Stakeholder Capitalism

7People and the Planet

At places like Davos, people like to tell success stories. But their financial success has come with an unthinkable price tag. And on climate change, we have to acknowledge that we have failed. All political movements in their present form have done so. And the media has failed to create broad public awareness.¹

These were the words from Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish climate activist, as she spoke in Davos at our Annual Meeting in January 2019. Thunberg had become known for her School Strike for Climate a few months earlier, shaking up the debate about what has increasingly become known as the global climate crisis. In Davos, she used the platform to give the world a hard wake-up call on the actions needed to avert catastrophe. “Adults keep saying: ‘We owe it to the young people to give them hope,’” she said at a special press conference. “But I don't want your hope. I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.”² After decades of scientific warnings and government discussions, how did a teenager become the world's most notable voice on climate change?

Thunberg, born on January 3, 2003, first learned of climate change in 2011, when she was still in primary school. Despite her young age, she already realized there was a gap “in what several climate experts were ...