Thomas Heising

Visual science communication
Back to the Lab

Palestine is 101 in climate activism

Existential dread
2025 | Cork, Ireland
We’re kind of f***ed
 
Effects of our changing climate are harder to ignore with each passing year, and 2023 and 2024 surprised us with the warmest summers on record globally. Several deadly and destructive weather events and trends have been linked to humans burning massive amounts of carbon since the mid-19th century.
 
Locally here in Ireland, disasterous flooding events such as in Midleton in 2023 have been linked to the ongoing global trends of a climate that’s changing faster than we can predict it. And globally, regions suffering wildfires are expanding and well-known cities like Las Vegas in the US and countries such as Brazil and Ghana all reported their hottest temperatures on record within the last 3 years.
 
Meanwhile, one climate conference after another with world leaders failing to agree on necessary measures, politicians outright walking back on environmental legislation, hyperconsumerism ploughing ahead, policies not being adhered to and empty promises of scaling solutions for climate change prevention are the best we can come up with. We’re basically industrialising a mass extinction.
 
Activists have long asked our politicians, regulatory institutions and corporate powers politely for a path divesting from environmental collapse and mass casualties. Long have these activists been ignored.
 
But one bit of hope is still around: the global call for Palestinian Liberation.
Palestine protest in Cork
Anti-genocide activism teaches us about climate activism
 
Anyone who wants things done concerning climate change and environmental degradation should be involved with Palestinian activism and liberation in some manner or form.
 
Period.
 
Occasionally, I hear onlookers diminish the global cry for an end to the genocide and occupation of the Palestinian people by Israel and the US as a nationalist movement. And yes, in some ways, it is. But that attitude still thrives on a shallow, apathetic and uninformed understanding of the historical trajectories and of why some people have dedicated their lives over decades fighting for Palestinian Liberation. The humanitarian, environmental and political dimensions of the situation beg for one basic thing here in Ireland:
 
Stop funding apartheid and genocide.
 
And still, this is what many large corporations and governments in Europe and North America are doing, including here in the Republic. Huge amounts of money are actively being made on mass murder as Palestinian people and bodies are used by tech and arms companies to test weapons and AI-technology on.
 
The genocide is a proxy for understanding how far our governments and corporates will prioritise capital over the environment and human lives. Politicians protecting Israel’s “right to defend itself” can be equated to protecting the ‘rights’ of corporations to fell rainforests, to use slave labour, to mass produce fast fashion items and to extract oil from the underground.
 
Thus for this and other reasons given below, Palestine is relevant for every human on this planet. But what can be done?
War criminals
Consumer consciousness
 
One of the great drivers for change amongst those on the streets for Palestine has been the call for consumer consciousness: the realisation that a trip to the supermarket can have negative implications for people and ecosystems near and far away. 
 
Admittedly, it’s not easy being an ethical consumer in today’s world, yet I’d argue that most people don’t even make an effort. I previously didn’t and most of my friends were the same.
 
“Sure, whatever, we’re doing terribly things all the time anyways” and that’s another bottle of Coca-Cola bought…
 
Boycott these
But then via the BDS (Boycott, Sanctions and Divestments)-campaign I learned that lives could be saved with boycotts and that greedy people could be pissed off and held accountable. McDonald’s and Coca-Cola have in some regions recorded large losses due to boycotts. This trend must spread and intensify.
 
These companies aren’t only involved in human rights abuses, they’re also behind disasterous levels of plastic pollution and environmental degradation. Palestinian activists know well not to support these, while these big brand products are stocked up at sustainability talks and climate conferences.
 
Coincidentally, many of the big tech brands that are complicit in providing Israel with means of subjugating, expulsing and killing Palestinians including Google, Amazon, Intel, Apple, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard are also behind high carbon emissions, much environmental destruction and hypercapitalism.
 
And so, any attempt at undoing oneself from the world of “convenience” though this hyperconsumerist system, that these companies lure us into, is worth the effort – for the sake of human rights and our environment. But it requires a critical amount of people in order for us to enact global change. Every boycotting individual counts, but the word needs to be spread as well.
 
This is not the only front that the anti-genocide movement is fighting.
Protest at Shannon Airport
Protesters blocking roads at Shannon Airport calling for US warplanes to be blocked from using Shannon Airport for transporting weapons to Israel. Many activists were attacked and arrested by the Gardaí on the day.
The arms industry
 
The global influence of the arms industry is arguably one of the biggest taboos around. I’ve worked with a few diagrams and datasets showing carbon emissions locally and globally. All of them omitted emissions from military, despite military greenhouse gas emissions amounting to an estimated 5.5% globally.
 
