Switzerland - Davos: Trump in his Davos speech plays down the threat of climate change - by Ishaan Tharoor

In the buildup to the World Economic Forum, the focus was all on climate change. On its first day, the forum’s organizers announced an ambitious agenda that would enlist a broad consortium of banks, companies and civic leaders to make this year’s event a “tipping point” for global climate action.

In the hour that preceded an address from President Trump, an envoy from Pope Francis urged the throng of gathered billionaires, corporate executives, politicians and celebrities to recognize their “moral responsibility” to safeguard future generations. Simonetta Sommaruga, the president of the Swiss Confederation, went to the dais and warned of “a world on fire.” 

She told the crowd, which included figures such as former U.S. vice president Al Gore and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “We need politicians to take action in their own country and internationally to ensure that the ecological balance is ensured and global warming is stopped.”

In the first of two speeches Tuesday, Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenage climate activist, once more scolded political leaders and media elites, accusing them of not making expressly clear the scale of the catastrophe facing the planet. “Without treating it as a real crisis, we cannot solve it,” she said.

Then Trump spoke. 

He used his plenary moment — the forum’s first speech by a major world leader — to take a victory lap of sorts, celebrating the U.S. economic “boom” under his watch. “America is flourishing, and, yes, America is winning again like never before,” Trump declared in what was essentially a 30-minute campaign stunt, albeit devoid of the familiar xenophobic demagoguery.

Read more at: Trump in his Davos speech plays down the threat of climate change - The Washington Post