Davos: A Green Beginning?

Davos is the last place one would think a progressive idea for saving the world from climate change would be put on the table. The idyllic Swiss village is the annual stage for the world's privileged elite to flaunt their wealth and status. But of all people the head of the World Bank, hardly a conservation oriented organization, Jim Yong Kim, called for a price on carbon at the World Economic Forum. US Person has long advocated placing a price on carbon emissions so they can be integrated into global price mechanisms and taxed. Right now carbon is completely 'out of the box' when economic decisions are made in board rooms. He also asked for financial regulators to begin requiring companies to disclose their climate related risks, and for greater use of green bonds in investment portfolios. Green bonds finance various climate adaptations and mitigation projects. He wants green investments to rise frm $20 billion to $50 billion by the time of a new international climate agreement is reached in Paris, 2015. Governments agreed to seal a deal by 2015 to begin bringing down global greenhouse gas emissions. The UN's top climate official, Christiana Figueres, was optimistic that this year's World Economic Forum would be the beginning of international efforts to transition to a low-carbon world. Not a moment too soon either. UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon, who visited the Phillipines and saw for himself the destruction wrought by a climate intensified typhoon, called global warming an "existential threat" to humanity. Globally, weather related losses and damage have risen from about $50 billion a year in the 1980s to close to $200 billion a year over the last decade. You do not have to be a Davos-goer to help achieve a low-carbon world by asking the EPA to adopt carbon emission limits on new power plants in the United States.