The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland brings together influential leaders including politicians, prominent business leaders, celebrities, journalists, and academics to discuss some of the world’s most pressing issues. 

Every year, critics claim that the event is an out-of-touch gathering of the global elite while others maintain that the Forum presents an opportunity for collective dialogue and a platform for promoting awareness about current global challenges.  

The theme of this year’s conference was “Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World.” Through panel sessions, guest speeches, business meetings, and networking opportunities, the event explored the topic of sustainability in relation to six core areas: ecology, economy, society, industry, technology, and geopolitics. 

With sustainability at the centre of Davos 2020, the most anticipated speakers were two individuals that arguably stand at opposite ends of the climate debate: U.S. President Donald Trump and climate activist Greta Thunberg. 

Trump spent his half-hour-long speech boasting about his administration’s successes and accomplishments. He spoke about the recent growth in the American economy, and took credit for wage increases, historically low unemployment rates, and the pursuit of “extraordinary” trade deals, claiming that his administration was responsible for “the great American comeback.”

However, Trump’s speech made  no mention of climate change and the growing global demand for climate action, nor did it reference any plans to address future challenges relating to sustainability. The only notable mention relating to the theme of sustainability was when Trump announced that the U.S. would be joining the WEF’s “1 trillion trees” initiative. The project aims to promote reforestation worldwide and has gained widespread support from politicians, business leaders, and climate activists. 

While Trump’s support for the initiative is encouraging, planting trees alone is not nearly enough to offset current rates of global carbon emissions. To have a significant impact, the initiative must be pursued simultaneously with other global commitments to lower emissions.

Greta Thunberg’s speech, on the other hand, took a strong stance against global leaders’ inadequate response to current climate challenges, emphasizing that targets to merely “lower emissions” are insufficient. Rather, she argued that global carbon emissions must stop entirely. She criticized government leaders and companies for focusing on “net zero” emissions, and instead demanded the need to reach “real zero” emission targets, meaning no emissions at all. With Trump giving minimal importance to the climate crisis, and Greta Thunberg expressing “our house is still on fire,” Davos attendees were presented with two extremely opposing views. 

Nevertheless, the discussion among attendees did not focus on whether or not countries need to better regulate carbon emissions, as there is a fairly broad consensus on the need for global climate action. Rather, the discussion sought to identify the most effective and cost-efficient ways of dealing with climate change for large private entities and governments alike. Large corporations are beginning to understand that business can’t be conducted as usual, and that new measures need to be adopted to address current climate challenges. Certain companies, such as Microsoft, have been at the forefront of the fight against climate change by going beyond net zero emission targets and instead aiming to be carbon negative – by 2030 in the case of Microsoft. At the same time, other companies still oppose a carbon tax and the tracking of carbon footprints, thus making cooperation more difficult. 

While recent advocacy for climate action has been led by youth at a grassroots level, the actual direction and pace of change will unfortunately be decided by the big decision-makers at the top. Politicians and business leaders must utilize conferences such as Davos to more precisely discuss innovative measures to address the current climate emergency. Otherwise, such events and conferences will continue to be seen as mere gatherings of hypocritical elites who are all talk and no action.