Juno News - May 24, 2022


The WEF wants you to reduce your carbon footprint


Episode Stats


Length

2 minutes

Words per minute

203.32806

Word count

558

Sentence count

28


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Andrew Lawton asks if the World Economic Forum is telling its attendees not to take private jets to Davos. And why is it that all of these wealthy elites justify flying here on their private jets, getting into their limos, and then lecturing us all about climate change?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Hey, this is Andrew Lawton coming to you from Davos on the promenade at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting.
00:00:06.060 As you can see, a bit more of a gloomy, grayer day today, not like the sunny weather we've been having in what one protester called a few days ago,
00:00:13.740 and I've mentioned a few times since, a corporate Disneyland.
00:00:17.000 One of the big questions, and this was one that people were asking me before I even got here to Davos,
00:00:21.120 is how do all of these wealthy elites justify flying here on their private jets, getting into their limos,
00:00:26.740 and then lecturing us all about climate change?
00:00:30.000 You may have seen a video clip I took just on a whim a couple of days ago of all the limos backed up for hundreds and hundreds of meters
00:00:36.740 as all the VIPs in their private cars tried to get in to Davos.
00:00:41.240 Well, the private jets are, again, no exception to the rule here in what's happening,
00:00:44.880 and then we continue on and have the fundamental question of what is it they actually want.
00:00:50.360 Well, this morning, the president of Alibaba Group, J. Michael Evans,
00:00:53.700 pitched one idea that he's really excited about debuting in the coming years.
00:00:58.280 We're developing through technology an ability for consumers to measure their own carbon footprint.
00:01:06.020 What does that mean?
00:01:07.460 That's where are they traveling?
00:01:09.660 How are they traveling?
00:01:11.040 What are they eating?
00:01:12.520 What are they consuming on the platform?
00:01:14.760 So individual carbon footprint tracker.
00:01:18.800 Stay tuned.
00:01:19.620 We don't have it operational yet, but this is something that we're working on.
00:01:22.880 Ah, so right there we have it.
00:01:25.520 An app that you can use that will track your carbon footprint, where you travel, how you travel, what you eat, what you buy.
00:01:32.840 But again, this is just for eco-conscious consumers, he's saying.
00:01:35.500 This is for people that want to do it.
00:01:36.980 Well, sure, maybe there are a few people that want to do that, but we're talking about Alibaba,
00:01:41.160 a company with very deep ties to the Chinese regime, a social credit state.
00:01:46.800 Social credit, not just being a government program, but something that also influences what is the so-called private sector there.
00:01:53.660 So do we really trust that data in the hands of a company like Alibaba or anyone?
00:01:59.420 But that's the whole thing.
00:02:00.460 These people are talking about it as though you and I are the problem.
00:02:03.320 I've never been on a private jet in my life, so my carbon footprint isn't near what it is for the Davos elite.
00:02:08.800 I ran into earlier the World Economic Forum's head of climate, a fellow Canadian, and I wanted to ask her about this.
00:02:15.580 I'm just wondering what the climate, what the global emissions are for this conference.
00:02:19.120 Like, does the WEF tell people to not take private jets here?
00:02:22.180 I'm sorry, guys. I'm on fire.
00:02:24.240 Well, it was a very short clip.
00:02:26.020 As you can see there, she didn't really want to answer the questions.
00:02:28.500 She said she didn't have time, but it was yes or no.
00:02:30.940 Does the WEF tell its attendees not to travel here by private jet?
00:02:34.980 That seems like, at the very minimum, at the very minimum, if nothing else, something Davos attendees could agree to do without.
00:02:42.580 From Davos, for True North, I'm Andrew Lawton.