Climate change is something all global citizens of today’s world have to deal with. Winter in New York has been sadly lacking in snow, while farmers in California are tossing out frost-bitten strawberries.

Globally, we have come to the point where clean air can be traded like a stock market commodity. By cleaning the air, through planting trees, countries can earn credits to sell to others who are causing harmful emissions.

According to a story in Ynetnews.com, trees planted in Israel to replace ones burned down during the War with Lebanon last summer, may enable Israel to join the Kyoto Protocol and earn an income of hundreds of thousands of shekels each year (which could then be used by the Jewish National Fund) to maintain forests.

Israel and the JNF can be proud of a long history of tree-planting in the region. “Making the deserts bloom” may have been Ben Gurion’s dream, but it also a wonderful example to the world of what can be achieved (horticulturally speaking) in climates that are less than ideal.

Read the Ynetnews.com story below:

Making money out of thin air
By Amir Ben-David

Air stock market? Yes, there is such a thing. There is also a chance that Israel will join it and start making money off the rockets that fell during the second Lebanon war .

Allow us to explain. Human actions on earth, mainly the burning of fuels and the emission of gases, as well as the interference with various natural processes, have brought about the interruption of the natural balance which previously existed here.

The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is the main international system designed to deal with that issue.

Among other things, the protocol allows for entities which “stop” the emission of toxic gases into the air (buy planting trees) to calculate the amount of gaseous activity their intervention actually prevented.

The protocol also allows for the “worth” of the above gases to be sold in a special international “stock market”.

Those who pay are the operators of industrial factories and other international companies which are required to cut down on the amount of toxic gas they emit, although that proved to be a difficult task.

It is here that the Jewish National Fund (JNF) enters the picture along with the many trees consumed by fires during the Lebanon war.

Money could be used to maintain forests
The head of strategic planning at JNF, Yishai Schechter, said that planting new trees would increase Israel’s contribution to the prevention of unwanted gases being emitted into the air.

If enough trees were planted in place of the ones burned down during the war, JNF would be able to join the Kyoto Protocol and earn an income of hundreds of thousands of shekels each year – money which could then be used to maintain forests.

JNF was looking into whether the replanting of over 12 thousand dunam (3 thousand acres) of trees burned during the war would count as replanting and not “restoring” the forest, which would not earn Israel points at the international air stock market, otherwise known as The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

Another point being looked into was whether or not it was profitable to replant the number of trees needed for Israel to join the protocol.

JNF’s estimates showed that the addition of any less than 10 thousand dunam (2,500 acres) of forest area would not be profitable due to the high expenses involved in the process.

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