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Hello Bill Gates (who will never read this). You are a solutions guy, and a technology guy. Unsurprisingly, your blog lists lots of good technologies and solu

• TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > But climate change has shifted from a technological problem to a policy problem. There is no such thing as shifting from a "technological problem" to a "policy problem". Technology creates the landscape on which political choices are made. Where a problem cannot be solved due to political costs, technology can provide alternative solutions that are more politically tenable. We may have a "cocktail of tech" ready for fighting climate change, but it's not of the right mix; it doesn't have the right political taste. Getting Gates involved in politics? That's not without its own risks, and it may not be the best use of his time.
  • mAEStro-paNDa 7y ago
    > but it's not of the right mix; it doesn't have the right political taste. What's that have to do with the technology?
    • TeMPOraL 7y ago
      I described it above. Technology offers options for policy. Our climate-solving cocktail of 20 years ago involved things like drastic reduction of car use in favour of mass transit, and mass deployment of nuclear power to replace fossil fuel plants. We would be in much better shape today if that was done, but that set of solutions was (and still is) politically untenable - so technologists had (and still have) to invent different solutions, that are easier for politicians to implement.
  • bryanlarsen 7y ago
    IMO, policy has a huge impact on technology. For example, if carbon was priced to include its climate change externality, the market would respond with solutions.
    • TeMPOraL 7y ago
      I'm not disputing that - if emissions were priced in, we wouldn't be anywhere near the mess we're in. Note however, that pricing carbon correctly is not a politically viable solution today. There are many reasons for that, and some of those reasons are addressable by technology. For instance, electrification of transport is a possible way of reducing carbon pricing's potential impact on costs of necessities and transportation - making the necessary political adjustment this much less bitter for people, and by extension politicians. Politics is an art of endless trade-offs; technology plays a vital role in shaping those trade-offs.
      • bryanlarsen 7y ago
        Policy shapes technology and technology shapes policy. Choosing which directions to focus research on rather than relying on happenstance or the market is policy. Therefore it all comes down to policy.
        • TeMPOraL 7y ago
          It's a feedback loop all right, but some parts of it are easier to nudge than others. Policy tends to be fixed, as it's based on fixed characteristics of human brain and fixed phenomena like those explored in game theory. More effort put into politicking will not yield better results (EDIT: it might do some good; see downthread). Technology is mutable, in the sense that more effort (and money) put into it yields meaningful change, that can also shift policy. Note that your argument right now boils down to "we need to invest more in right technology"; while the decision is political, it's literally the opposite of what people mean when they say something is a "political problem" and not a "technological problem".
          • 7y ago
  • jmcqk6 7y ago
    The policy problem is that there is a large chunk of people who don't even think there is a problem. How is that going to be solved with a different "mix" of tech?
    • beamatronic 7y ago
      Sadly, the people you are referring to won’t change until they feel the pain. And possibly not even then.
    • dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      The different mix of tech will make it cheap/easy enough to do the "right thing" from a carbon perspective that few will do anything else. I could burn my trash but my taxes pay the city to pay a company to come around once a week and collect a barrel from my house so why bother. I drive ICE cars because in terms of results per dollar they're an obviously better deal than anything with lithium batteries. When it's no longer the economically obvious choice to drive ICE cars I'll stop doing it but not before then.
      • TeMPOraL 7y ago
        > When it's no longer the economically obvious choice to drive ICE cars I'll stop doing it but not before then. Note that this may happen with policy alone. Many countries and cities around the world are now heavily subsidizing electric cars, through things like tax breaks and waiving parking fees. This is only possible because electric cars are an available option.
    • isoskeles 7y ago
      How does people having the right opinion change anything? I live in an extremely liberal city, and I still see people driving almost everywhere. They’re not all driving Teslas or even Priuses either.
  • dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    Agreed. If technology gets to the point where the cost of dealing with carbon is on the same order as municipal water and sewer it won't be a political problem.
• EForEndeavour 7y ago
  We need both better policy and better tech, right? As Bill's article points out, energy technology is by no means mature. There are huge improvements to be made in production, storage, and transmission. Could it be that policy requires and will respond to innovation? Policymakers need to consider not just today's "cocktail of existing tech," but upcoming technologies. My perhaps naive hope is that strong investment in tech will convince policymakers that reducing civilization's GHG emissions toward zero is becoming ever more feasible, desirable, and profitable (for some people). Disclaimer: I don't work in the climate sector, though I'd like to one day.
