Hey, it's akshat. I'm headed to Davos this week, reporting from the swisky village about how world leaders, finance chiefs, and business heads are thinking about climate change. In the meantime, I want to share an episode we published this time last year. It's an interview with Gail Weightman of Arctic Base Camp. Every year she camps outside in an Arctic science tent at the World Economic Forum to get the
Arctic and climate change on the agenda. It's a good history of Davos and how climate change became a central topic at the conference. So I'm sharing it again this week.
Welcome to Zero. I'm Akshatrati. This week thin ice, missing snow and a party for billionaires. Next week I'll be going to Davos, a ski resort town in Switzerland. But I'm not telling you about my holiday is that one week in January where Davos becomes the home of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting, an invite only gathering of CEOs, billionaires, select political leaders, and increasingly climate people. That's not always been the case. As recently as twenty fourteen, climate didn't
even get a mention in the executive summary. That is sent to attendees before the meeting starts, and now Climate has broken through, with more than a quarter of the main panel discussions tied to climate issues one way or another. It's disorienting to be a climate journalist at Davos. On the one hand, you are close to the people who have power or money or both to make the decisions
that can change the fate of the climate. The twenty twenty meeting, which was the last big one before the world shut down to deal with the pandemic, had one hundred and nineteen billionaires and fifty three heads of state attending. On the other hand, Davos is a petri dish for innovations in greenwashing. That same twenty twenty meeting ended with Davos attornees failing to find a consensus around carbon taxis, but it closed with a widely applauded initiative to plant
one trillion trees. There is little doubt that the business world listens closely to what happens in Davos. So how did climate get to Davos? What made the world's business elite take notice. One person that deserves credit is Gail Whiteman. She's a professor of sustainability at the University of Exeter's Business School, and she physically brought climate science to Davos in twenty seventeen by giving climate scientists a space to present their data. She called it the Arctic Base Camp.
The Arctic Base Camp is housed in an act polar tent used for Arctic exploration. Gail pitched the tent not too far from the main venue and has camped there every year since. It's not the most comfortable approach, but getting to Davos means unparalleled exposure to world leaders.
We were packing up the tent and we saw there's a ton of security, so really, you know, guys, we've guns everywhere and snipers and so on. So we knew somebody fancy was going to be around. And then we saw mister Netanya, who walking by.
Head of State of Israel at the time.
Yes, he was absolutely and he walked up to me and he said, what the heck are you doing here with this big arctic tent And I said, well, we are Arctic scientists and we're bringing a message of climate risk to global leaders. And he said you're sleeping here and I said, yeah, we are. We slept here for three nights. Davos gives you the opportunity where you can make those unusual moments and just speak science to power.
The tent is not a stunt. Davos is exclusive and accommodation at the meeting can run into the thousands of dollars. The tent was Gail's way of making things work, and she filled the tent with climate scientists and youth activists, people who couldn't normally afford to go. I wanted to talk to Gail about how she brought climate change to Davos, the limits of raising awareness among the elites, and what needs to happen for the Arctic Base Camp to succeed. Gil, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me ak Shat, it's great to be here.
Now. Tell us about the Arctic Based Camp. What it is, maybe starting with your motto, which is what happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic.
So Arctic Based Camp is a science communication platform. We're not for profit, and that's right. That is our motto that what happens in the Arctic doesn't stay there, and
in fact it's really a barometer of global risks. So our mission and the reason why we set up Arctic Based Camp at Davos in twenty seventeen was we felt that we needed to speak science to power and communicate all the global risks that were hitting the planet coming from the Arctic and in fact coming from the polar regions more generally.
Now the very existence of the Arctic Based Camp is tied to Davos, and we're going to talk a lot about Davos.
Now.
Davos is a town in Switzerland which happens to host the World Economic Forum every year, but it's also a shorthand for something else. Help me describe for the listener what we are referencing when we say Davos.
Well, it's funny because I think there's probably a couple of groups in the world those that when you say the word DeVos, they immediately get the desire like, oh, I've got to get there. I want to join the elite, the top of business, the top of policy and government, and the top of media to somehow get to the place where the move and shakers have been meetings since.
I think nineteen seventy one.
