Clinate change keeps on coming

The next couple of hours were spent in the large buffet lunch in which one talks buts eats little in a multilevel hall packed with a couple thousand people all with the same objectives, talk to the people you want to, avoid the people you want to and maybe get a bite to eat. A number of interesting conversations in which energy and climate change figured large. More with Jim Rodgers (one of the ten US CEOs who came out for carbon caps last week) on how to bring the country around on nuclear power. Coincidentally followed by a conversation with an old friend whom I had not seen in years, Prof Robert Socolow of Princeton. He is the recent author of a seminal paper on how to deal with climate change, in which he thoughtfully considered nuclear and how Al Gore had used his ideas but avoided the nuclear dimension. Just as I finally made it to the buffet table Richard Quest of CNN the moderator of the next panel of which I am a member to join him and the others in the preparations. Our topic was the technological and societal dimensions of the major power shifts now going on, with the focus on things like virtual communities, the rise of the download generation and the increasing youthful elderly. The others on the panel included Shai Agassi of SAP, Bill Mitchell the CEO of Arrow electronics, (visual note: if anyone wants a visual model of what a fantasy CEO and his wife look like, Bill Mitchell and his wife are it.) and David Rothkopf of the Harvard negotiation project. There was some whining about people losing authentic contact with each other because of new media and e-mail, etc…but I was the strongest advocate that far more had been gained in extending the breadth and depth of our communications and knowledge access. Not surprisingly I also argued for the growing power of the youthful elderly. Looking out at the audience at Davos can also be a daunting experience because you know almost everyone out there could just as well be on the stage as you. I saw Joe Nye and Larry Summers of Harvard, the head of Bus Dev of Cisco, Richard Levin the President of Yale, Ernesto Zedillo the former President of Mexico, the Indian Ambassador to the UN…..and it goes on.

In parallel to our session were several others structured similarly on economics, geopolitics and business. At the end the rapporteurs came to the big hall to report to all the delegates on the panels and their audiences’ views. We were to vote on the most important issues and the ones we were least prepared for. After much discussion…some of it quite good…a member of the audience said “but what about climate change?” And then we voted and climate change wiped out everything else, fundamentally undermining the process the Davos organizers had so carefully put together to create a neat web of interconnected issues. But Ged Davis manfully came up at the end and gracefully recovered the conclusions from the panels that such phenomena as the emergence of China and India and the return of Russia to the world stage might also be very important, and the huge generational transformations that are underway also might be consequential. But climate change remains the topic everyone keeps coming back to.

More conversations followed among them with Alan Gershenfeld, the brother of Neil and the CEO of a new kind of web start up designed to enable creative types, eg musicians to find their audiences. But as always talking with Martin Wolf the economics columnist of the FT was a highlight. We had a great debate with Joe Nye …who drew in others on whether the US would invade Iran before Bush left office, with Martin convinced that he would. Ran into our chairman Mark Fuller at the end of the debate and he and I headed over to the Yale reception at the Steigenberger hotel. It is the one ancient grand hotel of Davos and where most of the pseudo VIPS stay. (The real VIPS stay in rented chalets). At the Yale reception spoke with Zedillo about the impact of the biofuels industry in the US on Mexico…pricing corn out of the tortilla market for the poor of Mexico. They may have to break NAFTA to survive the US move in ethanol.

On to dinner on climate change and national security chaired by John Holdren. The highlights happened to be two Brits, Sir Nicholas Stern and James Cameron, the young new head of the Conservative Party. Sir Nicholas basically summarized his now very influential report arguing strongly that the cost of doing little was far more costly in the long run than taking strong action today. But it was Cameron who really surprised me. He wholeheartedly supported Sterns conclusions, (Stern is Labour) and then went on to argue that we need an international emissions authority… a kind of global EPA….not at all Tory like. A Pakastani general described the horror of his work in relief in a 1971 Tsunami that killed nearly 2 million people in Bangladesh as the waves washed over them. It was the future he feared from climate change. And Nick Kristoff, the NYT columnist, chimed in with the idea that maybe the WEB 2.0 phenomenon of bottoms up action might become a novel means of environmental enforcement…creating a kind of global ecological transparency. At my table were two amazing young woman, a member of the Brazilian Congress and one of a small group fighting hard on environmental issues in Brazil and a Lebanese educator and mother who is trying to preserve some hope for the future for her kids and students while trying to teach them something about the interconnected world of ecosystems in the midst of a dreadful conflict.