Encountered often is the argument that we need to keep our militaries running at high capacity due to a world full of “conflicts”. The idea that we must protect ourselves from major threats out there.
 
Russia violently invaded Ukraine in 2021, yes. However, many past and present invasions and genocides have been and are being fueled, performed, financed and paid for by North American and European countries. Perhaps what lies behind the argument of “defense” is simply the moral failings and colonial ambitions of our political establishments?
 
The concept of “war crimes” is increasingly redundant. War is overall a crime against people and the environment, and regimes in Europe and North America have been guilty of it many times. Our understandings of international law are hanging by mere strings of goodwill because of the failures of our political leadership and our collective greed.
 
Naturally for any person able to think for themselves, this brings about the stark reality that colonialism and colonial violence never ended – they just morphed into other forms of mass murdering people, seizing territories, extracting resources and destroying environments. The arms industry is now the industrialisation of these violations as seen so poignantly with Palestine.
 
In any case, mass murdering people emits a lot of carbon as should previously be apparent for those who had a clear mind during the Iraq and Afghanistan-invasions led by North America and Europe.
 
If nothing counters this, it will not stop until further environmental collapses finally stop us.
No to the arms industry
Doing something:
 
We’re so far away from even verbally confronting the things that keep carbon emissions and many forms of environmental pollution as severe as they are today. We could see disastrous global disruptions in our food supply due to our warming climate in a few decades or  years even.
 
An estimate from Scientists for Global Responsibility says that the UK military emitted as much carbon annually during 2017-2018 as the total number of UK domestic flights. Counterintuitively, the military and arms industry are also sectors well-guarded by our politicians. They aren’t required to report on their emissions as many other industries are. Our political leaders are so invested that they’re more willing to resort to fascist subjugation of their own people than to consider change as seen currently in both Europe and North America.
 
And so we find ourselves racing towards a severe type of doom, thanks to the current deadly genocidal dance between apathy, capital, corporate interests and our political systems. The effects of a changing climate are already killing people in every continent, meanwhile some of the largest arms corporations are reporting record earnings. We here in the West are largely to blame for these trends.
 
Anti-genocide protesting is at the forefront of battling environmental destruction. Thus, activist communities against genocide and against climate change overlap; simply because people see the struggles connected. Palestinian activism has grown a conscience in many people and we need many more to understand the absolute vitality of the movement. And to understand that it’s Palestinians themselves who’ve shown us the path forward.
 
But as long as most people in society see it as uncomfortable to speak out against genocide and apartheid and its relation to environmental destruction, we’re not divesting from the path towards increased carbon emissions and overconsumption of the planet’s resources.
 
It’s never too late to get involved. This isn’t about moral superiority. It’s about saving people, our environment and, in the end, ourselves.
 
World leaders

References:

Clarke, Ben et al., 2024. Climate change made the extreme 2-day rainfall event associated with flooding in Midleton, Ireland more likely and more intense. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25561/109420

Ghana Meteorological Agency, 2025. State of the Climate Report Ghana 2024 - At the frontline of climate action. https://www.meteo.gov.gh/

Larbi, R. et al., 2025. Parting the fog of war: Assessing military greenhouse gas emissions from below. The Extractive Industries and Society. Vol. 23, 101654. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2025.101654

Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR) & Declassified UK, 2020. The Environmental Impacts of the UK Military Sector. https://www.sgr.org.uk/

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/6/israels-war-on-gaza-are-boycotts-hurting-us-brands

https://ceobs.org/environmental-csr-reporting-by-the-arms-industry/

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-67482423

https://bdsmovement.net/

https://www.carbonbrief.org/cop29-key-outcomes-agreed-at-the-un-climate-talks-in-baku/

https://earth.org/us-military-pollution/

https://newrepublic.com/article/177074/israel-arms-worlds-autocratswith-weapons-tested-palestinians

https://www.lasvegasnevada.gov/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-environmental-consequences-of-big-techs-push-to-ease-regulations-for-ai-development

https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/cruel-experiments-israels-arms-industry

https://www.technologyreview.com/
2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/

https://theintercept.com/2023/12/13/intercepted-podcast-israel-palestine-military-equipment/

https://www.un.org/en/academic-impact/worlds-food-supply-made-insecure-climate-change

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/01/food-system-impact-of-climate-change/