There's another group that will say, if you say the word Davos, they'll say, oh, that's where all the elite go not to try and save the planet or fix the problems, but actually just to make their lovely life
that much more lovely. And maybe there's another group that have never heard of Davos at all, but the Davos that we want to talk to, and the reason why we go there is it is actually the place where the World Economic Forum convenes people that have power from all different stakeholder groups, and the mission in many ways has I think shifted over time from just trying to make the world a more economically viable place into actually
a more sustainable place. Of course, not all of them around the program yet, but increasingly a number of them are. So we go to try and influence that group that have power, that are interested in really getting us to a safer space and a low carbon economy, and really try and show them just what the heck is happening in the Arctic and the scale and speed of change that is happening this January.
Right, it's supposed to be a ski town, we are likely not going to see any snow because of the massive heat wave that has happened in Europe over the Christmas period. In the first week of January, what do you think that does to the people who come to Davos Now where between a quarter and a third of all the big panels that happen inside the Davos Tent are tied to climate change.
Well, I hope it shocks the hell out of them. I mean, you know, Switzerland in the winter should have snow. We have been camping outside of Davos except for this May when we were there, of course, and it was alpine summer.
There's always snow.
Now sometimes there's too much snow we have to dig ourselves in and out of our base camp tent. But it has never been the situation that we are going to be facing this year. And I hope it's a real reality check that it's not that climate change somehow has to be addressed by twenty thirty, which people sort of think it does, like, well, okay, we've got to get half emissions by twenty thirty. So people are thinking that we still have time, We still have time, and this should be a wake up call.
But now climate impacts are happening everywhere. That goes from hurricanes in America to droughts in the Horn of Africa to heat waves in Europe. Why is it that you wanted to bring the Arctic to Dabbos and not all climate impacts.
Well, in fact, we are bringing all the climate impacts to DeVos, because what happens in the Arctic is driving those impacts all around the world. So the Arctic is in many ways a remote and incredibly beautiful place that seems sort of far away, and maybe if you're a Canadian like me, or if you are a polar bear lover, you pay attention to what's going on in the Arctic, but it is a really important place in the global
climate system. So the snow and ice in the Arctic acts really is a big insurance policy on runaway climate change, and as it has changed, as it has melted and thought, in fact, that has ramped up global climate change throughout
the world, particularly extreme weather in the middle latitudes. So if you're worried about wildfires in California, you're worried about, you know, the polared vortex in the east coast of the US, or the extreme heat wave that we had in Europe this summer and that we're having right now. But also the shifting you know, monsoon patterns and typhoon patterns throughout the Asian side of the world. That's the Arctic calling and that's just the starting place.
Let's do a Arctic climate science one oh one. The measure that often has talked about is sea ice coverage. Why is it that that measure how much of the Arctic is covered by sea ice is so important?
Well, I think it's a good question, you know, a social scientist myself, I had to really do arctech science one oh one, and I've got some amazing world class colleagues that have really helped me understand why the sea ice, in particular the summer sea ice is so important.
The first of all, the ice when it's there and the snow.
Is white, and the sun light comes in from space and it hits the white and it most of it bounces back up. So the ice itself, the ice cover and the snow cover are really important because there are a protective barrier from that heat getting into the oceans
or onto the land. That's the albedo effect that we've heard about, you know, in al Gore's film, and everybody talks about now the summer in the Arctic, there's always some melt, of course, because it's warmer than it is in deep winter, right when the ice is the thickest and has the biggest extent. But the real read is that in the summer, how small it's getting. And that's the worrying sign. So it's not this fluctuation that you've had a we have a little bit of that dark ocean showing up.
Yeah, So it accelerates, right, because if you lose sea ice, then you're going to get more sunlight not being reflected by the white snow but in instead being captured by the dark sea, and that heats of the sea even more. That causes melting even more, and then it.
Starts to change things like the circulation system of both the oceans but also the jet stream, and that's how extreme weather starts to change.
And we can connect those jet stream fluctuations to things like the polar votex, which holds this cold typically inside the Arctic, then sometimes escapes, like we saw in the US when there was a cold snap in December, pushing temperatures in the negative in places like Texas. And if the polar votex doesn't flow as well as it does, it also causes heat waves like the one that we've just seen in Europe, which has melted all the snow indavors exactly.
