DAVOS DIARY: Train, not plane means scenery, carbon cutting

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — If you’re coming to Davos this year, try to take the train instead of flying, organizers of the World Economic Forum said.

So I did.

That meant a 12-hour journey from London to the exclusive gathering in the Swiss Alps, which I'm helping cover for The Associated Press.

Taking a train is much less convenient than a plane, but the scenery made up for it — the rolling farm fields of England and France gave way to Switzerland’s towering mountains and idyllic valleys dotted with chalets. And my carbon footprint will be a lot lower than a flight.

To many, Davos conjures up images of government leaders, billionaire elites and corporate titans jetting in on carbon-spewing private planes even as the meeting increasingly focuses on climate change.

Organizers have been stung by such criticism, even dedicating a webpage in past years to debunk those claims. Encouraging European attendees to come by train is part of their efforts to burnish the event’s sustainability credentials amid criticism it’s merely a talking shop that doesn’t produce systemic change.

I’m not the first to go by train. Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg famously took a 32-hour train ride to get to the Davos meeting in 2019, where she astonished participants with a fiery speech. I’m also riding a broader wave of traveler interest in train trips over short-haul flights tied to climate guilt.

My journey begins at London’s St. Pancras International train station, where I board the high-speed Eurostar that whisks me through a tunnel under the English Channel to Paris in about two and a half hours. There I take a short metro ride to another train station for the next four-hour leg to Zurich.

By plane, I would have been crammed on a discount flight from London’s Gatwick Airport for...