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Climate
“I can tell you Europe is absolutely committed to tackling climate change, to developing this green economy, and to making the green transition a European success,” said Nadia Calviño, President of the European Investment Bank.
The rollout of artificial intelligence has raised big questions about how it will impact Europe’s transition to a more sustainable economy. During a Global Stage livestream at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Calviño stressed the continent’s role in addressing risks generated by AI. She said, “I think it will be key when we're talking about these technologies that have such a huge demand for energy supply.” Alongside countries being energy-conscious, Calviño stresses that building strong trust between businesses and citizens will help the new technologies “unleash their full potential.”
This conversation, moderated by Becky Anderson, was part of the Global Stage series at the 2025 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, presented by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft.
Click to watch the full discussion for our panel's insights on AI's future and how it is expected to transform our economy and society by 2030.
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"We are on the right path to building, what I call, the 'intelligence grid' alongside the electricity grid," said Peng Xiao, CEO of G42.
As Donald Trump begins his new term, artificial intelligence has reemerged as a major topic of discussion. During a Global Stage livestream at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Peng highlighted the benefits and challenges of advancing AI technology. He praised Trump’s global infrastructure build-out initiative and AI’s potential to integrate seamlessly into daily life but underscored, "We cannot afford for intelligence not to be equally distributed."
Peng emphasized the need for global governance and development to be "equitable, systematic, and coordinated across regions." Thus as private sector investments in AI surge, policy decisions in the coming months will be closely watched
This conversation, moderated by Becky Anderson, was part of the Global Stage series at the 2025 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, presented by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft.
Click to watch the full discussion for our panel's insights on AI's future and how it is expected to transform our economy and society by 2030.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to be U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum attends the vice president?s dinner ahead of the inauguration of Trump, in Washington, U.S., January 18, 2025.
The AI race depends on fossil fuels. That was the message from Doug Burgum in his Senate confirmation hearing last Thursday.
Burgum is currently auditioning for two jobs. If confirmed by the US Senate, the former North Dakota governor will not only serve as secretary of the interior but also as the head of a new committee called the National Energy Council.
Burgum said that the US will lose its “AI arms race” with China unless it takes full advantage of fossil fuels. To run artificial intelligence models on advanced processors, data centers require copious amounts of electricity. He criticized wind and solar energy and said the country needs more “baseload” electricity from coal. “The sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow,” Burgum told senators, signaling plans for a deregulatory environment in the energy sector.
Companies are rethinking their climate ambitions in the age of AI. In July, Google’s Chief Sustainability Officer Kate Brandtadmitted that the company’s goal to become carbon “net zero” by 2030 is now “extremely ambitious.” The Biden administration has encouraged the development of nuclear energy infrastructure as a way to get more “clean energy” to pursue AI at scale without further delaying progress on climate goals. Google and Microsoft have struck deals for nuclear energy, while Meta is seeking a deal of its own.
Burgum’s confirmation hearing showed that while Trump’s administration may be just as enthused about dominating global AI, it’ll be less stringent on using renewable or clean energy to do so.
America’s adversaries are looking to exploit the transition period between the Biden and Trump Administrations, China has a fateful choice to make about its own role in the world, and the biggest challenge for US foreign policy might have more to do with clean energy than hard power, according to outgoing US National security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
Sullivan, speaking with Ian Bremmer before a live audience at 92Y in New York on Tuesday as part of a special episode of our nationally-syndicated television show GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, shared his views on key US foreign policy issues at what he said was “a huge, plastic moment of turbulence and transition” in global politics.
A few highlights:
On the transition to Trump. Despite huge differences of opinion about policy, he said, Team Biden has been working hard to ensure that with Team Trump everyone is “singing from the same song sheet” on key risks, in particular the prospect of a weakened Iran accelerating its nuclear program.
The unexpectedly swift collapse of the Assad regime, he said, is a moment of “promise but also profound risk” in which the US must work both with its Kurdish allies in the country as well as with other outside powers to ensure that the country doesn’t become a power vacuum and a haven for international terrorism.
A “just peace” in Ukraine should be “up to the Ukrainians.” He said he hoped Trump will “continue to provide Ukraine with the defensive capacity so that Ukraine's in the best possible position on the battlefield, which will put them in a better position at the negotiating table.”
Russia is more beat up than it looks. High inflation, unsustainable spending, and staggering combat losses in Ukraine are taking a toll, he said. “The conventional wisdom from a few months ago was ‘Russia's got it made in the shade economically, they can do this indefinitely’ – I don't think the economic signals we're seeing right now bear that out.”
China has a big choice to make. Does it want to slip deeper into an axis of reactionary powers like Russia, Iran, and North Korea, or does it want to assume a more constructive global role, even as it competes with the US? “The world,” he said, “should put the onus on China to make the right choice.”
What worries him most? “The one thing that makes me nervous,” he said, “is the need for us to deploy clean energy rapidly enough to power the computing power necessary to stay at the cutting edge of artificial intelligence.”
For more of the conversation: including what Sullivan learned from spending hundreds of hours with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, why he thinks Joe Biden’s foreign policy planted seeds that will bear fruit “for a generation”, and how an American invasion of Canada might compare with Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, keep an eye out for Ian’s GZERO newsletter, dropping later today.
