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Industrialized countries have promised to put more than $6.1 billion in the World Bank's Climate Investment Funds, which aim to boost clean technologies and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in developing countries. On Friday, the United States pledged $2 billion over three years; Britain will chip in $1.47 billion and Japan $1.2 billion, with contributions from Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland making up the rest. Two trust funds will be created under the Climate Investment Fund umbrella: The Clean Technology Fund will invest in projects that "contribute to the demonstration, deployment, and transfer of low-carbon technologies" and "have a significant potential for long-term greenhouse-gas savings"; the Strategic Climate Fund will "serve as an overarching fund for various programs to test innovative approaches to climate change." The World Bank will announce the first beneficiaries of the funds in early 2009.

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Some 600 nudes pose on receding Swiss glacier

Giving climate-change awareness an infusion of sex appeal and highlighting the issue of glacial melt, Greenpeace teamed up with photographer Spencer Tunick over the weekend to bring together 600 volunteers for a nude photo shoot on Switzerland's Aletsch Glacier. "People posing on the glacier, it's like they show their vulnerability, free of any protection," said Marcus Allerman of Greenpeace. "It's actually what happens with our nature, it's free of any protection and it's kind of sick, the glacier is like bleeding out or sweating." The glacier, part of a United Nations World Heritage site, shrunk by about 377 feet between 2005 and 2006. Greenpeace stressed that most Swiss glaciers will disappear by 2080 if climate change continues at its current pace. Organizers were happy that so many volunteers braved the 50-degree temperatures and were especially relieved that Al Gore wasn't mentioned in connection with the event.

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There was something different in the air at this year's Davos gathering of global movers and shakers -- and not just an increase in CO2 concentration. Instead of the irrational exuberance of the 1990s or the celebrity-studded glitz of recent years, we found upbeat but serious discussion of big issues -- climate change in particular.

A few days before the World Economic Forum opened its doors on Jan. 24, people were fretting that for the first time in living memory the snows might not come to this legendary ski town in the Swiss Alps, though they finally arrived in the nick of time. And speaker after speaker -- in a total of 17 sessions on climate, but in many other conversations, too -- voiced concern about global warming. Among them, British Prime Minister Tony Blair; the CEOs of Duke Energy, Shell, and Swiss Re; and Sir Nicholas Stern, whose recent report to the U.K. government on the economic implications of climate change is still making waves around the world.

One of the most interesting sessions focused on the growing links between climate and security, with organizations like the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute spotlighting the growing "carbon signatures" of the world's armed forces.

Alongside climate and carbon, another C word kept popping up: "concrete," both the cement mixture and the notion of concrete action.

China and India have been running hot and cold as they talk about tackling climate change, but both want accelerated transfers of clean technology to their emerging economies. Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice chair of China's National Development and Reform Commission, told a crowd at Davos that cement producers in his country are only about half as energy efficient as Western competitors -- and that China will be using a vast amount of cement and concrete in the coming decades.

Jacques Aigrain.

Photo: E. T. Studhalter/World Economic Forum

Climate was also front and center in the remarks of Jacques Aigrain, CEO of the huge reinsurance group Swiss Re, whose whole business model is threatened by Hurricane Katrina-style disasters that climate experts say we'll be seeing a lot more of. He stressed that taking tangible action on climate change now would be a lot less costly than inaction. "Waiting and seeing because one element or another is not certain is not a valid answer," Aigrain insisted. "No shareholders would tolerate this in business. Why should the people tolerate it from us?" He encouraged the political leaders present not to hide behind international treaties. "Global agreements are the best way to get nowhere. It's true in business and even more true in international politics. Let's take concrete steps, like the ones in California," he said, alluding to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's moves to cut carbon in transportation fuel and slash greenhouse-gas emissions in other ways.

