(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
[future] It's interesting to see three things that happened this week in context. January 23 – 27 puts business on the agenda during the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. On January 21, the news came that Madeleine Albright, former US Secretary of State, will evaluate the ethical guidelines for sustainable investment in the Petroleum Fund. At the same time, the stock markets plummeted. What is the connection? Yes, when we look up and look a few decades ahead, it will no longer be greedy and gambling American banks that pose the greatest threat to the global economy, but climate change.
America's violent impact on the world economy is declining. China, India, Russia and Brazil (BRIC countries) will all become powerful, together with the EU and the US. We are moving from a unipolar to a multipolar world. At the same time, the focus is shifting from national economies to global climate. A report from economist Nicholas Stern concludes that if we manage to mitigate climate change now, the cost will be only one percent of the world's gross domestic product (GDP), but if the climate runs smoothly, world GDP could be weakened by between five and 20 percent!
Investment bank Morgan Stanley believes climate change will lead to the worst effects of human activity ever. Equally complete: January 10, Leo Grünfeld wrote in an article in the Aftenposten that the oil fund should not be invested with a view to preventing human rights violations and climate change. This reactionary text is a cold scent from the time before the UN Climate Panel documented the seriousness.
Is there any reason to fear similar attitudes among you in WEF, nest manager Børge Brende? Or is the voluntary corporate social responsibility solution, in the absence of a global climate agreement? For even though the EU presented an important climate plan on 23 January, there are still so many countries that have not committed themselves that companies must also be part of the solution.
At the time of writing, Brende has not launched a credible proposal that the companies have voluntarily committed to. Therefore, the Petroleum Fund's ethical guidelines are important. The fund shall be invested in order to "promote sustainable development", and it shall not contribute to "human rights violations or serious environmental damage". But, as in so many other fields, there is a need for stronger global cooperation. The effect depends on how many other investors join. Therefore, it may be wise to bring in a heavyweight like Albright. At the same time, it was surprising that she got the job. Many question her competence. Albright will not otherwise assess the guidelines themselves, but how they are implemented.
It is also interesting that SV does not shout that the stock exchange is something that should be closed as soon as possible. SV shows that the party will not opt out and spend all its energy on utopian projects, but work to change existing institutions from within. In this way, the opposing forces avoid becoming irrelevant. Mix economy is sexy!
