The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent stringent lockdowns showed there is a “tremendous opportunity” for a “Great Reset” and a faster shift toward the Green Transition, according to Nicole Schwab, daughter of Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Ms. Schwab, who serves as a member of the executive committee at the WEF, made the comments in a newly unearthed video from a June 2020 panel discussion in Switzerland.
During the panel discussion, Ms. Schwab noted that the pandemic crisis had demonstrated that things can “shift very rapidly when we put our minds to it” and when people sense an “immediate emergency” to their livelihoods.
She also said the pandemic had shown that the system in place prior to the pandemic was “not sustainable.”
Overall, the pandemic and the resulting draconian lockdowns, she said, had proven that the same fear can be used to place environmental issues and tackling climate change at the center of the economy, in line with the WEF’s agenda.
“So I see it as a tremendous opportunity to really have this Great Reset and to use these huge flows of money—to use the increased levers that policymakers have today—in a way that was not possible before to create a change that is not incremental but that we can look back and we can say this is the moment where we really started to position nature at the core of the economy,” Ms. Schwab said.
The “Great Reset” of capitalism has regularly been pushed by the WEF and its founder Mr. Schwab.
Great Reset Explained
According to an article penned by Mr. Schwab on the WEF’s official website, the world must “build entirely new foundations for our economic and social systems” or risk leaving a world that is “even less sustainable, less equal, and more fragile.”The Great Reset, according to him, is a global economic recovery plan that would steer the market toward fairer outcomes.
Under the economic post-COVID plan, governments would improve coordination, implement reforms that would “promote more equitable outcomes,” ensure that investments advance equality and sustainability based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics, and create the conditions for a “stakeholder economy.”
It would also “harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to support the public good,” particularly by addressing health and social challenges, according to Mr. Schwab.
The fine details of the Great Reset are still relatively vague though and have faced criticism from Republican lawmakers and experts alike who fear the premise will be used to enforce radical policies and deprive ordinary citizens of their basic rights.
Experts Caution Against Great Reset
Dr. Antony Mueller, a German economics professor who teaches in Brazil, wrote in 2020 that the economic plan would result in no property and no privacy.“What is sold to the public as the promise of equality and ecological sustainability is in fact a brutal assault on human dignity and liberty,” Dr. Mueller wrote. “Instead of using the new technologies as an instrument of betterment, the Great Reset seeks to use the technological possibilities as a tool of enslavement. In this new world order, the state is the single owner of everything. It is left to our imagination to figure out who will program the algorithms that manage the distribution of the goods and services.”
Elsewhere Steve Milloy, who was part of the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team, has said the Great Reset is going to be about “control over what we do, control of industry, control, control, control.”
The newly unearthed video of Ms. Schwab comes as experts have warned of “terrifying” increasing global temperatures, with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres stating last month that the era of global boiling has arrived and warning of “children swept away by monsoon rains, families running from the flames, and workers collapsing in scorching heat.”
While speaking during the June 2020 panel discussion, Ms. Schwab said one of the “key reflection points” arising from the pandemic and lockdowns was about “engaging youth” to have a shift in mindset regarding climate change and environmental issues.
“Can we conceive of ourselves, as humans ... as a restoration generation?” she said. “I think that’s where we need to go. I’m also hopeful that it’s possible, but I think it will take a lot of will, both political will but also in terms of the business actors, to break with business as usual but in a very serious way and to say we need to make very difficult choices.”
“There are trade-offs, but this is our chance ... and this is about risk, and it’s about resilience because the shocks [that] are coming are going to be even worse if we don’t do it now,” Ms. Schwab concluded.
