Liberal Forum

World Economic Forum Panelist Thinks It’s Good People Can’t Afford Electricity And Basic Living Standards, Helping With Decarbonization John Scott, Head of Sustainability, Zurich Insurance Group, recently indicated that people’s growing issues with paying for basic necessities is actually in some ways good as it helps with achieving harmony in meeting global decarbonization goals.Scott explained this during a forum discussing the World Economic Forum’s recently published Global Risks Report 2024, on January 10th.

 The WinePress reported on the official report the day it came out, noting that some of the main tenets include more environmentalist panic, economic woe namely for the low- and middle-class, international division and war; and specifically this so-called war on “truth,” the WEF wrote, adding, “As polarization grows and technological risks remain unchecked, ‘truth’ will come under pressure.”During a Q&A session discussing the findings in the report, Scott was asked about collaboration in tackling climate change and how its not keeping pace with the Paris Agreement, and was asked, “how do you see real collaboration that keeps up with the pace of the risks happening, given everything else that we are talking about with climate change?”Scott had this to say:

[…] I think it’s just a reality that the world just doesn’t get organized by International cooperation anymore, you know it’s fragmented, it’s in flux. […] You know we talked about the cost of living crisis, you know some people’s, most people’s electricity bills are so high that they’re desperately trying to find some way of getting off the grid or removing themselves from the cost of purchasing electricity, so I think it’s these kind of things that you know it gives us some hope and optimism actually, that we can deal with some of these global risks when we see the global cooperation at an international level not really working so well.

 For context, earlier in the conversation Scott reminded viewers of the settled agreement to lower the earth’s temperature by 1.5 degrees, and emphasized “individual and collective action.” Scott listed a number of suggestions as New Year’s resolutions:

Perhaps some of you have changed your diet, maybe you’ve moved away from meat, maybe you [go] to a lower carbon diet. Some of you maybe been making choices about your travel for the coming year, reducing your carbon footprint that way. Maybe some of you have even thought about buying an electric vehicle.You know all of these individually are just drops in the ocean, but with critical mass this really starts moving the needle in terms of decarbonization, so consumer behavior [is] a very interesting risk mitigation.