• ZeroGravitas 7y ago
  I've generally found Bill Gates to be actively unhelpful to this end. Even in this blog he sounds very negative that nothing can be done unless all the companies he personally invests in come up with something. In reality, if there was the political will to roll out existing solutions we'd all be richer, healthier and happier, but another bunch of rich and powerful guys would prefer that their investments paid off.
  • Mirioron 7y ago
    We probably wouldn't be richer. Any solution is likely less efficient economically than what we currently have and thus we'd be poorer. We might be healthier, but even that is a tough sell considering that any realistic solution will impact the poor much more than the rich. Even if you offered universal healthcare economic difficulty would still impact poor people's health, because your health depends on factors like food as well. This is why there's little political will to do something about climate change. It will mostly come at the expense of poor people, because climate change is a consumption problem and the poor, as a collective, consume more than the rich.
    • ZeroGravitas 7y ago
      I think your facts are upside down. The externality of climate change and other pollution is what takes us away from efficiency. But even ignoring that, to give just a couple of concrete examples: shutting down coal-fired power stations in America would save Americans billions just in the cost of electricity. That's completely ignoring pollution and climate change. Yet there's a lobby fighting to stop that. Do you really think that's because they're worried about poor people? Every single projection suggests that electric cars will be cheaper than their ICE counterparts due to their massively higher efficiency, again even if you ignore local and global pollution. Yet there's an organised lobby fighting against that move. Is this because they're worried about poor people?
      • Mirioron 7y ago
        >But even ignoring that, to give just a couple of concrete examples: shutting down coal-fired power stations in America would save Americans billions just in the cost of electricity. That's completely ignoring pollution and climate change. And they are shutting down, because they are becoming economically unviable. Natural gas seems to be much more efficient, but both of these have a significant impact on climate change. >Every single projection suggests that electric cars will be cheaper than their ICE counterparts due to their massively higher efficiency, again even if you ignore local and global pollution. Yet there's an organised lobby fighting against that move. Is this because they're worried about poor people? It's not about being worried about poor people. It's about being worried about getting votes. If you're the person that doubles the prices, then you're going to be unpopular in the future. Aside from that, electric cars are projected to be cheaper, but they are not yet cheaper. Electric cars can't even fulfill the same needs that a normal car does. Say you live in an apartment, like many poor people do. They can't charge their car overnight. Not only that, it takes a lot longer to charge it at a charging station. The car also doesn't have the same range. Also, keep in mind that electric cars will only matter if those coal plants that are replaced by nuclear or some renewable. Otherwise it matters little. Yes, it reduces the impact, but we need more than just the reduction of the impact.
• yesyesno 7y ago
  I second this.
• bryanlarsen 7y ago
  When you do that, here's my little suggestion for a policy: a carbon duty. It seems to me the biggest argument against doing something is that any action we take would be useless if country X doesn't do anything. But with a carbon duty, this is much less of a difficult collective action problem. Impose a significant duty on products coming from countries which are not meeting some reasonable target for carbon emissions.
  • trickstra 7y ago
    sooo all other countries will pay for it while US will keep pumping oil and burning coal? With US leaving the Paris Accord? That sounds very strange.
    • Angostura 7y ago
      Soooo, we introduce a set of trade tariffs where imports are tax depending on the degree to which the exporting country has already imposed a carbon tax on manufacturer.
      • leesalminen 7y ago
        But CNN has spent the past month telling me that tariffs = bad. I guess they’re OK so long as they’re introduced for noble reasons?
        • DanHulton 7y ago
          I mean... yeah. Tariffs are bad for the economy. But if you're willing to slow down the economy for a good enough reason, then yes, it's okay.
          • SkyBelow 7y ago
            So tariff's are a tool that can be used for good or bad? So, was the message the previous poster receiving that tariff's are bad, or that the current use of tariff's are bad? If it was the former, it disagrees with your message.
• bluGill 7y ago
  Policy is messy and subject to differing values. Bill Gates would do worse getting into policy. He would turn off people who currently like what he is doing because his moral values are different from theirs. I don't even need to know anything about Bill Gate's moral values state this.
