Here’s how you know that the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland, attracts all of the world’s best and brightest: This morning, an audience heard from Derek Jeter.

If you don’t know who Derek Jeter is, allow me to explain. Imagine a group of pirates, a vile, filthy band of lawbreakers and miscreants. Now imagine this group had a captain who seemed perfectly nice and was very good at being a captain, but he’s spent his life in service to an evil, repulsive entity. That’s Derek Jeter. He’s the captain and star of the New York Yankees.

Jeter yells at someone, probably not about the climate

keithallisonJeter yells at someone, probably not about the climate.

But living in New York (until recently, in a $15.5 million apartment atop Trump World Tower) means that Jeter (despite his deep and abiding flaws) saw firsthand the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. From the Columbus Dispatch:

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“It’s just something that’s gotten so much attention,” Jeter said of climate change. “Regardless of how you feel about it, it’s something that needs to be addressed because we’re seeing more and more natural disasters each year, it seems like. Something has to be causing it.”

But Jeter, himself a global icon as the captain of one of the most recognizable and successful sports franchises in the world, said he doesn’t try to interject into politics.

“I know my place,” Jeter said.

Jeter’s place is clearly among amoral, hypercompetitive overachievers.

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The good captain is not alone in linking Sandy with climate change. A poll taken last December suggested that New Yorkers readily made that connection — with a concomitant increase in a desire to address the problem. Yesterday, we wondered if this would be the year that Davos attendees finally took real action on global warming; if a multi-millionaire athlete can help them do so, so be it.

In case you still don’t really get what Davos is all about, this might help explain: Baseball star Derek Jeter is at the convening — having been invited by Pepsi — where he talked about the climate. I’m not sure it can be summarized any better than that.