Juno News - May 22, 2022


Climate protesters say WEF meeting is a “corporate Disneyland”


Episode Stats

Length

6 minutes

Words per Minute

169.69897

Word Count

1,026

Sentence Count

56


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I'm coming to you from Davos, Switzerland, where the World Economic Forum's 2022 annual meeting
00:00:05.100 is about to begin. The thousands of VIPs, business and corporate elites coming in from all over the
00:00:10.960 world are descending on Davos, an alpine town in Switzerland, as we speak. But it isn't just them
00:00:16.960 who are here. Also, dozens of protesters gathering under an Antifa flag, having an impromptu concert,
00:00:23.140 steps from the promenade, which is where a lot of the action is taking place on the main drag of
00:00:27.700 Davos. Now, unsurprisingly, a lot of them are here to protest what they say is climate justice. And
00:00:33.760 it's odd because if you look at the Davos agenda, you can see that a great many sessions are
00:00:38.520 specifically about climate, about going to net zero, transitioning away from oil and gas, paying
00:00:43.680 attention to nature and conservation, all of these things. Well, oddly, the climate activists don't
00:00:48.500 believe that any of it is genuine. Many of them believe that it is, as this one protester's sign
00:00:53.300 said, no more than a corporate Disneyland. One woman I spoke to is part of a seniors group from
00:00:59.100 Switzerland that actually walked to Davos, and they feel that everyone who flew here is a big old
00:01:03.920 climate hypocrite. So what do you think of all of the people that fly in from around the world to
00:01:09.420 talk about climate? Flying is some of the baddest, of course. And I would forbid in Europe, because we
00:01:18.080 could go by train, we make better trains, who goes in the night, and then you are there in the morning.
00:01:24.380 But, and I would give some contingents for other countries, for USA and so on, you know, not only for
00:01:35.800 holiday in the Caribbean or so. But if you want to see the other cultures, especially for young people,
00:01:43.240 I would say every five years, a contingent to go in another Earth's place, or in another culture, yeah.
00:01:51.580 Now, do you believe that, because they talk about climate a lot at this conference, they have panels
00:01:55.500 about it, discussions about it. Do you believe, as a climate activist, that they actually care about
00:02:00.100 climate at the World Economic Forum?
00:02:02.540 I don't think, no. I don't believe. They say, and they did standing ovation when Greta was talking,
00:02:10.140 and said, you have to be afraid of, you must be afraid, the house is burning, she says. And the
00:02:17.460 people find it's nice what she's saying, but they didn't change anything. And this is the great
00:02:23.680 mistake, because the WEF is founded by making something better for the world. But we don't see
00:02:32.520 anything better. Since this, all this year, I think it's about 50 years, the WEF is existing,
00:02:39.640 but it doesn't change.
00:02:40.900 Now, these comments were echoed by one of the organizers who took aim at what seems like good
00:02:45.800 intentions by a lot of the people at Davos, but no real action. It's been going on for years,
00:02:50.980 and nothing has materialized.
00:02:52.840 Now, what brings you out here today?
00:02:54.960 I'm an organizer of the STRIKE WEF here, so we did a protest hike from Kubelis to Davos
00:03:00.100 over two days now, and we protested for climate justice.
00:03:04.080 Now, I've seen the agenda for this week. They have a lot of discussion about climate,
00:03:08.160 about net zero, about transitioning away from oil and gas. Are these things good in your idea?
00:03:13.500 Yeah, I think the intention is good, but we, like, we demand a big change, because we think
00:03:18.300 we have to take big steps to, like, tackle the climate crisis and the ecological crisis
00:03:24.260 in general. And we don't really see that the people actually want to change some values
00:03:30.100 in the economy, like, actually bring nature at the core and the humans and happiness, like,
00:03:36.620 just that this is in the core of economy and everything evolves around it. We still see
00:03:41.560 that profit and consumption and growth is really, really important. And also, like,
00:03:48.400 being ecological is, like, yeah, kind of fits sometimes into it. And then greenwashing is also
00:03:54.240 a big problem. So, like, we want that these people at the WEF really want to do something for the
00:03:59.920 climate and not just, like, do greenwashing and that it's good for their image, really.
00:04:05.540 Do you think capitalism is the problem then? Because there are a lot of companies here that have
00:04:09.400 their big displays. Do you think capitalism itself is the problem?
00:04:13.260 I think capitalism has some good things also. I'm not a full, like, enemy of capitalism. I think
00:04:20.960 there's some good things. But I think there's also a lot of things that we have to change. And
00:04:26.020 there's also a lot of, like, new systems that are really interesting, I think. And it's not about
00:04:32.460 communism. It's like a whole different, like, with new ideas and new values. And
00:04:39.020 like, just to think about, like, in the past 50 years, like, we really concentrated ourselves
00:04:45.500 on the, um, how is it called in German? It's BP. The, like, how much, like, the money flow,
00:04:53.300 kind of. Yeah. And also about growth and consumption. And I think it did a lot of good for humanity.
00:05:01.320 Like, we have a lot more, like, the life standard became bigger, but it also destroyed nature a lot. And
00:05:07.700 we're, have a climate crisis. And I think we have to rethink the values that we, we actually,
00:05:16.360 like, our economy is based around and have to, like, make nature a priority. And I think this was
00:05:22.800 missing in the last 100 years. And we really have to think about this.
00:05:27.320 Now, not only are these climate justice protesters not convinced that climate is truly on the agenda
00:05:33.240 of Davos, they actually believe it is, as this one chant in German suggested, a gathering of
00:05:39.260 murderers. Or, to put another song to the mix, someone who said, to the tune of Yellow Submarine,
00:05:44.560 this. What do we want? Climate justice. When do we want it? Now. We'll continue to cover the
00:05:58.920 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting. For True North in Davos, I'm Andrew Lutton.