So it regulates that global climate system that gives us the weather that we're kind of used to, and then we start to see things get really strange. So parts of Switzerland this week have been twenty degrees celsius. That is not a Swiss January, let me tell you. So it's just completely different, which means there's knock on effects. It's not just that you can't ski as much as
you might want. It's also that the whole biodiversity chain changes, because then trees start to think it's spring, or so do flies and other species. But there's also some really specific things that can happen that need to happen in the Arctic that aren't happening. The first is that as shipping opens up, there's a real need to get rid of heavy fuel used.
By ships, right because these heavy fuels are really polluting, and when they burn that fuel to ships, they pump out all these really bad particles, dark particles onto snow, which makes snow darker and does makes it easier to melt exactly.
Or the idea is that oh as the Arctic melts, we can get at oil and gas deposits that are there, and yet that's going to be you know, catastrophic, so don't do that. So it's a side of short lived economic games for some companies or some countries, and yet the rest will pay the price because the price tags are coming are not necessarily being felt by those that could gain from it. And there's lots of other things.
We know that the big wild card is permafrost. So much of Siberia and certainly parts of Canada and the US in Alaska have permafrost which in that has carbon stored frozen and as it thaws, it releases methane, which is a much more concentrated greenhouse gas.
But there's almost no.
Direct sensors monitoring that situation that looks like it is potentially destabilizing as well. I think the whole of the Arctic terrestrial area we've got only two hundred and fifty on the ground sensors, which would be like one sensor per state of West Virginia or the whole country of Ireland.
Like you can't it's not like you can get your cholesterol measured by having your neighbor down the roads lesterial measure and that means act shot you're okay, we actually need more measurement of something so important.
Now, once you decided to go to Davos, because the Arctic needed to be talked about at Davos. Was it as easy as buying a ticket and submitting a panel idea and then they will be like, yes, that's a really good topic. It's very important, we should talk about it. Gail, please come along and set up a panel.
Oh my god.
No, no, it was not at all an easy process, and in fact how it started off was I was actually in Tromso, so I was in part of the Arctic Circle in Norway at an academic conference. I'm a social scientist and I have worked my entire career collectively and collaboratively with the natural scientists around the world, so I bring in the natural science into discussions of global risk, particularly in.
Boardrooms around the world.
So I was in Tromso and the conference at the time in twenty eleven was on tipping point, and all the Arctic natural scientists were absolutely worried about the global implications at that time.
And that's over a decade ago now.
And I said, you know, why are we talking about this in the Artic And they said.
But that's where it's happening.
And I said, yeah, but when you're talking global tipping points, the globe is not here.
And that's when the light bulb moment for me was I said, we have to go to Davos.
And then my fellow colleagues in the natural scientists said a couple of different things.
First of all, they said, what is Davos.
For example, you know a group that hadn't heard of Damas.
Yeah, yeah, they're like, well, what is that? Exactly? An explained. And then some of them who knew what Davos was.
And then there was another group that also said, well, we do know what Davos is, but we're not sure. That's the role of science, And again this is over a decade ago. So scientists felt that their role was to do research, a rigorously peer review and publish it. And I certainly agree with that wholeheartedly. But in order order to get the implications of that research out, we have to sometimes go to places that we don't know
where we are. So I very bravely said, you we've got to go to the World Economic Forum, we have to go to Davas.
Let's go.
And I had worked a little bit with the World Economic Forum, and I went down that summer to talk to some folks that I knew there, and they were very interested, I have to.
Say, and this is we're talking.
Yeah, we're talking twenty eleven, twenty twelve.
Yeah, and it was starting.
Climate change was starting to be on the agenda, but again just sort of starting. But the Arctic was really seen as a niche part of that storyline, and there was a bit of work that was being done on the Arctic which was more about who owned the mineral rights or shipping this kind of stuff. So internally there was this idea, of course that it's a rich place of natural resources.
So you go to the World Economic Forum and there is some interest in the ocade, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, so then what happens next?
But it wasn't on the official program, but I did know that there was a series of side events, so I thought, well, we'll just do a side event. I completely under estimated the fact that you can't get a place to stay at Davos.
The hotels are booked.
