Fortune's Nelson Schwartz writes:


This should be Al Gore's year in Davos. After all, the former veep has been here in the past and in 2007, his signature issue, global warming, is at the center of the Davos agenda. Indeed, CEOs like Duke Energy's (DUK) Jim Rogers have been all over Davos addressing the topic. Rogers is chairman of the Edison Electric Institute, the U.S. power industry's trade association, and he wants electric companies to "have a seat at the table, rather than be on the menu" when policymakers sit down to decide how deal with CO2 emissions and rising temperatures.

But Al is nowhere in sight. Why? According to a top Democrat and former Gore campaign aide I spoke to here, the organizers of the World Economic Forum didn't want Gore to come and steal the show from Davos founder and impresario Dr. Klaus Schwab. So I asked Dr. Schwab why Gore wasn't here, and he told me to "Ask Al." Mr. Vice-President, care to comment? UPDATE: Gore spokesperson Kalee Kreider tells The Peak that: "Former VP Gore wasn't able to attend because he has a very firm book deadline for his new book 'The Assault on Reason' which is coming out in May. We informed the organizers in Davos of this several weeks ago."

Whatever the reason for his absence, it is too bad he couldn't make it. Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, has been cited again and again during the numerous workshops and forums on the issue. And Gore's passion on the issue would be a useful antidote to the well, hot air, coming from leaders here who say all the right things about climate change but offer very little in the way of actual policy prescriptions.

Nandan Nilekani is cofounder and CEO of Infosys, the Indian business process outsourcing company. He is a former FORTUNE Asia Businessman of the Year and on the advisory board of the Fortune Global Forum that will be held in New Delhi, October 29-31. He is writing a daily blog at Davos, which is being cross-posted here. Nilekani's first entry:

This year it is clearly about climate change and sustainability. But as is common with such complex topics there is as much confusion as clarity. At Davos there is a consensus that developmental models impacting the environment need to be rethought in the context of global development, especially in the case of India and China. Today, 70% of the world's carbon emissions originate from the US and Europe. The carbon emission per capita in the US is 24 tons per annum, whereas it is 4 tons in China and 2 tons in India. Everyone agrees that if India and China achieve the same standard of living as the US, we will need more than one planet for all of us to live together.

Given the fact that 70% of the world's carbon emissions are from the US and Europe and people of India and China want a better standard of living, we cannot then deny them development. So, it is very clear that we have to fashion a new kind of development model, which is less injurious on the environment. While there is agreement on this, the question is who does what and who pays for what? It is also clear that there is a role for government and there is a role for business. For government, there are basically five responsibilities.

The first is to create regulations to encourage the right kind of behavior. For example, having fuel emission standards for automobiles or mandating that x - percent of petrol should be bio fuel and so forth.

The second way that governments can make a difference is by creating global grading systems for different kinds of emissions so that less efficient organizations pay more. This essentially puts a price on environmental degradation.

The third way governments can achieve this is by having taxes on those forms of activities that they believe are harmful to the environment.

The fourth role of government is to give subsidies to those forms of behavior which they think is good for the environment.

Finally, governments have to support the technological development so that new innovative ways are coming up to develop carbon efficiency technologies.

Companies in turn have to work to become more innovative, more efficient, more environmentally friendly, and have to reduce their consumption of energy, water, or plastic, you know they have to make more things biodegradable and so forth, that is up to companies to do.

So there is a role for company, there is a role for government, and often in the conversation the lines are blurred as who does what.

The other issue is who pays for all this? Developing nations believe that they should not retard their growth because of a problem created by someone else. They want adequate compensation for the cost of inventing and implementing sustainable growth.

So the key issue at Davos is, "will we be able to out of all this create a framework as to not only what needs to be done but who does which part of it and most importantly who pays for it?"

Fortune's David Kirkpatrick writes:

The overriding issue obsessing this year's WEF is global warming and energy.
And with the weather worldwide seeming designed to remind us that man is perverting nature's balance, it was somewhat reassuring to arrive in Davos to find a healthy snow falling. I drove up from Munich where I'd been attending another conference, and where, like New York, the weather has been springlike all winter. Temperatures there of 60 degrees fahrenheit have not been unusual in recent weeks.

Security in Davos is a favorite topic of attendees, and this year it has reached new heights of absurdity. What drives so many of us crazy is that the hordes of machine-gun-toting Swiss soldiers who yell instructions whenever we're trying to go somewhere hardly ever speak English. I was seeking yesterday morning to register and was barred from walking down the street which would take me to the registration building. I was flummoxed, and became even more so when another rider in the van I was in, who spoke a modicum of German, told me that the soldier gesticulating wildly seemed to be saying that there was no way I could get to registration. Luckily I found my way eventually, after being forced to walk the wrong way for many blocks.

I've been coming here quite a few years, but for all the intellectual and sensory stimulation from amazing people and places, one thing has struck me every year - the toilets in the Congress Centre - the main hall where WEF sessions take place. After you use a toilet, a little robotic mechanism pulls the entire seat through a sort of squeegee with soap and water at the back of the toilet. It's a good symbol of the tidiness of the Swiss, so evident here in so many ways, sometimes to a maddening degree.

Finally - a tiny sign of economic stability - the price of a lunch at one of the many WEF sessions over lunch has remained stable for at least 5 years, albeit at the high price of 90 Euros.