Well its midnight here and I have one more night cap to go… so more tomorrow.

Making Green pay

Day 2 First Sessions
Began the morning with coffee with Geoffery Moore, Shai Agassi, Orville Schell and Baifang Liu, who brought along the former Chinese ambassador to China, and then John Holdren joined us.

I am currently in a fairly large session on Making Green Pay. It is a televised debate on CNN on several environmental and energy issues. (It will be broadcast at 6 EST on Jan 28.) The first proposition was in favor of nuclear and clean coal. The affirmative was presented by Jim Rodgers, CEO of Duke and old friend (we chatted before the session.) and the negative by Vinod Khosla, a VC. At this session we get to vote electronically on the propositions. The audience was asked to vote and the nukes and coal lost by 3-1, much to my surprise. Of course my friends Orville Schell and Baifang Liu, sitting next to me voted the wrong way. Dan Yergin is speaking now in favor of the second proposition on markets vs regulation, The Chinese ambassador has just weighed in on the government side. (one of the speakers just cited The Long Tail as an argument in favor of markets.) The audience voted 3-1 against markets, but Jim Rodgers just weighed in against the either or nature of the propositions. And the third proposition is on a global carbon tax now being argued against by Jose Goldemberg because setting the tax rate is very hard and would produce serious inequities around the world. He is in favor carbon caps and trading and efficiency regulation. He is not surprisingly, as a Brazilian for a strategy similar to what they did with respect to biofuels. Nicholas Stern is now arguing in favor of the carbon tax because of the scale and urgency of the risk. There appears to be some degree of consensus on the need to set a price for carbon, John Holdren and Lester Brown ended up on opposite sides. The carbon tax won 2-1. It was a surprisingly good debate…though made a bit artificial by the extreme nature of the propositions.

Arriving and registering

As always while registering for Davos, one runs into friends. Today it was Larry Brilliant...whom I will go see in a few minutes, Bill Berkman and David Green, a MacArthur fellow and neighbor in Berkeley.

Intro Davos

Day 1. Tuesday 1-23-07: The set up: What is Davos and how does it work? Officially the meeting is called the World Economic Forum. This is their annual meeting, but there are many other meetings during the year held around the world, but this is their big event they are known for. It was founded and run by Klaus Schwab in the early eighties as mostly a European event, but has grown huge and global with about 2000 participants from all over the world.
The participants range from corporate CEOs, heads of state, cabinet ministers, politicians, intellectuals, journalists, scientists, academics, celebrities and many hangers on. I have been coming to Davos off and on for a little over 20 years. Monitor is represented here by Mark Fuller and me.

The meeting is organized around three kinds of sessions. In the main Kongress Hall are major speeches (e.g. Tony Blair on Saturday) and high level panels (I will be moderating the one on WEB 2.0 on Saturday with Bill Gates, the head of Nike and the founder of YouTube….which directly proceeds Blair’s talk, meaning we will have a very large audience trying to make sure they have seats.). The second kinds of session are panels on a large variety of topics in the smaller meeting rooms. Finally there are the breakfasts, lunches and dinners at the local hotels on a great many subjects. I will be going to one Wed evening on climate change and national security hosted by GBN network member John Holdren and another on future IT hosted by another network member Paul Saffo. Around all the sessions is non stop talking in the many lounges and sitting areas of the Kongress Centre. Not surprisingly these are among the most interesting parts of being here. The day begins with early meetings and goes very late. Before and after the dinners are many receptions, cocktail parties sponsored by companies and governments. The India one always has the best food, but the Accel/Google party has among the most interesting people. And there is, of course, the NERDS dinners on Saturday evening…but more on that later.

Today is mostly registration an early dinner and meeting up with a few friends. My first panel as a participant will be Wed afternoon on the main theme of the conference, The Shifting Power Equation: Technology and Society. `

Davos is coming

Hello Friends, This year I hope to share with you some of what I am experiencing at the World Economic Forum at Davos. I will be participating in a number of interesting sessions including ones on the future of reproductive technologies, another on Web 2.o (with Bill Gates, the head of Nike, the founders of YouTube and Flickr), another on climate change and security. I will try to provide some of the insights I am getting, some of the mood and some of the flavor of being there. And of course I expect to see many of our friends and clients there as well. I will arrive in Davos on Tuesday evening Jan 23 and the meeting begins Wed afternoon. So you can expect the first posts on Wednesday evening. More to come...