Out in advance, and the World Economic Forum has guests who get the chance to book those rooms, and there's absolutely no way we could get a room and then even if we could get a room, the cost of those rooms during the Davos week for scientists, for academics impossible for us to be able to pay for that, even if we could. So I turned my way a couple of times onto a hotel list, like basically, you can have a closet if it's still available, but eventually
I would get kicked off on that. And you can stay outside Davos, but then you've got to come in, and then you've got no place to present. So around twenty sixteen, I said, you know what, let's just bring an Arctic science tent, a weather have intent that scientists use in the field, and let's bring it and let's find a backyard we can put it in, and we're going to camp in it, and we're going to use that as our event space.
And I did. I did. That's where the name Optic base Camp comes from. Yeah, so what should people picture when they're imagining the Arctic base camp tent? Inda of us.
Oh, it's a pretty big tent.
I mean, it's not a tent to get married in, so to speak, but it's a pretty big tent.
So it's about two and a half.
Three meters wide and about five meters long, and it's a big sort of domed tent and it's white with orange which is the classic weather Haven colors, and are big logo artic base camp. It's insulated, of course, it's got some insulation around it, and then we have smaller sleeping tents, which are a little yellow tents, two person tents that are set up around it.
Base camps are typically camps that are set up at the base of a mountain, so like the ever Space camp would be a very famous one where exactly even climbing up to the base camp is quite the challenge, but of course that's just the base camp, and then
you actually go to the peak. And so what you were trying to say with that is, now we've created this place actually physic place where people can come and if they so understand the importance of what's happening in the Arctic, well they can go to the next eleven and do something.
About it exactly.
And it was this idea that we could control this space and it was a space for science. And we were not fancy, and we were cold, and we were very thankful for any dinner anybody ever gave us.
During any of the Davos weeks.
To be honest with you, you know that first year it was minus twenty four celsius.
It was freezing. It was freezing, and we.
Ended up doing the actual event indoor at the research institute. Beside us that professor Conrad Stephan, who was a Swiss gleciologist. He'd just come back to Switzerland and he was in charge of a larger institute that had this Davos base for snow and avalanche research and he was completely supportive, so we co hosted it with him and his team. Let us use indoor facilities that first year to do
the actual presentations, and we were super lucky. We had Vice President Gore al Gore joined us as a keynote, Christiana Figueras, we had Peter Barker, CEO of World Business CA Council, leaders from WWF, Noukoichi was there from the GEF, and it was a huge event. We had well over one hundred and twenty people and that was a rocky way of kicking off Davos.
You've continued to do it since and many of the names you just recounted, like Alcore, are people who already understand the problem. So what was it that you had to do to bring in the other crowd, the crowd you really wanted to get to exactly.
Well, the first thing is we had to change locations because it was not actually on the animal corridor of the Davos participant.
They were not walking past that.
They were maybe getting in their helicopter, but that was not enough to see us. We got a location in the second year which we've stayed at every year since, at the Schatzel Hotel, which is a glorious hotel a short vernicular ride up the mountain and it's one of the classic hotels in Davos, and it's also where they had the closing lunch every year. Lots of folks stay at the Shatsu. It has got major events happening all
the time. You know, Bill Gates and Malala have done in, John Kerry have Doney Vet's and you know, a glorious view.
So it's kind of on the World Leader Tour.
That's handy, Yeah, that's handy.
You know one here in twenty eighteen, I believe, where we were packing up the tant and we saw there was a ton of security. So really, you know, guys with guns everywhere and snipers and so on, so we knew somebody fancy was going to be around. And then we saw mister Netanya, who walking by with his wife in entourage.
Head a state of Israel at the time.
Yes, he was absolutely and he walked up to me and he said, what the heck are you doing here with this big artic tent. And I said, well, we are Arctic scientists and we're bringing a message of climate risk to global leaders. And he said you're sleeping here and I said, yeah, we are. We slept here for three.
Nights and I was wearing the sweater i'd slept in.
I mean, you know, it was not the most glamorous meeting I would have to say.
And then he said I want to see the tent.
So they all came in and we talked about climate change and global risk and let him see some ice core samples, you know, that kind of thing.
I'm not suggesting he was.
On our target list for who we wanted to brief, but Davos gives you the opportunity where you can make those unusual moments and just speak science to power.
