LJWorld.com

Davos, Switzerland — When I tell friends I'm off for the World Economic Forum in Davos, they usually assume this is some kind of boondoggle. Five days in a Swiss alpine town, at a conference with more than 2,400 global political, economic and cultural leaders, including 800 top CEOs - the assumption is that Davos is one big party on the ski slopes.

Well, there are a lot of receptions and parties, but the astonishing thing about the Davos meeting is that its packed sessions offer an acute snapshot of global trends. This year's focus is on "the shifting power equation" - another way of saying that global economic and political power is fragmenting and the American unipolar moment is gone.

This is a chastened Davos, with no country or region being lionized, and a frisson of unease about the political future. A survey of participants showed that 61 percent believed that the next generation will live in a less safe world.

If the era of U.S. primacy is gradually passing, no one knows who or what will succeed it. But the world still depends on America as a reliable growth engine. And, as China's economic power grows, we don't know how responsibly it will, or will not, behave. Or as another seminar blurb asks: "What Kind of World Does China Want?"

The Davos panels on geopolitics pay sad testimony to the decline of U.S. global influence. Several focus on the troubles in Iraq, and many of Iraq's top leaders will attend. The meetings on the Middle East's future are likely to be glum.

The sense of this year's program is that governments, including ours, are falling behind nonstate actors in driving the world, whether those nonstate actors be terrorists, or individuals networking together with computers, or the World Wide Web itself, which can be used to rally movements in ways that states find hard to thwart or duplicate.

Yet amid all this uncertainty, there is a bright spot: the exciting potential of nongovernment actors - including a huge role for big-company CEOs - to affect one of the most crucial issues of our time: climate change.

This year's meeting focuses heavily on environmental issues. What makes this issue especially appropriate to Davos is that many top corporate leaders in the energy field, such as Duke Energy Corp. chief executive officer James Rogers, are pushing for U.S. government action to reduce carbon emissions.

They are way out in front of the Bush White House on the issue. (Rogers will be on a panel called "Advancing the U.S. Energy Agenda.") Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., also will be pressing the issue.

Davos organizers say that one in five of their participants listed protecting the environment as an issue on which world leaders should concentrate. This was up from only 9 percent last year. This issue is becoming so hot that even a reluctant President Bush had to touch on it in his State of the Union message.

If one trend defines this year's Davos, it may be the recognition by top business leaders that the world can't wait any longer to confront climate change.