Top business leaders issue expletive-laden message on climate

Top business leaders this week delivered an expletive-laden plea in defense of climate action, describing the backlash to Europe’s green transition as an “aberration.”

In an interview with CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Allianz CEO Oliver Bäte said he disagreed with the suggestion that it may just be a matter of time before net zero is dismissed in Europe, saying short-term thinking on this issue is “bulls—.”

Asked about political leaders backtracking on their much-vaunted European Green New Deal and Norway’s oil fund reportedly defending a push from companies to water down their climate goals, Bäte said anyone who has children “will have to worry” about the planet’s future.

“It’s an aberration that short-term people are saying that,” Bäte told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Tuesday. “I think it’s about doing it intelligently. And by the way, the role model here is China, they are going to be the leader both in terms of renewable and cost of energy.”

The CEO of Allianz, one of the world’s biggest insurers, said it was integral for business and political leaders to stay the course on necessary energy transition targets.

“This is what we do in Allianz, we said 2050 is net zero. Let’s not try to say, ‘ah I need to do it already by 2035’ — bulls—. Excuse my language on TV,” Bäte said.

“We have, in our company, reduced energy consumption for us by more than 40%. It can be done, but let’s not make it a religion. Make it a target and then keep focusing on it,” he added.

His comments come amid concerns that businesses are increasingly shying away from climate action, turning instead to issues such as competitiveness, while political support for net zero appears to be fading.

Indeed, at Davos, the event itself has shifted focus, looking now at how to cope with the worst elements of the climate crisis rather than, as in previous years, focusing on how to rapidly reduce planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions.

Andrew Forrest, founder and executive chairman of Australian mining giant Fortescue, said Monday that the net zero term itself was “a little bit of a problem here.” He has previously called for the world to walk away from the “proven fantasy” of net zero, saying it is time to embrace “real zero” by 2040 instead.

Net zero refers to the goal of achieving a state of balance between the carbon emitted into the atmosphere and the carbon removed from it. More than 140 countries, including major polluters such as the U.S., India, and the European Union, have adopted plans to reach net zero.

“While we use excuses like carbon credits, offsets, all that rubbish, I think that the president of the United States has a proper angle to prosecute an argument against those who just stood up for net zero [but] I’d have to say this: We don’t need net any more,” Forrest told CNBC’s Karen Tso in Davos.

“Real zero is simply stopping the burning of fossil fuel. That is a very simple equation. When are you going to stop burning fossil fuel? Name the date. Then you will be giving your shareholders a lower cost and more competitive cost of energy.”

Fortescue, which is the world’s fourth-largest iron ore miner, has outlined plans to stop burning fossil fuels across its Australian iron ore operations by the end of the decade, and called for other hard-to-abate companies to follow suit.

China, Forrest said, had wisely backed “every horse in the race” by investing in both hydrocarbon and renewable energy technologies, a policy decision that clearly diverges from the Trump administration’s approach.

“Now, the United States … have gone hard [for] fossil fuels and kind of made anyone going for renewables feel like they’re woke, they’re not looking after shareholders. Honestly, I’m here to tell all of Davos, that is not correct,” Forrest said.

“Walking into a renewable energy future is cheaper. If you have got a technology line which is basically flat or declining with oil and gas, which means your operating cost is flat or rising with oil and gas. Yet, you have got a renewable energy technology curve which is bloody near vertical up, and its costs are bloody near vertical down, then you’re looking at trends,” he continued.

“The trend of renewable energy is eating fossil fuels for lunch. So, I would just simply say to all my friends in America, back every horse. Your president is more businessman than he is anti-climate change.”

U.S. President Donald Trump, who has rejected the scientific consensus of human-caused climate change as a “hoax,” reportedly agreed to attend Davos this year after the organizers gave assurances that “woke” topics would not feature prominently at the meeting.

On Wednesday, the U.S. president took aim at the EU’s energy policy during his Davos speech, claiming that wind turbines destroy land and lose money.

“That is unfortunately not completely new, and we take indeed a fundamentally different view here,” EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told CNBC on Wednesday.

“We do feel that climate change has huge economic ramifications. At the same time, there is a clear opportunity in batteries, in solar, by the way also in nuclear, which is where I agree [with Trump],” he added.

Asked about the fraying political support for net zero policies, the EU’s Hoekstra conceded that “there are pockets” that are more skeptical than before.

“The harsh reality, though is that the physics of the whole matter and the planet doesn’t give a damn whether we talk about it or we don’t,” Hoekstra said.

“The only thing that matters is how much CO2 we are pumping into the air, how much the planet is heating up and how much economic damage to us as societies this is going to create,” he added.

Not everyone is worried about Europe’s commitment to climate action. Joe Kaeser, chairman of Germany’s Siemens Energy, said he’s more focused on what action can be taken.

“We need to talk to our customers about what we can do together and lay out a pathway on how we can come down to net zero in the end,” Kaeser told CNBC on Tuesday.

“There is no issue that we cannot do it, but it is about technology and innovation and not about regulation saying, ‘you must do this, you must do that, you must do hydrogen,’ although everybody knows it will never be economically feasible,” he added.