Al Gore gets furious with his elite peers, on behalf of youth climate activists around the world, at Davos
We came upon this video clip (click here - the embed above is wobbly) from our friends at Bella Caledonia, who headlined it “Elite despair at Davos”. It’s a little over-egged with the pounding orchestral muzak behind it, but it’s still quite something to see Al Gore use his insider’s privilege, as the ex-VP of the United States, to roar and accuse on behalf of the many “young activists I train throughout the world”.
Perhaps Gore’s fury is a register of how much Davos - the yearly global meet of elites organised by the World Economic Forum - poses as part of the solutions to our “polycrises”, whereas it is, in fact, a deep generator of the problems. As CNN Business puts it:
“Davos is the epitome of one of the greatest challenges to society right now, which is self-congratulatory elites,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale management professor who speaks regularly with many well-known executives…
Billionaires added $5 trillion to their fortunes during the pandemic, according to a report from Oxfam published in January. The world’s richest 10 men saw their collective wealth more than double between March 2020 and November 2021. Meanwhile, tens of millions more people around the world were pushed into extreme poverty as the global economy shut down, and many struggling households became reliant on emergency government support.
“The last two years have dramatized and clarified what has been true for some time now, which is an elite plutocratic class is not just leaving the rest of the world behind, but is thriving precisely by stepping on the necks of everybody else,” said Anand Giridharadas, author of the book “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.”