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Bill Gates Has a Master Plan for Battling Climate Change
- ilrwbwrkhv 6y agoCan't read; asks to subscribe. We should ban these links ideally.
- jonathanstrange 6y agoThere is a browser extension called "Bypass Paywalls" for Firefox. That being said, I agree.
- tzs 6y agoHere's another article about the book. I haven't compared with the WSJ to be sure but I'd expect it covers the same major points: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/feb/14/how-to-avoid-a-climate-disaster-by-bill-gates-the-new-climate-war-by-michael-e-mann-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/feb/14/how-to-avoid-a... BTW, those with Apple News+ subscriptions can often read WSJ articles by browsing to the article in Safari on iPhone or iPad, hitting the paywall, and then hitting the share icon, and then picking "News" as the sharing target. That tries to open the article in News+, which succeeds for many paywalled WSJ articles. This does not work in the desktop News+ app.
- sand_castles 6y agoDoes it start with not actively promoting the use of private jet ? and not using private jet himself ?
- gremlinsinc 6y agoYep, he wrote it all in his book he wrote from his yacht. /s
- conqueso 6y agoHe said recently on Trevor Noah that he pays $7 million per year for sustainable jet fuel. Edit: Also he claims his family's travel will be fully offset this year https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/14/bill-gates-on-his-carbon-footprint.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/14/bill-gates-on-his-carbon-foo...
- gabriel897 6y agoGreat, another billionaire with no relevant education is telling us how we should fix climate change. Meanwhile, his private jet is burning ~450 gallons of gas per hour.
- mywittyname 6y ago>Great, another billionaire with no relevant education I don't understand this attitude. Firstly, it asserts that expertise can only come from formal education (which is flawed). And secondly, this man has spent the better part of two decades focused on combating climate change, including investing in and serving on the board of companies whose mission it is to combat climate change in one form or another. I would think he's learned a thing or two.
- kyriakos 6y agoRelevant education or not he can afford to hire an army of scientists to solve problems for him. Thankfully he seems to care about fixing world problems and that's what he does. His announcements are based on the research and investigations carried out by his foundation which employs experts, they are not results of his own work.
- Jonnax 6y agoGates has dedicated his post-microsoft life to issues like climate change. Would a 4 year undergraduate degree really make him more authoritive.
- pkdpic_y9k 6y agoIve gotten used to hitting paywalls on these kinds of articles. Not sure what HN would be without them but its nice to be made aware of these things and see a diverse range of platforms / sources being linked. That said Im aways aware that if a topic seems interesting enough I can make a mental note to dive into some free resources on it when Im back at my desktop pretending to work rather than on my phone in the bathroom pretending to be in the bathroom. All that said I cant tell if Gates is just another psuedo-celebrity subjugating my mind chakra with never ending global PR stunts or the smartest most selfless of the private-jet hoarding jabillionaires. I guess time will tell, if were all dead in 30 years hes a jerk.
- gmuslera 6y agoOh, where is Admiral Ackbar when you need him? If it is about what people, not mostly corporations, need to do, then it is probably a trap/distraction. Or something that people must do that will destroy a lot of corporations, like full stop all international travel and most city travel. And those fortunes won't accept that peacefully. I hope that there is a solution, even if is backed by him. But inertia is something hard to stop, both in economics and in climate mechanisms. The situation by now is that we have a lot of excess of carbon in the atmosphere already, we are adding most of the produced 100 million/day barrels of oil, and a lot of positive feedback processes (like methane being released near polar regions, or gases released for the each time bigger/more frequent forest fires, or losing albedo). Going from that rate of emissions of long lasting greenhouse gases to effectively reaching negative emissions will be hard to plain impossible or just too risky.
- corobo 6y agoYeah I stopped really caring so heavily about recycling when I realised just one dominos shop causes more rubbish in a day than I do in a year. You can't recycle greasy cardboard. Corps first or fail
- klyrs 6y ago> You can't recycle greasy cardboard. You can compost it, though. It's a slow process, but you can grow trees in that compost. I'd argue that this is an adequate form of recycling, if we have enough managed forest land. OTOH... you're not wrong, corps gotta lead the way. I lived in Seattle when we made it illegal to throw away recyclables. Great start, right? No, corps got a carveout. Starbucks made a big show of letting customers sort their recycling, compost and garbage with fancy new lids on their bins. But ultimately, there's a single bag under there, and it all goes to landfill. Ridiculous.
- jsilence 6y agoIf we reduce meat consumption we can free up large areas of land used today for animal fodder production and repurpose it for this.
