{"title":"How the World Economic Forum damages the credibility of climate science","authors":"Elizabeth Woodworth","doi":"10.1111/ajes.12533","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>The World Economic Forum (WEF) was established in 1971 with the nominal purpose of bringing together leaders to discuss global problems. However, it is well on its way to becoming the most powerful institution in the world, merely by setting forth an agenda for global management that is attractive to many political and business leaders. Two of the central issues on which the WEF has focused are climate change and the pandemic. The first has a depth of scientific support, but the WEF's stance and official pronouncements on the latter were never based on normal scientific review procedures. Since the WEF was a catalyst in the rush to judgment on COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates, this suggests that the WEF is primarily guided by political motives, not by science. In fact, the way the WEF approaches the climate issue—as an excuse to restrict freedom without promoting renewable energy sources—makes evident the true motives of the WEF. As a result of the WEF's political use of the climate issue, the validity of climate science has been tarnished in the public mind. If there were true political will to solve the existential problem for future generations, the following could be undertaken immediately: To convert the oil industry to renewable energy, national governments of the world could agree to require that the fossil fuel companies receiving tax dollars convert to renewable energy at a rate of 7%–8% per year. Compounded, within 10 years, these companies would still be dominating the energy game, but with safe sustainable alternatives.</p>","PeriodicalId":47133,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Economics and Sociology","volume":"82 5","pages":"493-511"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9000,"publicationDate":"2023-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"American Journal of Economics and Sociology","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajes.12533","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The World Economic Forum (WEF) was established in 1971 with the nominal purpose of bringing together leaders to discuss global problems. However, it is well on its way to becoming the most powerful institution in the world, merely by setting forth an agenda for global management that is attractive to many political and business leaders. Two of the central issues on which the WEF has focused are climate change and the pandemic. The first has a depth of scientific support, but the WEF's stance and official pronouncements on the latter were never based on normal scientific review procedures. Since the WEF was a catalyst in the rush to judgment on COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates, this suggests that the WEF is primarily guided by political motives, not by science. In fact, the way the WEF approaches the climate issue—as an excuse to restrict freedom without promoting renewable energy sources—makes evident the true motives of the WEF. As a result of the WEF's political use of the climate issue, the validity of climate science has been tarnished in the public mind. If there were true political will to solve the existential problem for future generations, the following could be undertaken immediately: To convert the oil industry to renewable energy, national governments of the world could agree to require that the fossil fuel companies receiving tax dollars convert to renewable energy at a rate of 7%–8% per year. Compounded, within 10 years, these companies would still be dominating the energy game, but with safe sustainable alternatives.
期刊介绍:
The American Journal of Economics and Sociology (AJES) was founded in 1941, with support from the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, to encourage the development of transdisciplinary solutions to social problems. In the introduction to the first issue, John Dewey observed that “the hostile state of the world and the intellectual division that has been built up in so-called ‘social science,’ are … reflections and expressions of the same fundamental causes.” Dewey commended this journal for its intention to promote “synthesis in the social field.” Dewey wrote those words almost six decades after the social science associations split off from the American Historical Association in pursuit of value-free knowledge derived from specialized disciplines. Since he wrote them, academic or disciplinary specialization has become even more pronounced. Multi-disciplinary work is superficially extolled in major universities, but practices and incentives still favor highly specialized work. The result is that academia has become a bastion of analytic excellence, breaking phenomena into components for intensive investigation, but it contributes little synthetic or holistic understanding that can aid society in finding solutions to contemporary problems. Analytic work remains important, but in response to the current lop-sided emphasis on specialization, the board of AJES has decided to return to its roots by emphasizing a more integrated and practical approach to knowledge.