Ursula von der Leyen has warned China and other large fossil fuel producers to find a way to price carbon at home or risk being hit by the EU with a planned CO2 tax on imports. “There is no point in only reducing greenhouse gas emissions at home, if we increase the import of CO2 from abroad,” Ms von der Leyen told delegates at Davos. “It is not only a climate issue; it is also an issue of fairness towards our businesses and our workers. We will protect them from unfair competition.”

Welcome to day four of Moral Money’s Davos 2020 special editions! We are publishing every day this week at 0500 GMT to keep you updated about all the developments at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting that relate to sustainable and ESG investing.

Global leaders made plenty of bold — and often pious — pledges about climate change this week as they gathered in Davos. One of the most thought-provoking comments came from Axel Weber, UBS chairman, about carbon taxes. He predicted that finance is on the verge of “a big change in market structure”, as investors wake up to climate risks and embed carbon prices into their portfolio decisions. “The carbon price will become like Libor,” he declared. The London Interbank Offered rate — its full name — served as a vital benchmark for western loan markets for three decades, until revelations in 2012 that some traders had manipulated Libor prompted a regulatory overhaul.

US Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin criticised Greta Thunberg, challenging the economic impact of the climate activist’s call for investors to divest completely from fossil fuels. “This is nothing against China and India but the real environmental issues right now are in both their countries.”

It is no doubt a major step in the right direction as China has passed an ambitious new ban on single-use plastic. However, the article here correctly states that whilst this sounds good on paper, without the massive investment in composting technology and infrastructure, the rubbish problem will still exist which in tern is bad for the environment. It aptly writes that “real change requires a cultural shift, not just different materials.”

The virtual face-off between Greta Thunberg and Donald Trump in Davos this week caught the spirit of the times: on the one hand, a call to action to avert the world’s impending climate catastrophe; and on the other, a dismissal of evidence and an exhortation to optimism. Their audiences, meanwhile, faced the more pressing concern of restoring growth and confidence to a flagging global economy.

The article highlights how according to a new study, a greenhouse gas 12,000 times more dangerous than carbon dioxide, called HFC-23, predominantly produced by China and India is being released into the atmosphere at a record rate.

China’s crude steel production hit a record of just below 1 billion tonnes last year, with signs that this will continue to increase in 2020. Restrictions on production that were implemented towards the end of last year were meant to combat the smog and pollution that this industry creates, however these have proved all but ineffective in controlling the harmful repercussions of steel production.

“Our house is on fire,” Greta Thunberg told delegates at the World Economic Forum last January. In the months that followed, “Greta” became the uncompromising spokesperson for a global movement.

The Daily Telegraph has published a series of visuals to depict the harsh reality of working in China’s coal industry. The captions also reveal that China is responsible for nearly a third of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions, cited as the primary cause of global warming.