The elites need a dose of political reality

The annual gathering of the world’s movers, shakers and opinion formers in Davos has this year been dominated by climate change. The Prince of Wales yesterday called on international leaders to “bring the planet back from the brink” as he also met the teenage activist Greta Thunberg. She had clashed the previous day with Donald Trump, who alone among the political luminaries attending the World Economic Forum refuses to acknowledge the existence of global warming and does not accept the need to do anything about it. Ms Thunberg and her followers were, he said, false prophets of doom. He may or may not be right, but he is like Canute seeking to turn back the tide.

The anti-carbon forces are now unstoppable whether or not Mr Trump trusts the science. He could, in any case, be out of office by this time next year, whereupon America’s position is likely to change. What is disappointing about Davos is that once again world leaders lined up to make apocalyptic predictions of imminent disaster without focusing on practical measures to bring about a low or zero-carbon future. The very people who will be making the business and investment decisions to meet the various environmental targets should stop the talking and concentrate on the realities of fulfilling this policy.

For instance, do any of them yet fully appreciate the political implications of eliminating coal, oil and gas from the energy mix within 30 years? We are not talking about the Extinction Rebellion cultists, who see economic growth as the enemy and would happily crash the Western capitalist system as a means of curbing emissions.

Politicians have to live in the real world and sell to their people what will be considerable changes in lifestyle and ask them to pay the costs of killing off carbon. Yet an attempt by the French government to increase fuel prices on environmental grounds created the gilets jaunes movement and six months of violent demonstrations.

Prince Charles was right to call on business leaders to help consumers make sustainable choices that are also affordable. But this will not be easy in wealthy countries let alone in the developing world. Over the past 20 years there have been several protests in this country against relatively modest duty increases and these were nothing to what is coming down the track. We need to be prepared.