atoning death of the Messiah and His resurrection.

And in my mind, as long as humans will push God away,

they will spiral down more and more to find solutions that are bringing their own destruction.

This is my conviction.

And I love the way you described this new religion

because it’s one thing for me based on how I believe to say that,

but it’s another thing for even someone who does not hold my own beliefs to notice that, to see,

a professor in university, a scientist, someone who was born here,

someone who understands that there is more to these things than only what we’re being told.

I want to thank you, Yonni, for being with us.

Is there any last thing you want to say for?

YONATAN: Well, I want to end with a positive message.
AMIR: Please.

YONATAN: On a positive note.

If people are hearing us and, you know, they want to do good,

and they were thinking about going into these climate rallies or things like that,

it’s okay to want to do good

but there’s a difference between really doing something good and doing something that makes you feel good.

And this difference is important.

And I want to finish maybe with a message to the viewers and to the maybe to the younger people who are listening to us.

When I talked to Professor Bill Happer, which was mentioned here, I asked him,

so what should we do to improve the environment?

And he told me an amazing answer.

He said, well, most of your environment is the people around you,

your friends, your family, your community, be nice to them.

And I think this is an amazing message.

AMIR: Love your neighbor.

YONATAN: That I…

AMIR: Bill Happer, huh?

Bill Happer, Princeton University, I think he read Isaiah chapter one.

When I read the prophet Isaiah, I nearly choked

because the first chapter of this book it says, God hates religion.

Can you imagine?

God speaks to Isaiah to tell the people of Israel:

Religion is not the answer, treat one another.

Look what He says. He says this, He says:

“Your New Moons and your appointed feasts
My soul hates;” (Isaiah1:14)

God says:

“They are a trouble to Me,
I am weary of bearing them.
15When you spread out your hands,
I will hide My eyes from you;

Even though you make many prayers,
I will not hear.
Your hands are full of blood.” Now,

He says, just what Bill said,

16 “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean;
Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes.

Cease to do evil,
17Learn to do good;
Seek justice,
Rebuke the oppressor;

Defend the fatherless,
Plead for the widow.

18’Come now, and let us reason together,’
Says the Lord,

‘Though your sins are like scarlet,
They shall be as white as snow;

Though they are red like crimson,
They shall be as wool.”

You see, even in the Bible we see that you can pretend to do religious stuff as long as you want.

If you don’t take care even of your neighbor,

if you’re not changing who you are towards others,

you will never be able to please God.

YONATAN: You know, these words are touching even for a secular humanist.

AMIR: Absolutely.

YONATAN: These are beautiful words.

AMIR: These are beautiful words. And the same Isaiah said also later on how God eventually provides solution for sin.

Isaiah chapter 53. Go home, read it, write to me later what you think.

That’s the chapter that changed my life as a Jew, born in Jerusalem to a Jewish family.

And thank you again, Yonni.

What a very informative talk we had.

And I learned a lot. I’m sure many people learned a lot.

And I’m looking forward to do more things with you in the future.

All right. Thank you and God bless. Bye bye