Trump, Thunberg offer clashing climate change visions
DAVOS, Switzerland — Leaders at the World Economic Forum heard competing messages of unbridled economic progress and demands for drastic action to avert global catastrophe as U.S. President Donald Trump and climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the summit in the Swiss Alps.
The world should follow the United States’ economic model and reject those who predict humanity is nearing a point of no return, Trump said on the first day of the annual gathering of top politicians and chief executives in the Alpine resort of Davos on Tuesday.
“This is not a time for pessimism, this is a time for optimism. Fear and doubt is not a good thought process,” Trump told assembled country leaders, chief executives and Thunberg, who was also in the audience.
“To embrace the possibilities of tomorrow, we must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of apocalypse,” he added in his keynote speech, without once using the words “climate” or “global warming.”
Trump announced that the U.S. would join a new global initiative to plant 1 trillion trees this decade, and he expressed confidence that scientists would find solutions to the world’s pressing problems.
Taking the podium not long after Trump, 17-year-old Thunberg took aim at his speech.
The world still has not got the message on how urgently climate change must be fought, the Swedish activist said.
“Our house is still on fire,” she said, echoing remarks she made one year ago in Davos.
“Your inaction is fuelling the flames by the hour,” she told a panel at the World Economic Forum.
Young people do not want to wait for carbon emissions and investments into fossil fuels to be phased out, but want them to be stopped now, the activist said.
Planting trees and waiting for scientific progress will be not enough, Thunberg added.
Trump and the Swedish teenager already squared off at a U.N. climate summit in September in New York. This involved glares from Thunberg, a feigning of indifference from Trump, and Twitter jabs by both.
This year’s World Economic Forum is focused on climate change and corporate responsibility.
The U.S. president, who is running for a second term in office while facing impeachment proceedings against him back in Washington, used the stage in Davos to tout the strong performance of the U.S. economy, and to take credit for it.
“Years of economic stagnation have given way to a roaring geyser of economic opportunity,” he said.
Deregulating the economy, cutting taxes, and striking new trade deals with China, Canada and Mexico had created economic opportunities for ordinary workers and their families, by bringing jobs back to the U.S.
“Today I hold up the American model as an example to the world,” Trump said, calling on other leaders to always “put their citizens first.”
World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab thanked Trump for bringing a sense of optimism to Davos.
However, a few hours earlier, when Schwab opened the 50th edition of the summit meeting, he warned in a speech that “the world is in a state of emergency and the window to act is closing.”