Davos delegates are crying crocodile tears over the climate crisis just like they did over inequality

As the world’s rich and infamous have their people check that everything’s tickety-boo on their private jets ahead of their flights to the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s annual bash, the organisation wants us to know that this is the year it has woken up to the climate crisis.

In the PR push that accompanies the countdown, it’s trumpeting that the top five risks facing the world are now linked to climate change, while promising to do its bit by going carbon neutral.

So will there be sherpas hired to bring in the biodynamic champagne for its delegates to quaff on foot? Perhaps not, but there’ll definitely be a few more evergreens to make the slopes look pretty outside over the next few years.

Trouble is, you’d need a forest of them to offset all the hot air that the place is going to pump out next week. I suppose that it will at least leave plenty of bullshit to serve as fertiliser for all those new trees.

For the WEF, climate change appears to have been designated as this year’s substitute for inequality.

The people who combined to create the vast disparities between rich and poor spent years pretending to cry about that at the event.

We must, you know, do something! The fact that us lot in this room have more moolah between us than the combined populations of Mali, Laos and Guyana, it’s just terrible isn’t it. Let’s promise to think really, really hard about a solution and then issue a communique to explain how much it upsets us while highlighting some of our super-duper initiatives!

Then up popped Rutger Bregman. The doughty Dutch historian became something of a social media shooting star simply by statin’ the bleedin’ obvious.

Speaking at a Time panel at last year’s event, he pointed out that instead of talking about philanthropy, and justice and equality and (insert buzz word), the billionaires could strike a blow against inequality tomorrow if they were just willing to pay their taxes like everyone else does. Bergman was the kid who said, ’ere, that emperor bloke in the golden carriage you’re all cheering on? He’s got no strides on. How come you lot can’t see it? He’s got no strides on and nuffink else eivver.

It’s kind of difficult to pretend to care about the latest global poverty indices, and the fact that however many billions of people scrape by on less than three dollars a day, after having been so brutally exposed as a bunch of hypocrites.

But look, we have the climate crisis to pretend to care about. It’s here, it’s real, and the carcasses of thousands of cute koalas piling up in the burnt-out Australian bush bear witness to that fact.

Because of events like that, people are slowly waking up to the fact that the right-wing assholes who’ve been denying it are talking out of their, well, you know. And they’re calling for action.

It’s perfect. Davos has done it before, but not to this extent. This year the WEF’s delegates will be able to do some really serious hand-wringing before going back home and doing all the destructive stuff they’ve always done.

To that end, the WEF’s website looks almost like the front page of The Independent. Rising temperatures are just the tip of the iceberg, it says. The world needs a grand coalition to tackle climate change. We’re doing some stuff. Look at these projects we’re backing! It all sounds terribly familiar.

Anyway, we’re told that “young climate activists, including Greta Thunberg, will be attending Davos this year to put pressure on world leaders to end the fossil fuel economy”.

Greta’s been before and she knows the drill. She probably doesn’t need any help with her speech. But if she does find herself searching for inspiration she might just care to look at the YouTube coverage of Mr Bregman.

The people she’s going to be addressing are among those who’ve set the world on fire. They need their feet holding to it.