Post Davos: The Elite’s New Climate Narrative Has Dangerous Flaws

Post Davos, most corporate elites seem to accept that climate change is occurring — a welcome change from the era of denial. This might seem like a big win, but let’s not start celebrating just yet. Climate change isn’t like a virus and once there’s agreement on the cause, we can simply move forward with the cure — there are a lot of moving parts. The key point is not that there’s agreement that climate change is occurring, but rather, is there agreement on the scientific urgency to deal with it. Without clarity and agreement on the timeline, we’re no further ahead — we’ve just changed the focus on what is being denied.

Davos Switzerland, January 2020.

Imagine having a policymaker that believes something that is simply wrong — for example, a senior health administrator who believes that the Coronavirus can only be passed along by people with blue eyes. That would lead to some pretty terrible science and could put the lives of millions of people at risk. Another example with devastating consequences is a policymaker who ignores the scientific consensus on the need to preserve our remaining carbon budget and designs climate policies with a primary focus on preventing a financial collapse.

As a side note, when discussing economic policy, let’s not forget that capitalism doesn’t need our help to create a financial crisis…the system is inherently unstable, especially when regulations are removed. Just think about what happened in the 1920’s and then again with the neoliberal deregulation campaign that ran from the 1980’s until the crash of 2008…and beyond. Many would argue that capitalism itself is the crisis but that discussion is for another time. Let’s return to the new Post Davos Narrative.

Read the Medium story by Brad Zarnett - “Post Davos: The Elite’s New Climate Narrative Has Dangerous Flaws.”