• quotz 7y ago
  Lets all tweet this comment at tag him + journalists
• philshem 7y ago
  to paraphrase Indian activist and writer Arundhati Roy: > if Bill Gates were a shoemaker, he would solve the worlds problems with shoes
• root_axis 7y ago
  Climate change is a losing battle from a policy perspective; most citizens don't care and elected officials are actively hostile to any policy changes that would make a difference. IMO, Bill Gates should avoid trying to deal in policy and continue to effect change through mediums that sidestep wrangling with policy.
• ridicter 7y ago
  This. I've been in the climate movement for some 15 years. Our basic stance has been, "We have the technology; we just need the political will." There are many groups that you can become involved in. If you're a pro-market-solution type, the Citizens Climate Climate Lobby has been around ten years, and it currently has a bill in Congress that has bipartisan support (ahem, one Republican congressman): The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (http://energyinnovationact.org/ http://energyinnovationact.org/). With this plan, all the revenue from a carbon tax is directly returned to citizens as a yearly check--no enlargement of the state. Carbon pricing (which can come in the form of a tax or cap and trade) is the single most effective mechanism to address climate change. The idea is to internalize the _real_ costs of climate change into the price we actually pay--ramping up the price on carbon over time until it is prohibitively expensive to use fossil-fuel-expensive products, and incentivizing the economy to adapt. That fundamental price signal, where renewable energy becomes cheaper relative to fossil fuels (and similarly less fossil fuel-intensive goods are cheaper relative to fossil-fuel-expensive ones) reverberates throughout the economy. If you're skeptical of Republicans ever coming to the light, even when they have pro market solutions like the one above to choose from, the Green New Deal is the way to go. Like Obamacare, it will require a progressive majority to push through. Frankly, this is where I'm at, after spending the better part of 5 years trying to get conservatives to take action. I've seen the general conservative position shift from "its not happening" to "it's not human-caused" to "who cares? it'll be great for the economy." I am skeptical of Republicans both a) taking action at all, and b) taking action at the scale REQUIRED to address climate change (i.e., a high price on carbon that is not meddled with by oil baron lobbies).
  • selimthegrim 7y ago
    I’ve been reading the book “Oil’s Deep State” about the oil lobby in Alberta and what it says makes me pretty much in your camp
  • erik_seaberg 7y ago
    We don't quite have the technology. Battery swaps didn't work out, and recharging an electric car is so slow that they only work for homeowners with private garages and fairly short commutes, so no apartments and no ride sharing.
• ekianjo 7y ago
  Technological progress will solve any policy problem. If you make it so that wind, solar, and next generation nuclear power is cheaper than other alternatives and more desirable, the market will progressively switch. Most technological improvements did not wait for a policy to change to induce revolutions in their respective fields. Now everyone is investing in Energy, and there's hardly any need for policy when the market is already full steam in investment mode.
  • Uehreka 7y ago
    > If you make it so that wind, solar, and next generation nuclear power is cheaper than other alternatives and more desirable, the market will progressively switch. Not necessarily. Lots of people have jobs in coal, oil and gas production, and those constituencies will often vote for politicians who promise to keep those jobs around. They can do this through heavily subsidizing the cost of fossil fuels (which they currently do) in order to reduce the extent to which the economic benefits of clean energy can influence the market. In the long term, they probably can't keep this up, but we don't really have a "long term" anymore.
    • ekianjo 7y ago
      The cost of "unions protecting their job" increases further as the alternatives get cheaper over time. So it's not sustainable in any way. Additionally, fossil fuels are usually subsidized the most in local areas where they are mined/extracted so states/regions with no such natural resources can be expected to move way faster in adopting new forms of energy production.
      • rangersanger 7y ago
        While the UMWA certainly has a vested interested in keeping coal mining jobs around, blaming unions for protectionism here is a little far down the value chain.
    • imtringued 7y ago
      If you divide the total subsidies aluminum smelters in Germany receive by the number of jobs then you get 440,000€ of subsidies per job per year, the workers themselves only see a fraction of that. Unsustainability has never stopped politicians from doing stupid things.
