German leader champions new tack on climate at Davos event

GENEVA (AP) — New German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called Wednesday for a “paradigm shift” in the way the world approaches climate policy, saying his country would leverage its presidency of the Group of Seven industrial nations this year to push for standards to fight global warming.

Climate discussions have been a key theme this week at a World Economic Forum meeting, which is being held online after COVID-19 concerns delayed its annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland. It included a panel with U.S. special envoy on climate John Kerry and billionaire Bill Gates that featured ideas environmentalists and scientists have challenged: that innovations yet to be invented or used widely would help drastically reduce emissions.

Unlike events such as last year's U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, the Davos meeting is more of a discussion of big ideas — not where concrete agreements are made on how to act. Critics regularly fault the Davos event, whose origins date to 1971, for hosting economic and political elites who voice high-minded but often empty goals that are deemed out of touch with the needs of regular people.

In an address, Scholz focused on ambitions by Germany and the wider European Union to fight climate change.

“Europe has decided to become the first carbon-neutral continent by 2050; Germany wants to reach that goal in 2045 already … a monumental task, but a task that we can and will master,” he said.

Scholz added that Germany will use its G-7 presidency to “turn that group into the nucleus of an international climate club."

“What we want to achieve is a paradigm shift in international climate policy. We will no longer wait for the slowest and least ambitious," he said. “Instead, we will lead by example, and we will turn climate action from a cost...