A Good Person to Listen to on Climate Change: Bill Gates


Bill Gates has so much money he can say or do whatever he wants. He is interesting to me because he seems mostly to have left behind what made him famous in his life, gaming technology to make lots of money. Warren Buffet, for example, could also so anything he wants but he still goes to work at the same office gaming the stock market. I suppose he has no other interest. Buffet is like most retired people, they do not move on. Gates, on the other hand, is different. He has many interests and keeps looking for new answers to big problems. He does not think the strategy from inside the environmental community will solve the problem. Only by developing technology that captures carbon can we slow climate change. 

Gates has benchmarks for the climate change goals. Going back several years, I recall scientists predicted various possible temperature rises. They thought the rise might be between one degree F and three degrees. Three degrees would be catastrophic. The only good news, I recall them saying, was that temperature rises would not happen for some decades so we had time to change our behaviors and avoid the worst.

Today, the climate change is happening much faster than predicted. Further, the peak temperatures will be in the high of the predicted range. It is a double whammy. 

Gates says the carbon problem cannot be solved with more trees. It is likely the public will not voluntarily alter their consumption behaviors in any important way. In democracies they will not vote for candidates that ask them to sacrifice. We're back to Gates' theory of some technological breakthrough. He also advocates higher taxes for carbon products and producers and ways they can pay for their damage. 

Good solutions or not, Gates predicts temperatures will rise for several years and then began to slowly fall. My own guess is that deaths from higher temps will be like deaths from car crashes. People will lament them but mostly shrug and say nothing much can be done. Probably 95% of deaths by car crashes can be prevented with laws and different driving habits. But, the public will have none of that. 

In climate change and car crashes, the weaknesses of human ability for rational reasoning is laid open for all to see. Humans have limits on their ability to survive.  

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