WEF – Or the meta level of Greenwashing

As for almost everything that systematically goes wrong on a small scale, an upstream and higher-level structure is needed where the course is set for future grievances in everyday life. The recently held WEF in Davos provided a prime example of how people complain and feign about real sustainability at the highest level!

It is said to have been the greenest WEF ever, so least its organizers say. Thanks to vegetarian buffets and no PET bottles! And for all those who wanted this truly green turnaround not only on a small scale, but wanted to see it implemented globally, the WEF even chose sustainability as an official theme for this year’s edition in Davos. With Greta Thunberg and other very young (and female) figureheads in the fight against the impending climate catastrophe, the great concern about global warming was brought to the media in the middle of the WEF meeting. Nobody should get the malicious idea that the global economic elite and their political water bearers or moderate antipodes do not want to seriously oppose climate change. One of the many snags in the story: The most important and most noted of all the politicians invited was Donald Trump and has been the President of the world’s largest economy for three years. And with his speech in Davos, he underlined once again that, as with all pressing environmental problems, he is not prepared to oppose climate change much more than ignorance bordering on idiocy. And whoever may object that Trump himself does not represent the WEF, but as an important state leader is merely invited to participate in the open dialogue in Davos, can easily get his mouth shut with a look at the list of WEF directorates or this year’s meeting. Darling participants. You can read and hear a lot about the recently communicated decision by the world’s largest asset manager, Blackrock, to make climate friendliness a key investment criterion in the future. At the same time, however, two dozen financial service providers who regularly participate in the WEF have invested oveGreenwashingr $ 1400 billion in fossil energies since the Paris climate agreement in 2015. The Vegibuffet in the foyer of the Davos congress center suddenly finds it very difficult to assert itself in the struggle for environmental sovereignty at the WEF.

Maximizing profit is not sustainable

The deeply hypocritical thing about this whole PR tsunami on the part of the WEF is its inner contradictions. There is a direct or indirect throw through all media channels with eco keywords that you can no longer see the forest for the green. At the same time, it is the majority of the protagonists of the WEF themselves who block or water down successfully tightened environmental regulations through political lobbying and who seriously pretend that the market is solving the longer-term environmental problems in the daily political debate on environmental issues. If this were really the case, then one would have to say that at least the West has done just about everything in the past decades that requires ecological sustainability. An ideal declaration of bankruptcy can no longer be more drastic. The idea that the board of directors of a listed company voluntarily sacrifices the good financial statements for its shareholders for the sake of more ecological sustainability sometimes seems grotesque. There should be symbolic cuts in the purpose of winning, as we already know, greenwashing is the highest of all feelings.

The well-oiled PR machinery of the WEF does nothing to change the fact that it is currently unlikely to be a forum for a better world and that it is likely to remain so (as mendacious as now about the climate crisis, the WEF has had questions about the past years social inequality). Ultimately, the WEF is something like the meta-level for global greenwashing. As in the recently broadcast documentary Save Davos to marvel at the world to perfection, the maxim at the WEF in Davos officially applies: the main thing is that we talked about it. There is nothing to add.