Throughout the gathering, there was a sense that the tide had changed, and powerfully, with corporate leaders now popping their heads above the parapet to announce climate-related initiatives, even competing to be seen as friends of the climate. There was considerable interest, for example, in the new U.S. Climate Action Partnership, launched just days before the forum by Alcoa, Duke Energy, DuPont, GE, and Lehman Brothers, among other big corporate names. The coalition is calling on the U.S. government to set up an emissions-trading system and require carbon cuts of 10 to 30 percent below current levels over the next 15 years, and 60 to 80 percent below current levels by 2050.

Top among the "concrete developments" touted in a media release at the end of the forum was the formation of a new international partnership -- the Climate Disclosure Standards Board -- that brings together seven organizations including the California Climate Action Registry, the Carbon Disclosure Project, Ceres, and the Climate Group (to name just the Cs). It aims to come up with a standardized framework for climate-related information that corporations will be asked to report on, to make it easier for investors, managers, and the public to compare the performance of different companies and sectors.

There were still the occasional contrarian voices, however. One CEO of a major food company -- in a private session in which he appeared alongside half a dozen other CEOs -- questioned whether climate change should even be a priority concern. He noted that when Hannibal went over the Alps with his elephants, he could do so because there was little ice at the time, and that the "green" in Greenland reflected the fact that at least some of that giant island was ice-free and fertile at the time when it was settled by Icelandic and Scandinavian Vikings.

We felt moved to stand up and point out that the Greenland colony died out after 450 years, with graves in the area suggesting that the colonists were increasingly stunted as conditions worsened and ships failed to get through the ice. (We were also tempted to ask to what degree Vikings could be relied upon to tell us whether a place was warm, but resisted the urge.) No doubt the colonists squabbled energetically over which god was responsible for the dramatic change in their fortunes, just as ExxonMobil and its ilk have squabbled energetically with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and others over what is driving climate change.

Pamela Hartigan.

Photo: E. T. Studhalter/World Economic Forum

So who needs to do what in response? A striking feature of Davos 2007 was the growing interest in the work of social and environmental entrepreneurs. Indeed, Nicholas Kristof drew one final concrete connection in a New York Times column lauding social entrepreneurs as the most interesting people at Davos. He quoted Pamela Hartigan, managing director of Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, as saying, "The key with social entrepreneurs is their pragmatic approach. They're not out there with protest banners; they're actually developing concrete solutions."

We couldn't have said it better ourselves (though we made a valiant attempt in our previous column). Social and environmental entrepreneurs -- like Davos attendee Nic Frances of Easy Being Green -- are leading the way in addressing climate change and just about every other major challenge the World Economic Forum has highlighted in recent years.

In the same way that wealthy people once went to clinics in the Swiss Alps for health-promoting exposure to fresh air and energizing concoctions, the high and mighty now head to Davos for fresh ideas and energizing discussions. Let's hope that a few years hence we can conclude all that hot air produced concrete results for people, planet, and posterity.

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A Swiss ski resort worried about global warming's ill effects on its future is taking matters into its own mittened hands. At the ski season's end in May, the Andermatt resort will cover some 32,200 square feet of the Gurschen glacier with an insulating PVC foam in hopes of keeping its black diamonds from melting into bunny slopes. The foam, which costs some $84,000 and can be stored during winter for reuse, was constructed by Swiss technicians to protect the snow layer from heat, ultraviolet rays, and rain. The country's glaciers have lost about a fifth of their surface area in the last 15 years, according to a Zurich University study linking the loss to global warming, and the ice field above Andermatt is retreating by about 16 feet a year, a resort spokesperson says. If the PVC-foam trial is successful, the resort plans to cover more of the glacier, and other resorts may also get in on the doggy-bagging technique.

