Teenager steals the show as Davos summit ends in discord

A teenage climate change activist has all but stolen the show at the World Economic Forum in Davos with a warning to the global elite that the “house is on fire”.

The Swiss summit was characterised by discord over momentous issues like Brexit and world trade.

Many of the leaders closest to those questions — from Donald Trump to Theresa May and Chinese President Xi Jinping — did not show up as they had in past years.

Environmentalists, meanwhile, howled about alleged hypocrisy after reports that a record number of flights by carbon-spewing private jets would ferry rich corporate bigwigs to talk at the event this year — including about global warming.

As the adults deliberated, 16-year-old Swedish girl Greta Thunberg sounded the alarm.

“I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day,” said the student, who got a waiver from school to travel 32 hours from her home in Sweden — by train, to keep her carbon footprint down.

Greta, whose speech to a climate conference in December went viral, did not mince her words amid concerns that nations will not meet their target of keeping global warming below 1.5C.

“We owe it to the young people, to give them hope,” she said. “I want you to act … as if the house was on fire. Because it is.”

Since founder Klaus Schwab first gathered European business executives in 1971, the World Economic Forum has defended globalisation as a force for good that improves lives and boosts prosperity.

Now, advocates of closer economic and cultural ties are on the defensive. Mr Trump’s America First sloganeering, Brexit-style self-interest, populist politics and the rise of “strongman” leaders in countries from the Philippines to Brazil have shaken confidence in the international rules and organisations set up since the Second World War.

The conference centre in the ski resort of Davos still bustled with business executives, presidents and prime ministers, heads of non-governmental organisations, scientists, and artists.

They met privately or sat on publicly broadcast discussions about world issues: poverty, climate change, the rise of machines, diseases like Alzheimer’s and cancer, and trade disputes.

Organisers of the event trumpeted some achievements and commitments made in Davos, but the forum has struggled to shake off the impression that it hosts champagne-swilling executives more interested in their bottom line and power-hungry politicians more interested in polishing their global image than in the state of the world.

Several hundred environmentalists and political activists waved green and red flags as they demonstrated their opposition to the WEF and capitalism in Davos’s snow-and ice-covered streets.