And to catch the whole interview: tune in to GZERO World with Ian Bremmer airing on PBS-affiliates nationwide starting Friday. More info here.
Protesters gather at the venue of the 29th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, dubbed COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Nov. 16, 2024, calling for developed countries to take responsibility for the greenhouse gasses they have emitted.
Aftermarathon sessions and deep divisions, COP29 concluded in Baku, Azerbaijan, with a commitment of $300 billion in annual assistance by 2035 to help poorer nations cope with climate change. That’s up from today’s pledges of $100 billion a year. Twenty-three contributors will kick in the funds, including the UK, US, Japan, and countries in the EU. Recipients include countries in Africa and South America, as well as a host of small island states.
While some delegates applauded the deal, many developing nations branded it a “betrayal.” Indian delegate Chandni Raina called it “an optical illusion.” “This will not address the enormity of the challenge,” she said. Meanwhile, low-lying nations like the Marshall Islands acknowledged that the deal is a “start” but ultimately insufficient.
While the agreement also lays groundwork for next year’s COP30 in Brazil, big questions remain. Will wealthy nations deliver on their pledges? How will the funds be divided? What can developing nations do if it isn’t enough?
The urgency is real. 2024 is expected to be the hottest year ever (the second record year in a row), with global emissions still rising. The world is currently on track for temperature increases of up to 3.1 C (5.6 F) by the end of the century, according to the 2024 UN Emissions Gap report.
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
North Korea ratified a major defense treaty with Russia. What do both sides hope to gain?
Well, the North Koreans really want mutual defense. They are helping the Russians out in their time of need, sending a whole bunch of troops, things that the North Koreans have in surplus and don't really value and the Russians can really use right now. And they would love to see Russian troops in North Korea. They'd love to see that appear as mutual defense and give the North Koreans a lot more leverage so they are not forced to be supplicants in Beijing, and they can also be more assertive versus South Korea, Japan, and others. This is a major escalation in this war and a big problem geopolitically.
The Russians, of course, are just looking for more troops, more ammunition, more ability to fight, and they are in a much, much stronger position to get terms that they want from the United States and from the Ukrainians. Especially now that the US has elected somebody that says he really, really wants to end the war. Putin will be like, "Okay, but here are the things that I need if you want me to end the war." Trump's incented to give him a lot more of those than almost anybody in NATO right now.
Japan's PM survived a rare parliamentary vote. How will he tackle the country's sluggish economy?
Well, he is saying that he's going to do a lot more stimulus, and so basically blow out the budget. Exactly, not where he has been historically. Japan's economy is pretty flat. Interest rates are close to zero, though they've been pushing them up a bit, historically surprising, recently. It's not like companies are all itching to get into Japan. Their demography is falling apart, and most people are pushing their production elsewhere, so including Japanese companies. So it's a real challenge, and Ishiba is going to be there maybe for a year. This is a very weak LDP coalition government.
What do I expect to come from COP29, the new climate summit happening in Baku?
Well, the Americans are attending with their knees cut off because Trump is going to be president in a couple months and he will pull the Americans out of the Paris Climate Accord once again. The trajectory on post-carbon investment and the prices coming down at scale for the Americans and for everyone in the world is already way too well-developed to pull back, and that's a good thing. But the US is going to be focused more on additional permitting and for oil and gas and production increases. Even beyond the record levels that they are right now under the Biden administration. They'll go further.
And so it's really, the Americans are going to be pretty marginalized at this summit, and the Chinese are driving the bus. They're producing a lot more coal, of course, but at the same time, they're also producing a hell of a lot more post-carbon renewables at global levels. In other words, China's doing at global scale what Texas is doing in the United States. And that is making them much more important as decision-makers.
A person takes photos of the waves as Typhoon Krathon approaches in Kaohsiung, Taiwan October 2, 2024.
2: At least two people are dead in Taiwan, and 70 injured, from weather attributed to Typhoon Krathon, which is expected to make landfall on the densely populated west coast of the Island on Thursday. Thousands have been evacuated from areas at risk of floods or landslides. One elderly man fell off a ladder while pruning a tree near his house in preparation for the storm, and another crashed into fallen rocks while driving. Western Taiwan is usually sheltered from major storms by its east coast mountain ranges and Taipei has put 40,000 troops on standby for expected rescue operations.
2: Two high-profile Beninese political figures were arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of plotting a coup against President Patrice Talon, allegedly having attempted to bribe the head of the Republican Guard. Benin is one of the most stable democracies in West Africa — even the communist dictatorship that ruled 1975-1990 handed over power peacefully — and was not previously believed to be at risk of extralegal regime change.
40: Vietnamese media reported Wednesday that some Vietnamese fishermen were severely injured in a clash near the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea after around 40 foreign sailors boarded their vessels and beat the crews with iron bats on Sunday. The hull numbers of the alleged aggressors correspond with local Chinese maritime patrols, and Beijing confirmed an operation against Vietnamese fishermen near the Paracels but denied Hanoi’s version of events.
80: A long-forgotten US bomb dating back to World War II buried deep beneath a taxiway at Japan’s Miyazaki Airport suddenly exploded on Wednesday, causing a large crater and the cancellation of at least 80 flights. No one was harmed, thankfully, though hundreds of unexploded US bombs remain buried in Japan and are sometimes dug up during construction projects.