After the break, I asked Gale whether what happens at Davos really makes a difference and what needs to happen to save the optic. If you like learning about big subjects like is Davos effective at handling climate change? There is another Bloomberg podcast I think you will like. I want to recommend The Big Take. Every day they bring you one big important story. Start out with Crypto Explained in plain English. It's a thirty minute interview with Bloomberg
Opinions Matt Levine that brings clarity to crypto. It's based on a forty thousand word story that's made up the whole issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Re Check it out The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts, Davos has been the place where climate change is being talked about more recently. Part of it is because of initiative like yours, bringing the Arctic based camp to Fruition and bringing more leaders to really understand this problem. But we also know that
emissions haven't started falling. There was the one year in the pandemic that we saw a drop, and that was because of economic activity being halted. We saw emissions rise over the record high that was set in twenty nineteen last year, So now we have a new record high. That is why many people look at dubos and go, yes, they're talking about climate change, but if they are not doing something about it, isn't that greenwashing? How do you respond to that?
Yeah, So I think, you know, I think the Forum has If I look at the international stage, it's really significantly changed over the years. So a decade ago, there was probably inside the World Economic Forum ten to fifteen people working on environmental issues. Now a decade later, there's probably over well over one hundred or one hundred and twenty people working on environmental issues, climate change, biodiversity, plastics,
all kinds of stuff. So they have massively scaled up their teams and they've done I think tremendous work in all of those areas and work in the sense of mobilizing private sector action.
They've got a CEO Climate Leaders Group, which.
Is impressive, is bold, is ambitious, you know co leader is Yesper Broaden's CEO of IKIA. So you've got these really you know, interesting and I think relatively young CEOs that are active in this space.
But you've hit the.
Nail on the head here. If emissions do not fall, it doesn't matter, none of it.
Matters.
None of the science matters, of the media stories matter, none of the corporate CEO good statements matter.
I don't think it's only greenwash, just.
Like I don't think the work that I'm doing is necessarily self aggrandizing. I think what it is is that we've got intractable problems and when governments go back into their zone of say post pandemic recovery, they focus on short term gains. So you look in Europe the pushback to coal because of the war in Ukraine with Russia. You look at the UK flip flopping on what they're trying to do depending on who is the current Prime
minister or not. But the real flip flip flop back and forth on how far and how fast, and should they bring that Cambo oil field online or not, or if we had two hundred years. Actually I would feel pretty optimistic because there's been a sea change in this decade since we've been trying to get to Dabos, an absolute sea change. But the problem is is that we've delayed action so long that physics is really pushing us.
And I think extreme weather, which is the number one global risk around the world, is the wake up call.
What specifically needs to happen at the World Economic Forum next.
Well, from our perspective, because the Arctic is so important, you know, in terms of the future of humanity, what really needs to happen is it needs to become a central part of the Forum programming.
We have to go from off.
Broadway into the main tent, so to speak, and that means we have to become one of the projects. Not Arctic Base Camp, we're separate, but the Arctic or broadly the polar regions need to become part of the World Economic Forum. So they have stuff on water and oceans, they have stuff on trees, where's the cryosphere, which is the frozen parts of the planet. We know that they're so important, So we really absolutely need the Forum to pick this up as a project. And in order to
do that, they need members. They need concrete two three companies or big foundations, philanthropic donors that say this is important enough. And it is because we cannot do any of the other things if we don't save the Arctic and the Antarctic.
You use the word project. Now, lots of things can be projects, but what does it really mean to be a project of the World Economic Forum?
Oh, oh, that's a good question.
So the Forum has a Center for Nature and Climate that they set up, and underneath that they have probably about I don't know, fifty or one hundred projects. Those are the actual work projects that members work on throughout the year the World Economic Forum, of course, the annual meeting is at Davos, but that doesn't mean that's all that the Forum does. In fact, they have these workstreams that continue throughout the year. And that's why you want
to get on a project. You don't want to just pop up as here's the Arctic again in January of every year. You actually want people working on the Arctic or the Polar regions more broadly throughout the throughout the year.
So you want to be a protect And because of the presence of the Arctic based camp at Davos, you've been asked by CEOs and companies to come and give briefings. What does that involve and like what does it lead to?
