Climate change and the environment is top of the agenda at the World Economic Forum at Davos this week, in large part due to Greta Thunberg – Time magazine’s 2019 'Person of the Year' – and other teenage activists from across the world.
Donald Trump – and his entourage of seven helicopters – was there to talk about "prophets of doom" and his "spectacular" economic turnaround in the US. Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz from Columbia University slammed Trump’s speech:
He managed to say absolutely zero on climate change. Meanwhile we’re going to roast.
LafargeHolcim – the world's largest cement company and parent of Aggregate Industries – was also there. "Head of Group Communications and Branding" told those prepared to listen "about running a socially responsible and #sustainable business in the 21st century" – which is quite a leap, given LafargeHolcim is Acting in a way that would "wipe out most life on the planet", pumping out 135 million tonnes of CO2 in 2018, up from 131 million in 2017, up from 127 million in 2016.
What will make businesses like LafargeHolcim be #sustainable in the future, not just talk #sustainable – if humanity's greatest existential crisis has had no impact on their emissions? As Greta Thunberg remarked:
The climate and the environment is a hot topic right now thanks to young people pushing. But if you see it from another perspective, pretty much nothing has been done.
What might make businesses act is their own existential threat. A recent survey found "the impact of climate change has soared up the CEO agenda", with two thirds of UK bosses worried that climate change could threaten their business:
Achieving net zero by 2050 will demand innovation and transformation at an unprecedented scale and speed and will require business to take positive action.
Others also sense a change:
I have come to Davos for well over a decade and I see behind the scenes, among top executives, a huge change in perception of the risk of climate change.
However, it's one thing perceiving a risk and another thing doing enough about it. Here's what Greta Thunberg had to say at Davos, with her closing remarks below; wise words from a 17-year old:
I wonder, what will you tell your children was the reason to fail and leave them facing a climate chaos that you knowingly brought upon them? That it seemed so bad for the economy that we decided to resign the idea of securing future living conditions without even trying?
Our house is still on fire. Your inaction is fuelling the flames by the hour. And we are telling you to act as if you loved your children above all else.
Last month Greta Thunberg was guest editor for BBC Radio 4's Today programme; here's the video of when she spoke to Sir David Attenborough.
