One of the things Davosians love best when they meet up here in the mountains each year is the ability to hash out serious ideas about where the world is going. The World Economic Forum, after all, bills itself as “committed to improving the state of the world.”

This year is no exception and about 750 of the movers and shakers here have just decided that climate change is not only likely to have more impact than anything else on the world in the years ahead but that it is by a long shot the thing that everyone is least ready for.

It worked like this. After a morning divided between seminars on business, geopolitics, technology and the economy, participants identified a dozen shifting sands likely to have the most impact on the world. These included growing emerging economies, inequality, demographics and so on. After a vote, climate change won out. Emerging economies came a close second in the “most impact” vote. Inequality was a distant second in the “least ready” category.

The problem was that climate change was a last-minute add on. One participant said it had hijacked the vote. Another accused the assembled high-flyers of having a herd mentality. There was also a mini-row over equality, with some speakers at a kind of town hall meeting saying it did not matter that some people were getting poorer because many more were getting wealthier. Others took umbrage, with one jumping up to say that inequality was driving all kinds of threats to world stability. There will eventually be a podcast of the event.