Lawyer Monthly Magazine - February 2020 Edition

the US and, even though it was lifted in 1974, the government sought ways to obtain more fuel supplies. A plea from the EEC at Davos was not enough to enforce change in this instance, however, in 1976, due to pressing concerns on a shortage of fuel, President Jimmy Carter pushed for legislation, including the 1978 National Energy Act, and led the creation of the Department of Energy to try control oil and fuel consumption. He was not able to find support for an oil tax, however, as Americans didn’t want a plan that required them to ‘pay more for less’. In 1989, Nobel Prize winner Carlo Rubbia took the opportunity at Davos to warn people about the impact of fossil fuels and how they were a significant threat to the planet, urging for investment in nuclear fusion reactors to counteract the greenhouse effect. During this time nuclear fusion was taking the headlines with promises of an “inexhaustible source of energy” due to progressive development in this area, yet over 20 years later, nothing had been achieved with Physicist the past two years. But this isn’t the first time the environment has been a focal point of Davos. In 1973, Aureilo Peccei, an Italian industrialist, delivered a speech calling for balancing economic goals with environmental concerns, and the following year, political leaders were invited for the first time, where the European Energy Commissioner asked the United States to cut fuel consumption by 5 to 10 percent. Did their request result in change? (See Figure 1). In 1973, Congress did try to diminish fuel usage - as reflected in Figure 1 (left) - by creating a 55-mile-per-hour speed limit on federal highways but this was merely due to the Arab nations, via the OPEC cartel, imposing an embargo on Such a spoken event like Davos has the potential to do much more other than excite or reassure eager- eyed investors, but is the event in a position to make such changes when it does not go hand-in-hand with legislative change. - 13 - WWW.LAWYER-MONTHLY.COM "Roboter für Grundeinkommen" by Kopf oder Zahl