Not all hot air – but the whiff of hypocrisy is still heavy in Davos
Is there any point in trying to defend Davos? The event has become a punchline. “Davos Man” has calcified into caricature. The irony of delegates flying in on private jets to talk about climate change is too delicious. The hypocrisy of the world’s wealthy preaching about the need for higher taxes from a Swiss mountaintop pulpit is too nauseating. How likely is it, those looking on from outside are entitled to ask, that the world’s uber-successful will alter a status quo that has patently served them rather well?
The official theme of the 50th iteration of the World Economic Forum was “stakeholders for a cohesive and sustainable world”, which is, as the 49 previous themes have been, total gobbledegook. The real focus, however, was the environment (so much so that some eye-rolling delegates suggested the meaning of WEF’S middle initial should be updated). This somewhat heightened the incongruity of an event that takes place in a ski resort in January. It’s hard to wring your hands about global warming when you can’t feel your fingers.
The WEF is painfully aware of all this. And, my goodness, did it bust a gut in its furious attempts to counter the accusation of double standards this year. The rooms were decorated with seaweed-based paint and carpeted with used fishing-nets. The delegates were quenched with local spring water and fed with alternative protein sources. The virtues of a train journey up the mountain were extolled. Shoe grips were handed out in organic cotton rucksacks to nudge participants into walking the few hundred yards between meetings along the icy promenade rather than jumping in a car – albeit electric.
If delegates absolutely, positively couldn’t travel by any other means than a private jet (sideways glance at you, Prince Charles), the WEF made “sustainable aviation fuel” available for business flights to and from Zurich airport. All of which was very impressive but rather in vain, I fear.
The showdown between the two headline acts was instructive. In the green corner was teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg telling the global elite to wake up and smell the bushfires. In the orange corner was the US president, Donald Trump, decrying the climate “prophets of doom” with their “predictions of the apocalypse”. While there is little doubt who won this bout in the boxing ring of popular opinion, there is even less doubt about where the real power currently lies.
The tone was set before the annual jamboree even started when Larry Fink, the head of Blackrock and one of the leading born-again evangelists for so-called “stakeholder capitalism”, sent his annual letter to chief executives on Jan 14. Fink claimed that the climate crisis is likely to result in a fundamental reshaping of finance, and warned that there will be a rapid shift of money from polluting industries that cause global warming to clean alternatives. He also outlined how Blackrock, which has nearly $7trillion (£5.4trillion) in assets under management, will avoid investing in unsustainable companies.
Bravo, Davos delegates publicly declared. But, sotto voce, they also pointed out that Fink’s gambit comes following accusations that Blackrock has been paying mere lip service to its own “environmental, social and governance” criteria. What’s more, Fink’s message has yet to trickle down through his own company. One boss of a large UK company says he has met with Blackrock people dozens of times and has yet to be asked what he is doing for the environment.
Does this mean that Davos is all hot air? Mostly, yes. But not completely. Park your cynicism for a moment, and look at it this way: if all the talk nudges the dial just a scintilla, and only a tiny fraction of the initiatives come to fruition, the net effect could still be positive.
Take just one project. Research indicates that if WEF achieves its aim of growing and conserving one trillion trees around the world, it will suck all of the carbon humankind has spewed up in the last 25 years back out of the atmosphere. The plan is so cheap and painless that even Trump got on board. Say that it spectacularly fails, and only 500m trees get planted. What’s not to like?
There is also a track record of success. Klaus Schwab, the German founder of the World Economic Forum, likes to say Davos “played midwife” to Gavi, the global vaccination public-private partnership, founded 20 years ago. Since then, it has immunised 760m children, prevented an estimated 13m deaths, and contributed $150bn in economic benefit to the countries in which it operates. Go on, sneer, I dare you.
And the reality is that there are two Davoses. Most people don’t come for the speeches and the panel sessions; they assemble to meet each other in a frenzied orgy of hyper-efficient, champagne-soused networking.
Here’s a sum that WEF should do. Add up the number of delegates and multiply it by the number of meetings they have. Work out the number of air miles that would be clocked up duplicating those meetings in the real world. And calculate the amount of CO2 that has therefore not been emitted.
But would anyone pay any attention? Of course not. Which is why, at some point, the World Economic Forum will have to descend from the mountain top. I get the arguments in favour of holding the event in Davos – a venue that is relatively easy to get to but hard to leave, so delegates can’t dip in and out (although, if that was the main criterion, you could hold it at the Croydon Ikea).
There is also the issue of security, with so many world leaders attending. But even this argument was undermined by reports that Russian spies posing as plumbers tried to bug the town earlier this year, and by the fact that WEF holds many successful regional events around the world in far less remote locations.
So here’s my message to the global elite. Meet by all means. Gather to discuss the geopolitical and societal horses that have most recently bolted over the horizon. Hold seminars on whether or not to shut now redundant barn doors. Immerse yourself in virtual reality tours of empty equine establishments. Experience a day in the life of an unemployed stablehand. And if you manage to achieve even a scrap of what you promise, all the better.
Just don’t do it in Davos.
‘The rooms were decorated with seaweed-based paint, and carpeted with used fishing nets’