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Government kept mum about GM corn's mistaken identity

Over a four-year period, Swiss biotech giant Syngenta AG inadvertently sold unapproved strains of genetically modified corn seed to U.S. farmers. The corporation claims the sales, which began in 2001, resulted from a case of mistaken identity between two genetically similar varieties of GM corn. Although the company reported the mistake to regulators in December 2004, U.S. officials have stayed mum about it. The news became public yesterday when the journal Nature published an article about the mishap. A Syngenta spokesflack confirmed that a relatively small amount of the seed was planted, but said that most of the resulting crops will be used as animal feed or for industrial purposes and that any remaining seeds were destroyed or isolated. Kendall Lamkey, head of Iowa State University's plant-breeding center and a former panel member for the National Academy of Sciences, said it's the federal government's secrecy about the matter that's most alarming: "The whole GMO controversy surrounds a lack of transparency on both [the part of] the companies and regulatory agencies."

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Global Climate Change Could Spell End of Winter Sports Industry

Bad news for ski bums: As global climate change heats up the planet and pushes snow lines ever higher, many winter resorts in Europe might have to shut down. Less expensive, low-altitude destinations will be particularly hard hit, with some slopes in Italy, Austria, and Germany already suffering from lack of snow. But higher-altitude resorts won't be able to stave off trouble indefinitely either: According to a United Nations study released yesterday, 50* of Switzerland's 230 resorts will not have enough regular snow to sustain skiing within 30 years. That's an economic disaster for resort owners, an environmental disaster as lack of winter snow changes water and weather patterns -- and, of course, a recreational disaster for winter-sports lovers everywhere.

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A corn product developed by the Anglo-Swiss biotech company Syngenta will likely be approved for sale by the European Union next month, ending a five-year de facto ban on new genetically modified foods on the continent. A number of other GM product approvals are expected to follow. This may mollify the U.S., which has been fighting for GM products to be allowed into Europe and has gone to the World Trade Organization to file a complaint against the E.U. on the matter. But European citizens, some 70 percent of whom say they want nothing to do with GM foods, aren't likely to be lining up to buy them, and as GM products in Europe have to be labeled, Europeans can easily avoid them. U.S. citizens, who are given no idea which products contain GM ingredients, have no such option.

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In a closely watched referendum, Swiss citizens voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to keep nuclear power going strong in the country. Although Switzerland has abundant sources of hydroelectric power, voters rejected two initiatives on the ballot that would have phased out the nation's five nuclear power plants over the coming decades. Philippe de Rougemont, representative for an anti-nuke coalition, predicted that the "no" vote would discourage companies from pursuing renewable-energy projects, and he blamed the initiatives' defeat on the powerful nuclear industry. "It seems that money determines the outcome of the vote," he said. The Swiss electorate also rejected a citizens' initiative that would have established car-free Sundays in the country.

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Two new studies on global climate change, both appearing in the latest issue of Nature, predict that the Earth will get even hotter by the end of the century than previously estimated by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. One study, from Switzerland, sees a 7.7 degree Fahrenheit increase by 2100; the other, from Great Britain, predicts as much as a 12.4 degree increase. (The IPCC expected a rise of anywhere from 3 to 10.5 degrees; for comparison's sake, the temperature difference between now and the last Ice Age is 9 degrees.) More important, say scientists, the studies show a temperature increase of 0.5 to 2.3 degrees (the British study) or 0.9 to 1.9 degrees (the Swiss study) for the years 2020-2030 -- just two decades from now. And you thought it was bad on the East Coast right now.

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The Tesso Nilo forest on Sumatra, Indonesia, contains more biological diversity than the Amazon. It is home to elephants, tigers, gibbons, and tapirs, and a recent survey conducted by scientists from the World Wildlife Fund found as many as 218 vascular plant species in just 0.05 acres. But the entire forest could disappear in less than eight years, according to the WWF (or within four years, according to the World Bank's more dire prediction) if clearcutting and illegal logging continues apace. The Swiss-based WWF urged Indonesia to set aside Tesso Nilo as a protected area and called on foreign countries, especially the G-8, to stop the international trade in illegally logged timber.

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