How to Avoid a Climate Disaster
By Bill Gates (2021)
During the last ice age, the average temperature was just 6 degrees Celsius lower than it is today. During the age of the dinosaurs, when the average temperature was perhaps 4 degrees Celsius higher than today, there were crocodiles living above the Arctic Circle. 🐊
Today, when businesses make products or consumers buy things, they don’t bear any extra cost for the carbon involved, even though that carbon imposes a very real cost on society.
The countries that build great zero-carbon companies and industries will be the ones that lead the global economy in the coming decades.
My Notes
From 51 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases per year, to zero by 2050:
- Focus on that goal, not e.g., reductions in the next decade
- The plans may be different
- However, where the prices are close to fossil fuels, act now
- When the price differences are higher, research
- New policies
- Price/tax fossil fuels
- Incentives for green
- Research
- Because renewables won’t be enough
- We need breakthroughs in science/engineering
- Government investment; incentives for private investment
National leaders around the world will need to articulate a vision for how the global economy will make the transition to zero carbon.
Planning
Making reductions by 2030 the wrong way might actually prevent us from ever getting to zero. Why? Because the things we’d do to get small reductions by 2030 are radically different from the things we’d do to get to zero by 2050. They’re really two different pathways, with different measures of success…
Opportunities
… Biology, chemistry, physics, political science, economics, engineering, and other sciences.
… Breakthroughs that will give birth to new industries composed of major new companies, creating jobs and reducing emissions at the same time.
Numbers
| Source | Emissions |
|---|---|
| Manufacturing: cement, steel, plastic | 31% |
| Electricity | 27% |
| Plant and animal produce | 19% |
| Transport: planes, trucks, ships | 16% |
| Heating and cooling | 7% |
| What | Consumption |
|---|---|
| The world | 5,000 gigawatts |
| USA | 1,000 gigawatts |
| Mid-size city | 1 gigawatt |
| Small town | 1 megawatt |
| Average US house | 1 kilowatt |
| Energy source | Watts/sq m |
|---|---|
| Fossil fuels | 500 - 10,000 |
| Nuclear | 500 - 1,000 |
| Solar | 5 - 20 |
| Hydropower (dams) | 5 - 50 |
| Wind | 1 - 2 |
| Wood and other biomass | < 1 |
Renewables
Yes, but not enough. E.g., to power Tokyo for three days during a storm you need “more storage capacity than the world produces in a decade.”
Nuclear
It’s the only carbon-free energy source that can reliably deliver power day and night, through every season, almost anywhere on earth, that has been proven to work on a large scale.
US is 20% nuclear; France 70%.
Alternative Fuels
Electrofuels/biofuels when electricity isn’t viable: long-distance trucks, trains, airplanes and container ships.
Or for containerships, nuclear (like submarines).
Direct-Air Capture (DAC)
It’s probably the most expensive solution; in many cases, it will be cheaper not to emit greenhouse gases in the first place.
Trees
Half the world’s land mass worth to absorb the emissions of the US population 😣
What Can We Do?
Reduce emissions yes, but more powerful is sending “a signal to the market that people want zero-carbon alternatives and are willing to pay for them.”
When you pay more for an electric car, a heat pump, or a plant-based burger, you’re saying, “There’s a market for this stuff. We’ll buy it.”
Make calls, write letters, attend town halls.