Juno News - May 26, 2022


The WEF is out-of-touch with those affected by its policies


Episode Stats

Length

4 minutes

Words per Minute

207.12695

Word Count

1,023

Sentence Count

35

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Andrew Lawton coming to you from Davos, Switzerland, where the World Economic Forum's
00:00:03.980 2022 annual meeting is taking place. One of the biggest criticisms leveled towards the World
00:00:09.160 Economic Forum and to a lot of the policies that are discussed here is how out of touch they are
00:00:13.960 with not just the struggles of the people around the world, the ones who are governed and affected
00:00:18.120 by these policies, but also how different regionally places in the world are from the
00:00:24.000 interests that are being represented here. One notable example of this is energy. It's all easy
00:00:29.600 to talk about the big picture pie-in-the-sky ideas of moving towards clean and green energy,
00:00:34.340 which by the way never seems to include nuclear for some reason, but that's a topic for another
00:00:38.960 video. But again, when they talk about the infrastructure required for solar, for wind,
00:00:43.640 a lot of the times they're talking about wanting to do away entirely with fossil fuels, with
00:00:48.760 traditional energy like oil and gas, the backbone of the Canadian economy. I spoke about this a little
00:00:54.000 bit with Peter Baker, who works with a global organization of business leaders that tries to
00:00:58.880 move forward towards sustainable goals. So what is it that you're doing here at the World Economic
00:01:03.740 Forum? So we're the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. We're talking to all the
00:01:08.760 business leaders about how we can get action to scale up because we need real system transformation
00:01:13.920 and this is the place to talk about that. I'm from Canada where the oil and gas sector is critical
00:01:19.100 to the economy and when a lot of people in that industry hear about sustainable development,
00:01:23.260 they hear about basically programs that are going to outlaw their industry. So what is the place for
00:01:29.520 oil and gas in your ideal future for business? Well, it's clear that over the long run we need to
00:01:35.120 move away from fossil fuels, but we need transition pathways out of it. The world has a lot of need for
00:01:41.120 energy and we'll have that for the coming periods, but we need to begin to invest in alternatives.
00:01:47.000 We need to really then work with the oil and gas companies to say what are those alternatives
00:01:50.860 and can we create investable solutions together with them? So that's really the conversations
00:01:56.400 we're having here. Do you think the market is capable of dealing with these things or do you
00:02:00.260 think it ultimately comes from governments that have to push the market into these things?
00:02:04.520 I think capital markets are actually in the lead at the moment. So more and more investors are
00:02:08.460 beginning to map what are climate risks, how do certain assets compare to those climate risks,
00:02:14.360 begin to price it in. And so over time what you'll see is companies that really
00:02:18.240 are investing in the transitions will attract the lower cost of capital and that's going to
00:02:22.820 accelerate the transition. And then yes, sure, the laggards, they will need to be regulated
00:02:27.360 towards those type of solutions. But I think the combination of corporate innovation
00:02:32.780 with capital market pricing will be the accelerator of all this.
00:02:36.780 As he says, they're very keenly aware that business can take a leading role in this,
00:02:41.300 but just what are the implications of that going to be? We here in Canada, our own government,
00:02:45.840 talk about the so-called just transition away from oil and gas without anything concrete about
00:02:50.700 how they're going to ensure that the people affected by that transition have jobs in the
00:02:54.960 future. Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said it's all just a simple matter
00:02:59.020 of re-skilling and up-skilling. What are you doing to help the workers who are being left behind?
00:03:04.740 Re-skilling, up-skilling. I mean, you're quite right. The interaction between machine and human
00:03:08.760 is prevalent in every industry. Actually, it's interesting. If you go even in a small and medium-sized
00:03:13.560 businesses, which would be tools, for example, or in aluminum, or even in steel, you start saying
00:03:20.760 the, if you've seen some of these machines, you need a lot of skills today to operate that. I mean,
00:03:25.580 this is not the job of your father. This is easier said than done. And there was an interesting
00:03:29.980 dilemma that came up when one discussion, one of the many here at the World Economic Forum focused
00:03:34.820 on climate, did a survey which didn't just go to the people in the room, but went to anyone who was
00:03:39.920 watching it online, who wanted to vote, and it was what their top priority should be. And if you look
00:03:44.920 at the results, everyone, I think, thought that it was going to be transitioning away that was going
00:03:49.200 to be the top priority. But people actually talked about energy independence, sustainability, and also
00:03:54.820 things like reducing energy costs. They were all neck and neck as far as which ones were, in fact,
00:03:59.600 the top priority, which was a bit surprising to the people in the room. I caught up later with India's
00:04:04.640 Minister of Natural Gas and Petroleum, and he admitted that the discussions are very different
00:04:09.120 elsewhere in the world than the ones that are taking place here in Davos. You were on a panel
00:04:13.640 about oil and gas and energy this morning. Do you think phasing out of fossil fuels is actually a
00:04:18.420 realistic goal? Look, I said what I had to, but you know, if you were to do that survey in different
00:04:25.960 parts of the world, if you were to do it, for instance, in South Asia or Africa or in Latin America,
00:04:32.280 you'd get results that might be a little different from the kind of results you're getting here.
00:04:36.200 The minister didn't go into too much detail before he was hurried away to his next meeting,
00:04:39.940 but I appreciated his candor that, yes, the conversations they're having about energy in
00:04:44.320 the developing world where they need fossil fuels, they need oil and gas, they need traditional energy,
00:04:49.540 those discussions are very different than the ones taking place here at Davos.
00:04:53.200 For True North from the World Economic Forum, I'm Andrew Lawton.