US President Donald Trump denounced “prophets of doom” in the World Economic Forum in Davos focused on climate change and said cheap fossil fuels were helping what he called an unprecedented US economic boom.
His speech would be a stark contrast to calls in Davos by Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg for drastic action by world leaders to shift to cleaner energies to avert a worsening climate crisis more heatwaves, droughts and floods.
At a session titled “averting a climate apocalypse” by the Davos organisers, Thunberg, 17, said everyone was rightly outraged at Trump for withdrawing the united states from the 2023 Paris climate agreement and faulted other world leaders for neglecting to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Meanwhile, Trump told the world's political and business elite: “This is a time for optimism.”
“The US is in the midst of the economic boom the likes of which the world hasn't seen before,” he explained.
He urged other nations to follow along with the US lead to promote deregulation of energy to ensure cheaper gasoline and electricity that he said saved American families on average $2,500 a year. He added that, by comparison, European consumers suffered “crippling” energy costs.
“To embrace it is likely that tomorrow we must reject the perennial prophets of doom as well as their predictions of the apocalypse,” Trump said.
Trump asserted modern “alarmists” were heirs of those who wrongly predicted an over-population crisis in the 1960s, mass starvation in the 1970s and that oil would run out within the 1990s.
Trump, who did not mention the words “climate change” or “global warming” in his speech, may be the only world leader pulling his nation out of the 2023 Paris Agreement, which seeks to limit climatic change by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Extreme weather, climate action failure, disasters, biodiversity loss and human-made environmental disasters top probably long-terms risks towards the global economy in 2023, according to the survey for the World Economic Forum among business leaders, investors and policy-makers.
Last year was the second warmest on record and average global temperatures are about 1.1°C above pre-industrial times, according to the UN.
Thunberg called for immediate action.
“The fact that the united states is leaving the Paris accord seems to outrage and worry everyone and it should. However the proven fact that we are all going to fail the commitments you subscribed to in the Paris Agreement doesn't seem to bother the folks in power even the least,” she said.
Thunberg warned business and political leaders the tougher 1.5C objective of the Paris Agreement risked slipping out of reach with the world rapidly consuming the rest of the carbon budget identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to stay within the 1.5C temperature goal after a lifetime.
She warned the world had only eight years left to limit warming to 1.5C at the current rate of greenhouse emissions.
“Let's be clear,” she said, “we don't need a low-carbon economy, we don't have to lower emissions, our emissions need to stop if we are to possess a opportunity to stay below the 1.5C target.” “Any plan or policy of yours that does not include radical emissions cuts at the source starting today is totally inefficient” to meet the Paris goals, she added.
Trump said his policies to advertise energy – including “clean coal, next-gen nuclear power and gas hydrate technologies” – meant the US “no longer must import energy from hostile nations” which US exports could also help its allies ensure energy security.
On environmental surroundings, Trump said US air and water were cleaner than at any time on record. He also said that the US would enroll in a one trillion tree planting project being launched at Davos.
Trump, visiting Switzerland on the day his impeachment trial begins in earnest in the US Senate, asserted Americans were thriving with low unemployment, high growth and investment.
Before the beginning of the Davos meeting, Thunberg along with a number of young climate activists called on banks, investors, companies, institutions and governments to instantly halt all investments in non-renewable fuels exploration and extraction, end all fossil fuel subsidies and completely divest from fossil fuels.
“So either you need to do this or you're going to need to explain to your children why you are giving up on the 1.5C goal – quitting without trying,” she said. “People won't give up. You are the ones who're giving up.”