• jsingleton 7y ago
  You are correct that this is a social, economic and political problem. Nothing new needs to be invented. However, tech solutions can help build the necessary public demand and political will. This is the software side that people here will find more familiar than heavy engineering. It's not just Gates that can help. We all can do something as tech pros. Join the team here: https://climateaction.tech/ https://climateaction.tech/
• _bxg1 7y ago
  I don't disagree that he should do that, but given how deep in the pockets of industry our government currently is, it may be that the only feasible solution is an economic one. They won't listen to people, but they will listen to money.
• SkyBelow 7y ago
  >The rest of us can't, so you have to. But if you use your resources in ways that do not align with the view that climate change is a problem, such as using a private jet when riding on a commercial will produce far less greenhouse gas for the trip, we will remember it when you push policies that tell if not dictate to us how we should be using our own resources in our own lives.
  • toasterlovin 7y ago
    You know, life doesn't have to be an ideological death march. Let's focus on moral improvement instead of moral purity. Large scale incrementalism has wrought massive positive change for humanity. Whereas the large scale pursuit of purity brought about the disasters of the 20th century.
    • SkyBelow 7y ago
      The issue is simpler than ideological purism at large scale. If you ask someone make sacrifices that the one asking isn't making, no one should be surprised when there is resistance to making the changes and the motivations of the one asking are called into question.
    • patrick5415 7y ago
      It’s difficult to see how asking somebody who is beating the climate change drum to toe their own line is sending them on an ideological death march. The hypocrisy displayed when these folks run around in their private jets while screaming about ice caps and carbon is a textbook example of the “fine for me but not for thee” attitude of the elites that many plebes find insufferable.
• stale2002 7y ago
  If technology becomes good enough, the policy problem is irelevant. Once solar and wind, without any subsidies, are cheaper than coal, then societies will switch purely out of self interest. No prisoner's dillema solution needed.
  • nathan_long 7y ago
    > Once solar and wind, without any subsidies, are cheaper than coal, then societies will switch purely out of self interest. If coal prices included the negative externalities costs - in other words, if we charged coal companies for dumping their trash into our collective air instead of subsidizing them by letting them do it for free - it would greatly change the price comparison. Then the market would likely do the rest.
• robomartin 7y ago
  > We can solve climate change with a cocktail of existing tech No. We cannot. We most definitely cannot. It seems that everyone commenting on this subject on HN is working off preconceived notions or decade+ old information. We know better now. And the picture isn't pretty. And, no, you can cover this planet with solar panels and wind farms and you are NOT going to reverse things at all, in fact, atmospheric CO2 concentration will continue to rise exponentially. This is surprising to me because the HN audience is --at least this is my perception-- supposed to be technically sophisticated and striving to be up to date with research and technology. None of the comments I have read so far on this subject in this thread and older ones showcase an understanding of what we know now. I have written about this in the past. I just wrote about it again on this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19922099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19922099 If you don't read what I wrote, I beg you to at least read this paper. The conclusion, paraphrasing, is: Even if we deployed the most optimal forms of all renewable energy sources globally, atmospheric CO2 concentration would continue to increase exponentially. https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-data/pdf/43326.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-... Read it. It will open your eyes to reality. It was done by Google Research and they were brave enough to publish their conclusion, even when it collided with their preconceived notions on the subject.
  • strainer 7y ago
    Build renewable generation to stop releasing GHGs - this technology is affordable, ready and is likely in the medium term to be alot cheaper than running the old plants. Its no where near necessary to "cover this planet with solar panels and wind farms" that is "decade+ old" mis-information. Large scale aforestation can take a great deal of CO2 out of atmosphere and simultaneously help endangered and degraded wildlife, and help people visit and work within biophilic surroundings. Large scale afforestation is advised by the IPCC. Geoengineering may well be necessary, we will see as things turn out but strong technological knowledge exists for this also. Ocean seeding, atmospheric aerosols, - langrange point "sun shade" construction... these possibilities should be researched and may need to be implemented at scale, but as IPCC advises they are secondary to reducing emissions - which we DO have the technology ready and improving still. I dont regard that 2014 article you linked as representing reality well, its a five year old editorialisation - a magazine conversation piece not a sober or reviewed analysis. Since 2014 cost of wind and solar have dropped, almost in half.