🌍 Guess how many times world leaders in Davos mentioned climate change?
- sebmanhart

- 2 days ago
- 2 min read

Zero.
💬 I spent the last few days watching most of the special addresses given at the 2026 World Economic Forum: Trump, Carney, Merz, von der Leyen, Zelenski, and Macron.
🌡️ These speeches give a fascinating insight into what truly matters to the political elite today. What stood out to me: in almost four hours of speaking time, not ONCE did any of them mention climate change or global warming.
📑 This stands in stark contrast with the WEF’s own 2026 Global Risks Report, where environmental risks make up 2/10 risks in the short-term (2 years), and 5/10 - including the top 3 - in the long term (10 years).
⚡ Instead, energy security was a core pillar of every single speech. It was the most climate adjacent theme and is clearly top of mind as it feeds into sovereignty, security, and affordability.
⚠️ For me, while not surprising, it was still a startling observation. We are quickly losing the attention of key decision makers. If we are not able to reframe our work, there is a good chance climate will keep losing relevance in policy, with all the repercussions that will have.
💬 Something I have been saying for a while: any climate intervention that wants to succeed in this world needs to primarily address urgent issues society is currently facing: affordability, unemployment, migration, security, etc. The climate impact still matters, but cannot lead the argument anymore.
😔 Otherwise I don’t think we stand a chance. This is as true for carbon dioxide removal as for any other climate solution. I know how hard this is for us “green” folks, but we need to start talking the language most people actually care about.
🙋🏻♀️ Did you watch these speeches? If not, I highly recommend so - all freely availably on YouTube. Curious how you interpret this shift and what it means for climate moving forward?
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