Spotlight on elite’s carbon footprint at Davos summit

CLIMATE change will be among the big issues at this week’s meeting of the world’s business and political elite in Davos, Switzerland, and they could start by confronting their own carbon footprint.

Today, hundreds of participants in the World Economic Forum (WEF) will land in private planes as large as Boeing 767s and travel to the Swiss winter resort in helicopters, limousines or rented 4x4s.

While some will take advantage of different programmes to reduce greenhouse gases or use Switz-erland’s train network — one of the world’s best developed — the annual meeting will demonstrate how such global meetings contribute to the problem of greenhouse gases.