Climate and extreme weather take center stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos
AccuWeather Founder and Executive Chairman Dr. Joel Myers joined the WEF community in Davos this year for the launch of his new book, “Invisible Iceberg: When Climate and Weather Shaped History,“ and hosted a discussion at Goals House with other leaders in the climate and sustainability space.
AccuWeather Founder and Executive Chairman Dr. Joel Myers joined the World Economic Forum community in Davos this year for the launch of his new book.
Weather was a hot topic at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos this year, and not just because of the freezing temperatures at the Swiss mountain resort.
WEF, a non-profit, independent foundation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, brings together leaders from business, cultural, political and social spheres and has evolved into a global platform that addresses pressing global issues. The Forum’s Annual Meeting, held in Davos, Switzerland, serves as a platform for dialogue among leaders and is designed to address the world’s biggest challenges.
Davos, Switzerland. (Credit: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg)
One of the key themes at Davos this year was discussing a long-term strategy for climate, nature and energy. Extreme weather was identified as the number one long-term risk in the 2024 World Economic Forum Global Risks Report, and as the frequency and severity of extreme weather and climate events increase, so do their direct economic costs.
A logo of the World Economic Forum WEF is seen in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 19, 2024. (Photo by Lian Yi/Xinhua via Getty Images)
“Humanity is in crisis,” said Gim Huay Neo, Managing Director of the Centre for Nature and Climate at the World Economic Forum. In a session at the Annual Meeting, Neo noted, “2023 was the hottest year on record… extreme drought, extreme rainfall, heatwaves, wildfires, these effects will get worse as the Earth gets closer to and even crosses over tipping points.”
AccuWeather Founder and Executive Chairman Dr. Joel Myers joined the WEF community in Davos this year for the launch of his new book, “Invisible Iceberg: When Climate and Weather Shaped History,“ and hosted a discussion at Goals House with other leaders in the climate and sustainability space about what we can learn from extreme weather and climate events throughout history, and how business and government leaders can be better prepared to handle them in the future.
“This book is about what happened in history and how important weather and climate were in determining the course and the pathway that got us here. Now we're dealing with the real challenge of warming—a lot of it being caused by human activities. There's a lot of talk today about the warming, but what is it going to mean specifically? That's what is not getting enough attention," said Dr. Myers."
AccuWeather Founder and Executive Chairman Dr. Joel Myers joined the WEF community in Davos this year for the launch of his new book, “Invisible Iceberg: When Climate and Weather Shaped History,“ and hosted a discussion at Goals House.
Texas Tech University’s Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist and one of the most effective communicators on the issue of climate change, also urged that when we talk about environmental crises, it is important to connect them to the things that matter most to us: food, shelter, the natural world, and the people we love.
Building on this point, Dr. Myers went on to say “For example, if you live in Arizona, how will climate change affect you? Will it mean that the number of days over 110 degrees becomes so high over the next 20 or 30 years that you will need to relocate? How will that affect air conditioner use and the local energy grid? Or, if you are a company planning a market expansion, will changing climate and weather create major issues in the location where you want to build your new facility? This is the kind of applied scientific information that I believe people want and need to know.”
“The secret sauce is leadership,” said IKEA CEO Jesper Brodin, echoing that sentiment in his own address to world leaders at the WEF. “Leadership to accept that responsibility to commit based on the knowledge that the alternative is absolutely unthinkable.”
When asked what advice he would give to the Davos community, Dr. Myers added, “There are a lot of the brilliant people here talking about the right issues, but I think there's more we can do specifically, as I mentioned, to focus on what the warming is going to mean, where it's going to be more critical than elsewhere. “
Former Vice President Al Gore echoed Dr. Myers’ concerns at the TIME dinner in Davos in saying “We’re in a very difficult situation. In perhaps the best speech ever given in the English language, Abraham Lincoln said that the occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we will save our country. The word thrall is an ancient form of voluntary enslavement, and the application that came to my mind is that we are in a sense voluntarily enslaved to a fossil fuel economy – it is 80 percent of the energy we use, and we're trying to break out of this.”
Dr. Myers concluded his advice saying “The demand for energy keeps increasing and AI is going to exacerbate that. So how do we meet this challenge? Certainly, a lot of people are working on that, but we can't stop it. It already exists. The CO2 and methane in the atmosphere continues to increase. So how do we understand what that is going to mean and then develop policies and allow companies and governments to plan? Specifically, I don't see enough attention on that. So that’s where AccuWeather is focusing.”
“Invisible Iceberg: When Climate and Weather Shaped History” is currently the #1 New Release in Weather on Amazon, and is also available from Barnes & Noble and wherever good books are sold.
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