Green Is the Word: Davos Diary

(Bloomberg) -- Hello again from the Swiss Alps. Here’s the second installment of Bloomberg’s ‘Davos Diary’ from the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every day through Jan. 24.

The gathering has truly gone green this year with multiple panels, speeches and studies devoted to threat of climate change and what businesses should be doing about it.

For activist Greta Thunberg, the concern is that talk isn’t being matched by action.

“Pretty much nothing has been done, since the global emissions of CO2 have not reduced,” the 17-year-old said in Davos. 

She will have been disappointed albeit unsurprised to hear President Donald Trump speak later in the day. He had arrived by helicopter to be greeted by the words “act on climate,” carved into a snowy mountainside.

While he spent most of his speech highlighting his management of the U.S. economic expansion, Trump also touted the benefits of soaring American oil and gas production and made a thinly veiled attack on those like Thunberg who warn about looming environmental catastrophe.

“We must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse,” Trump said. “They are the heirs of yesterday’s foolish fortune tellers.”

Trump aside, part of the dilemma for those in Davos is they don’t yet know how much economic growth they are willing to sacrifice to deal with the risks of rising temperatures, according to a Deutsche Bank report being promoted at the meeting.

And a survey of CEOs by PricewaterhouseCoopers found only 24% are “extremely concerned” about climate change. Tellingly, Thunberg’s panel drew only a handful of the energy executives chiefly responsible for warming the planet.

Still, Davos regular Marco Dunand, the head of Mercuria Energy Trading, one of the largest oil traders, says the delegates are up to meeting Thunberg’s challenge.

“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,” he said. “It’s not just talk: it’s translating into billions of dollars in investments in the energy transition.”

And BlackRock’s Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink told a Bloomberg Live event that companies do need to step up and develop “real long-term planning.”

My colleagues Josh Wingrove, Javier Blas and Alan Crawford deliver the full story of the Trump-Thunberg showdown. 

Bloomberg Green

Tuesday marks the launch of Bloomberg Green, changing the way we cover climate change. Our editor-in-chief, John Micklethwait, explains why — and don’t forget check our live climate scoreboard for the world. 

Who Is Talking Wednesday

Temperatures predicted to be between -7°C and 6°C; depth of snow: 51 centimeters.
All times are local in Davos. Click here to watch the live broadcast.

• 10:30 a.m. | Finance Panel with U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, UBS’s Axel Weber, IMF’s Kristalina Georgieva
• 11:00 a.m. | Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez gives special address
• 11:30 a.m. | European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen gives special address
• 2:15 p.m. | Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam addresses WEF
• 6 p.m. | Iraqi President Barham Salih gives special address
• Be on the lookout for Bloomberg Television’s interviews with
  • UBS Chairman Weber
  • Barclays CEO Jes Staley
  • Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam
  • Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman
  • Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan
  • U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao
  • China Securities Regulatory Commission Vice Chairman Fang Xinghai

Catch Up 

• Trump’s victory lap | Trump boasted about his handling of the U.S. economy in a speech to business and political leaders in Davos, hours before his impeachment trial started in Washington.
• Opening doors | Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng said his country’s trade deal with the U.S. won’t hurt rival exporting nations as complaints mount from governments that were left out of the agreement.
• Vowing to stay | Hong Kong Chief Executive Officer Carrie Lam told Bloomberg she has no plans to step aside to help resolve protests that have racked the city: “I will do my utmost to stay in this position to help arrest the current situation.” 
• Austerity bashing | The co-leader of Germany’s Greens sided with the U.S. in demanding more spending from Berlin, saying that Chancellor Angela Merkel should drop her balanced-budget “fetishism.”
• Flight shame | Would you take a 12-hour train instead of a 1 hour 40 minute flight to lower your carbon footprint? Our Quicktake team went by rail from London to Davos to find out how concern over global warming is changing travel habits.

• Speed read | Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told Bloomberg that countries which fail to attract immigrants will lose out as the global tech industry continues to grow  Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri predicted “massive productivity growth” from 2028 | Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei played down the threat that the U.S. will impose even stricter sanctions against his company | Charles Li, CEO of Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing, shrugged off concerns about the outbreak of a deadly virus | Joseph Stiglitz says “significant haircuts” are coming for Argentine debt | SAP’s co-CEO Jennifer Morgan says companies will see stakeholder activism spread to consumers and employees | Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat said many branch jobs are still safe from machines| Guggenheim’s Scott Minerd likened the inflation of asset prices caused by loose monetary policy to a “ ponzi scheme”

Davos Data Download 

Davos is cloaked in white, but its agenda is green: Environmentalism — fighting climate change in particular — has emerged as one of the biggest priorities of this year’s meeting.

Quote of the Day

Trump “loves it here,” Eurasia Group founder Ian Bremmer said. “The delegates here may not like Trump, but they like his policies. They like the regulatory rollback, they like his Cabinet, they like his tax policy.”

One Last Thing...

This is the 50th time World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab has convened an annual meeting. The gathering was initially called the European Management Forum and the first in 1971 drew around 450 participants versus the 3,000 official delegates of today. It ran far longer — two weeks — with the first few days assigned to discussing “The Challenge of the Future.” Economist John Kenneth Galbraith was among the speakers. The only year the meeting left the slopes was in 2002 when the it moved to New York in solidarity with that city after 9/11. Aside from Schwab and his wife, Hilde, there’s at least one person who was present at the inception and scheduled to attend again this year. That’s Wilfried Stoll of Germany’s Festo Holding GmbH.

--With assistance from Samuel Dodge, Chris Reiter, Iain Rogers, Aaron Rutkoff, Demetrios Pogkas and Gem Atkinson.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Zoe Schneeweiss at zschneeweiss@bloomberg.net, Fergal O'BrienCraig Stirling

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