- throwaway888abc 6y agohttps://archive.is/pempV https://archive.is/pempV
- gist 6y ago> Rodi Guidero, managing director for strategic investments at Gates Ventures (who now oversees Breakthrough Energy Ventures), Guidero blurted, “That’s a terrible f—ing idea.” He argued the fund would lose money and embarrass Gates. “Why do you think I care about that?” Gates replied. (In retelling the story, Guidero now says, “I can’t believe I said a thing like that to Bill Gates.” Gates says he doesn’t remember the exchange.) You have to love apocryphal tales like this. The idea that Gates would hire someone who didn't know that Gates wouldn't care about this (in this situation) when they work so close is just so funny. It's almost a story planted on purpose a 'went against all odds people told him he was crazy'. Note that I remember other stories about how Gates liked people to stand up to him and not be yes man. > “In another 20 years, you’re not going to be wondering if you got a return,” says Larry Cohen. “You’re wondering if there’s going to be a planet left for your great-grandchildren.” I wish they'd stop with that type of over the top hyperbole. Most people not in the top slice of the 1% (meaning not the 1 percent but the top slice of that) are just getting by day to day with daily issues. I don't think many of them are really thinking about children of children that haven't been born yet. A good test to see if you are comfortable well off and lucky might even be to see if you actually think about those thinks along with 'your legacy'.
- osobo 6y agoThat's why it says "In another 20 years" and not "today". Because you can bet that it'll be on everybody's minds in 20 years.
- Aerroon 6y agoBut why? Are the effects of climate change within 100 years so bad that we will worry about the survival of humanity? Isn't that just an exaggeration?
- rodonn 6y agoThe estimates I've seen mostly suggest damages in the range of 0.5-10% of GDP https://www.brookings.edu/research/ten-facts-about-the-economics-of-climate-change-and-climate-policy/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/ten-facts-about-the-econo... Here's a quote from the IPCC consensus report: "For most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers (medium evidence, high agreement). Changes in population, age, income, technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation, governance, and many other aspects of socioeconomic development will have an impact on the supply and demand of economic goods and services that is large relative to the impact of climate change." https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WGIIAR5-Chap10_FINAL.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WGIIAR5-Chap... Another IPCC quote: "Under the no-policy baseline scenario, temperature rises by 3.66°C by 2100, resulting in a global gross domestic product (GDP) loss of 2.6% (5–95% percentile range 0.5–8.2%), compared with 0.3% (0.1–0.5%) by 2100 under the 1.5°C scenario and 0.5% (0.1–1.0%) in the 2°C scenario." https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WGIIAR5-Chap10_FINAL.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WGIIAR5-Chap...
- anm89 6y agoI think overall Gates is a decent guy with his heart in the right place but these articles of him opining how the world should work always rub me the wrong way. He has all the money in the world, and he should just go do what he is able. If you want to push some policy as credible, than have it stated by an expert, and stop attaching his name to every opinion as if it lends credibility.
- rodonn 6y agoWhat he is doing is good. He is using his platform (i.e. the fact that people know his name, journalists want to write about him, and people want to read articles about him) to promote policies that are created by experts. When those same experts say the same things it doesn't generate the same level of awareness/conversation. If you want to read these ideas straight from the experts, then go read the IPCC climate report, but most people aren't going to go read that on their own.
- breck 6y agoThe one thing I can't reconcile about BG is how he could supposedly be in favor of helping the poor and especially poor regions like Africa, but then support #ImaginaryProperty laws (copyrights and patents), which absolutely crush the poor. He is with one hand supposedly trying to help India and with the other hand part of the conglomerate trying to get India to block SciHub at the ISP level, cutting a billion people off from access to the world's scientific knowledge. I just can't figure that one out. The only possibility I can see is that he came to that realization about the public domain late, and Microsoft's recent moves toward open source are him quietly but methodically turning the aircraft carrier around.
- sand_castles 6y agoThere is a big difference in power and being helpful. Scammers are always helpful, and PIMPs tend to give gift to their subject. BC like being the PIMP, but won't accept somebody else having the power to be self-sufficient.
- tzs 6y agoHe's been doing this a long time, and from what I've read he takes a pretty hands on approach to much of his foundation's work. By "hands on" I mean he puts in the effort to learn quite a bit of the underlying science relevant to the areas his foundation funds. The impression I've gotten when I've seen or read interviews with the experts that have worked with the foundation is that they don't have to dumb things down for him. He's not going to writing research papers in the field, but he can read them with good understanding.
- vlod 6y agoIf you want to know more about Bill Gates and what he's been up you might like this Netflix 3 part-er: "Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates" https://www.netflix.com/title/80184771 https://www.netflix.com/title/80184771 I think what he's trying to do with water sanitation and Terra-power (modern safe nuclear power) is pretty cool.