Davos puts Climate on the Back Burner

Davos puts Climate on the Back Burner - The New York Times

Climate Forward

“Yeah, the world is going to end, but I’m still going to vacation.”

Here at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the most revealing discussions often happen not on the main stage, but at the myriad side events that transform this Swiss ski town into a high-minded networking event.

Case in point: the annual luncheon hosted by Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff, who is plowing some of his personal fortune into efforts to plant a trillion trees and protect the oceans.

This afternoon, as a few hundred Davos attendees ate vegetarian fare under a geodesic dome, Benioff interviewed the OpenAI chief executive, Sam Altman, about his vision for the future.

Altman, who is investing in fusion power along with artificial intelligence, described a world where energy was cheap and abundant enough to pull huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere.

“Unfortunately, people are going to have to just do carbon capture at some point,” Altman said. “You can’t do that very easily with current energy prices, and we don’t have enough clean energy to do that. If fusion power works, I think you can undo a huge amount of climate damage with a clean source of energy.”

After that conversation, Benioff invited Jane Goodall and the musicians Will.i.am and Sting to join him onstage. (This is a classic Davos move.)

Will.i.am had a darker vision for the potential of A.I., invoking the specter of a digital intelligence that turns on its maker.

“What happens when the A.I. is asked to figure out the solution to this climate thing and says, ‘It’s you,?’” he mulled. “What happens then?”

Goodall, who turns 90 in a few months, quickly chimed in.

“We humans,” she said, “are not exempt from extinction.”

‘I’m still going to vacation’

The Davos program changes from year to year, but the agita that animates this gathering is always the same: The issues at the top of the agenda are a) the ones that powerful people are most afraid of, and b) the ones they think they can make money from.

Last year it was cryptocurrency and the war in Ukraine. This year it is A.I. and the possibility of another Trump presidency. Climate change has largely been relegated to the back burner.

Despite the fact that 2023 was the hottest year in history, despite the fact that the oceans are experiencing a prolonged heat wave, despite the fact that extreme weather is wreaking havoc around the globe, the Davos set remains consumed with other crises du jour.

“They are not talking a lot about climate, about biodiversity, about this crisis at all, and that is not acceptable” Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, a climate activist from Chad, told me. “There are many crises around the world. I understand that. But many of the crises are natural resources based, are climate driven. Why are we not talking about that?”

There is a sense that however profound the climate crisis challenges might be, the stakes are not yet urgent enough to warrant drastic action.

“I think there’s a little bit of sort of climate catastrophe fatigue,” Andres Gluski, chief executive of AES, a major renewable energy company, told me over breakfast. “People are like, ‘Yeah, yeah, the world is going to end. But I’m still going to vacation on the Greek islands or the Bahamas.’”

‘We need to act’

This shortsightedness isn’t just a symptom of the ultra-privileged Davos set. Climate change is the ultimate long-term challenge, requiring huge investments in efforts that may not turn a profit for years. Overhauling energy production, agriculture, transportation, heavy industry and more will require patient capital and consistent regulatory frameworks, two things that are often in short supply.

“Human beings aren’t well adapted to reacting to long-term changes,” Gluski said. “Our brains are basically the same as a Paleolithic hunter. It’s like, ‘Throw spear, run from tiger.’ We’re not good at thinking, ‘Three years from now my cave might collapse.’”

Climate conversations weren’t entirely absent from the main program. The World Bank president, Ajay Banga, spoke about the need to bring renewable energy to Africa. On a panel I moderated, shown at the top of this newsletter, John Kerry, president Biden’s departing climate envoy, talked up the agreement from COP28 to transition away from fossil fuels.

“Climate is not at the top of the agenda, but it’s not off the agenda either,” Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told me during a roundtable discussion. “That represents progress. It shows that despite the geopolitics, despite everything else, people understand we need to act.”

Gas kept the lights on as Texas froze

Texas has invested more in wind and solar power than any other state in recent years. But during this winter’s cold snap, it was natural gas that played a key role in keeping the lights on.

As the mercury dropped, many Texans were probably thinking about the winter storm of 2021, when power failures were blamed for some 240 deaths. Disinformation spread then, wrongly blaming wind energy. While some wind turbines froze in 2021 and coal plants were knocked offline, it was frozen natural gas plants that were the main problem.

This year, starting on Sunday, wind chills dipped below 0 degrees Fahrenheit in some Texas cities and demand for electricity surged. During those peaks, the grid leaned heavily on gas, according to data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid operator. Thanks to newly weatherized equipment and calls for conservation, the grid performed well.

In areas of Texas where temperatures dipped the lowest, it has been frigid but sunny. Solar power generation continued, though it provided a small share of total electricity generated. In Texas, winds die down in winter.

“We still rely a lot on natural gas,” said David Spence, a professor of law and regulation at the University of Texas at Austin.

While some experts say natural gas acts as insurance for renewables, others point out that solar and wind offer their own role in reducing the amount of gas needed to power through brutal weather. Last summer, for instance, wind and solar energy propped up Texas during an intense heat wave.

— Dionne Searcey

Read the full article here.

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David Gelles reports on climate change and leads The Times’s Climate Forward newsletter and events series. More about David Gelles

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