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Global Elites Pound Away at Climate Change as World Economic Forum in Davos Reaches Mid Week Mark
Edited by; TJVNews.com
At a press conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, trade ministers from a handful of nations have announced an initiative to promote trade policies that support action on climate change, according to an AP report on Thursday.
Their aims include ensuring better access globally to clean technologies that would reduce emissions and promoting products that were made in line with climate and sustainability goals.
Speaking Thursday at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering, Ecuador’s production minister Julio José Prado said the discussion on aligning trade policies with climate goals is “way overdue.”
The AP reported that he added, “As trade ministers, we need to deliver both economic results and sustainable results … we should have done this years ago, but this is the time for action, and it’s time to start these sorts of coalitions.”
Valdis Dombrovskis, the European Commission’s executive vice president and commissioner for trade, said countries “need to do a better job in terms of joining those different dots” between trade, development and climate action, according to the AP report.
The coalition is being co-led by trade ministers from Ecuador, the European Union, Kenya and New Zealand and over 50 nations have joined the initiative.
According to an astute analysis Liz Hoffman at Semafor.com wrote that the prognostications made at the WEF in years past are “almost always wrong. It’s too optimistic ahead of crashes. Despite its global attendance list, it missed the rise of nationalism and economic balkanization. It’s vulnerable to groupthink.”
Hoffman added that a “short list of things the Davos crowd missed were the 2008 crash, Brexit and the election of Donald Trump in 2016, slowing global growth in 2018 and 2019, and the pandemic in 2020.
She observes that “so far this year, the vibe is dour, and I’d expect that cement to harden by the end of the week.”
“It does seem a little more downcast than usual,” Lazard’s Peter Orszag told CNBC, before going on to prove my point. “I think the best reason for hope is all the hand-wringing, because the Davos convention is almost inevitably wrong.”
Twitter user Walter Kirn offered his opinion on Thursday by saying, “What strikes me most about the WEF is how little disagreement there is. The largest matters on earth are at stake (supposedly) yet the conferees don’t argue. They don’t debate. All points seem smugly settled. It’s an ego orgy, a great self-satisfied mutual grope.”
Speaking Thursday at the Davos confab, former Vice President Al Gore said data from a new project tracking greenhouse gases suggests oil and gas companies are emitting three times as much as they report, the AP reported.
The report indicated that he presented findings from a tool called Climate TRACE that can help hold countries to their climate pledges and let companies compare which manufacturers are emitting the most greenhouse gases when making decisions on where to source supplies.
It was unveiled at United Nations climate change conference last November.
The former vice president in the Bill Clinton administration said that “for the first time, we know exactly where the pollution is coming from,” according to the AP report. Of oil and gas producers, Gore said, “Most other industries are not this far off.”
The inventory was created by researchers, data analysts and non-governmental organizations from around the world using satellite data, remote sensing and artificial intelligence, the AP reported. It’s open to the public and free to use.
With many European leaders fearing a clean energy law that benefits American-made green technology, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte says the world should be happy the U.S. is acting on climate change, the AP report.
In a panel session Thursday about global energy, Rutte said that “we have for years told the U.S.: ‘You have to step up on Paris. You have to step up on climate change.’ Now, they are doing it.”
He added that the Inflation Reduction Act aims to close the gap on Paris climate goals, “so let’s be happy about it,” the AP reported.
He says there are some unintended consequences, but European officials are working with the Biden administration and he’s “not pessimistic.”
Some fear European companies will be boxed out of the U.S. market and denied green tech investment, according to the AP report.
West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin said the law doesn’t intend to hurt allies but get clean technologies to scale quickly.
To calm geopolitical unrest and help the environment, he said that “you better be able to do it quicker, faster and better than any place in the world and then share it with your friends. That’s what we’re going to do, “ the AP reported.
Ilham Kadri, CEO of Belgium-based chemical company Solvay SA, said the U.S. legislation “is not the enemy, it is the best thing which could happen to Europe.” The AP reported that companies like hers require constant energy, and she warns that Europe has a “huge risk of deindustrialization.”
Russia largely cut off natural gas to Europe. The AP reported that energy prices soared, leading energy-intensive industries like fertilizer and steel to scale back production because it was no longer profitable.
U.K. opposition leader Keir Starmer also said the U.S. law is not “just a challenge.”
The AP reported that he said it’s “the single biggest opportunity we’ve been given for a very long time to transition, to take the jobs and opportunities of the future.”
Greece’s prime minister says he still believes it’s possible to resolve his country’s differences with Turkey by speaking with Turkey’s president, stressing the neighbors will not go to war.
Relations between the two NATO allies have been particularly strained over the past two years, with the rhetoric from Turkish officials alarming. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly said Turkish troops could descend on Greece “suddenly one night” and even threatened to hit Athens with ballistic missiles, the AP reported.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Thursday during a session at the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland, that “we will not go to war with Turkey.”
He added that “we should be able to sit down with Turkey as reasonable adults and resolve our main difference, which is the delimitation of maritime zones in the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean.”
