Bill Gates on climate change
In a TED speech that I really like Bill Gates offers a sober and rational approach to the climate challenge, kind of what you would expect a businessman of his caliber to do. In his presentation Bill first paints a picture of the challenge with a global perspective at it’s core; where are we? where are we going? where should we be going? and what do we have to do to change direction?
The population of our planet will increase, the services provided will increase (a small part of the earth’s population can reduce their consumption but population growth and poverty alleviation will lead to a big net increase), the amount of energy used to deliver each unit of service might go down a bit, but not enough to really turn the tide. What’s left is reducing to almost zero the greenhouse gases needed to produce each unit of energy, be it fuel for transportation or electricity for homes. In Bill’s words we need “Energy miracles”.
To create these energy miracles we need technological breakthroughs of historical proportions. It can definitely be done, but the question is if we can do it fast enough. We need to, and this is something I’ve been advocating for a long time, focus perhaps a bit less on limits and more on possibilities. More on how to enable the changes that’s needed than trying to force them through in the current framework. The truth is that making the transition to a zero-carbon global economy will be impossible without the technological breakthroughs that can alleviate poverty and sustain comfortable livelihoods in developed countries without emissions of greenhouse gases. We need to put the inventor, innovator and entrepreneur at center stage and put in place policies that propel them forward.
Funding RD&D is obviously important here, catalyzing private investments as well and not least making sure that the economical framework supports low-emission innovation, e.g. by introducing cap™ programs. Our approach must be based on the politics of possibilities rather than the politics of limits.
Today the international negotiations under the IPCC perhaps has a bit too much of the European “limits” perspective and too less of the American “possibilities” perspective, and absolutely too little of the global perspective which is rarely found anywhere.
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One energy miracle that’s been in the pipe for a looong time and which might finally be edging towards getting realized is fusion power. Read more (eng), (swe)