Its interesting we found because we're sort of seeing obviously as an unusual experience at Davos and one where the teams will bring up a CEO for we had we had one in May, large multinational company and incoming CEO his first time at Davos, and he wanted to come up and see different things, and he came into the Arctic based camp tent and we did a bespoke science briefing, which man it was just for him and his team, and we went through not just the latest in Arctic change,
we then brought it into the global risk stuff. And for this company, they were incredibly focused on water risk and change over time and really did not know at the c suite level how much the art it would affect those water patterns throughout the world.
So when we have a chance to do that, we do it. The same thing with food.
The Arctic because of its role in the water and precipitation patterns around the world, it actually threatens the six bread baskets of the world. You know, Arctic risk is coming to our food system. The world is focused on, of course the bread basket in Russia and Ukraine, and rightly should be, but the other overlying threat on that one and all the others is actually Arctic change. Yeah.
As a climate journalist, there's a shorthand that I've learned, which is climate change is caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but it really manifests through water on Earth. And of course when I think about water, I'm thinking rivers and lakes and oceans and sea level rise. But really it's not just water in liquid foam, but water in the frozen from in the poles, both in the Arctic and the Antarctic.
I love that metaphor. You know, I don't know if you've ever talked to Lewis Pugh.
Yes, it's interesting you bring up Lewis Pew because talked to him just a few episodes ago. And I hope list this can go back into the archive and listen to the episode on why protecting the oceans is so important.
You know, he says this great line, ice is life. It's incredibly important from the water system. And then also you know sea level rise. We are seeing such instability in Greenland, which is the largest contributor right now to sea level rise, which threatens coastal communities everywhere. So I think Arctic Base Camp is a way of bringing the Arctic to Davos. But the real hero of the story
is the Arctic itself. When you see the scale of change that's happening, whether it's in Greenland or you go to northern Canada or Alaska, or you're in Svalbart and onwards, and you see that scale of change, you feel a moral imperative to try and deal with that terrifying outcome.
And that comes back to your point, okshot, what will happen at Davos when there's no snow and all the people that are used to seeing that snow and they've got they bring their big boots anyway, and they don't need them.
Well, but Davos as the place of the powerful and the elite, meeting at the start of the year to set the agenda for the rest of the year. Typically in the way that it manifests is the tip of what capitalism does. How do you think morality is going to help shape that outcome?
Well, you know, call me naive, but I actually think this is because I've seen it happen so many times. Ultimately, leaders are people, and when we touch their humanity and we combine that with self interest at times, but when we touch their humanity and they see the existential threats facing them, and we saw it with the pandemic for sure, we saw it to some degree with the war in Ukraine. People will rise or can rise to the occasion, not always will, and I think that will happen with the
climate crisis. My worry is that it might not happen until it's too late to really avoid some major losses. So we're pretty close to the one point five c safe space, and you'll get scientists that will say we don't have a hope in hell of maintaining that. I stand on the side of optimism that as close to one point five as we can get is better than saying that that target's away, because it's not a target.
It's really about a physical limit. So we have to keep going until it's too late, and even then we have to try to mitigate as much as we can. The pandemic did show us that when people were faced with it, not all there is gaming. There was all kinds of political expedient decision making at times around the world. But people will make decisions that are bigger than themselves, and I'm hoping that we can start doing that too, because time is running out.
I hope you're right. That was a fascinating conversation. Thank you, Kayle, Thank you. Last year was the first time I went to Davos. It was in May instead of the usual cold January, and the discussion no surprises, focused on the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis that was to come, and how the global economy will deal with high inflation. Despite that, the climate remained a priority. Seven months on,
things haven't changed all that much. The war continues to drag on, inflation is still too high, and energy security remains top of mind. Will climate still be a priority at Davos find out at Bloomberg dot com, slash Grain. Thanks so much for listening to Zero. If you liked this episode, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Send it to a friend, or send it to someone who travels too often in a private chat in touch at Zero pod at Bloomberg
dot Net. Zero's producer is Oscar Boyd and senior producer is Christine Risco. Our theme music is composed by Wondering Special thanks to Eric Rosten and Hugo Miller. I'm Akshatrati back next week.