Bill Gates is an optimist about the climate, despite concerns about global warming, extreme weather, and the resulting displacement of people due to climate change. Perhaps the fact that he is working to reduce global warming is inspiring him to do so. In addition to establishing the climate investment business Breakthrough Energy and donating millions through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, he also gives $10 million to the carbon capture company Climeworks each year to compensate for his own personal carbon footprint. People pay attention when he talks on climate, and he had a lot to say during “Climate Week” in New York City, where the United Nations was holding a General Assembly.
“I’m the guy who’s doing the most on climate in terms of innovation and in how we can achieve several goals,” Gates said during an on-stage interview at the New York Times Climate Forward Summit.
He claims that while the risks are real and pressing, they are also solvable and will not bring about the end of the planet. At a different gathering this week, the Earthshot Prize Innovation Summit, he made the statement, “There’s a lot of climate hyperbole,” alongside billionaire Michael Bloomberg and Prince William of the United Kingdom. Climate change is not a death sentence for Earth. Therefore, the Earth is in good shape.
He echoed those thoughts a few days later at a Times event. The world is less affected, but there are impacts on people, Gates added. It’s not too easily broken. But I’m committed because of the potential impact on people’s lives. He continued by saying that the difficulty of cultivating crops in the equatorial areas as a result of global warming is what he sees as the most pressing consequence of the climate catastrophe.
His confidence that we can overcome the challenges posed by climate change drives his upbeat outlook. It’s quite apparent we’re not going to go to extreme circumstances,” Gates remarked. After reaching a high point, emissions will gradually decrease. They won’t decrease as rapidly as we’d want, leading to continued temperature increases; once temperatures have risen, they don’t drop very quickly, even in the case of large carbon removal.
Of course, when Gates talks about “emissions,” he means the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere every time a non-electric vehicle or airplane takes to the skies. Even though electric car acceptance has been modest so far, the auto industry anticipates broad adoption over the next decade, thanks in large part to Elon Musk’s Tesla. In addition to the White House’s objective of having at least half of all new automobiles sold in the U.S. be electric vehicles, the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit organization focused on climate change, predicts that EV sales will climb sixfold by 2030.
Are we science people or idiots
Gates predicts that the world will soon have access to a variety of options, one of which is the development of carbon removal technology. Developing countries, or “poorer countries,” as he called them, will be able to incorporate environmentally friendly technologies without suffering additional expenditures once these breakthroughs become industrialized and applied at scale. At the Earthshot Summit, Gates emphasized the need to reach out to “middle-income nations, who are 60% of emissions, saying to them, “Hey, you have to create steel a different manner, but that steel will not be more expensive.” The same goes for cement, cattle, and milk.
For example, Gates told the Times that he supports a plan to create a cheaper palm oil alternative to palm oil to slow deforestation in the Amazon. Simply restricting deforestation in certain areas will not be a sustainable solution, as it will not reduce the overall demand for palm oil. Furthermore, demand for palm oil will remain even if there is a change of administration, which would probably lead to a policy reversal.
Gates, on the other hand, was not convinced by other recent strategies to combat climate change. It’s “total insanity,” he continued, to think that just reforesting the earth will solve the climate crisis. Gates posed the hypothetical question, “Are we science people or are we idiots?”
Marc Benioff, another Silicon Valley billionaire creator, wants to plant a trillion trees by the end of the decade. In order to achieve the targets set forth in the 2015 Paris Accords, the world has to stop releasing around 6% of carbon dioxide by 2050, and research by MIT determined that planting one trillion trees would do this. This week, Gates praised President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which contains $1.5 billion in grant money for towns to plant trees in under-treed regions.
Gates has stated his preference for carbon taxes as a means to support future green technology, in particular carbon capture, which seeks to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, over more speculative approaches like planting trees. However, he admitted that huge fossil fuel and energy firms will likely pass those costs on to consumers, making it an unpopular proposal among voters. Some people could say, “Hey, I enjoy climate change,” if you try to compel them to agree with you on climate change. I support environmental protection. I don’t want to pay that and have to lower my living standards,'” he told the New York Times.
However, Gates was satisfied with the IRA that was enacted under President Joe Biden in 2016. Inspiring around $200 billion in funding for renewable energy and electric car research, the IRA included some of the greatest climate investments in U.S. history. Gates took it upon himself to lobby Joe Manchin (Democrat, West Virginia) to vote in favor of the measure. Gates winked at the critics of the measure, who said it didn’t go far enough to combat climate change since it still allowed for drilling on federal property. “If some voters believe that another candidate would have received greater support, that’s fantastic! That’s the person they need to vote for.