How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need

by Bill Gates

On the other hand, I kept thinking about what I had witnessed in my travels. India, for example, has a population of 1.4 billion people, many of them among the poorest in the world. I didn’t think it was fair for anyone to tell Indians that their children couldn’t have lights to study by, or that thousands of Indians should die in heat waves because installing air conditioners is bad for the environment. The only solution I could imagine was to make clean energy so cheap that every country would choose it over fossil fuels.

In climate terms, a change of just a few degrees is a big deal. 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.

Finally, the third stage: What can we do about the processes that inherently produce greenhouse gas emissions? Remember that making steel and cement emits carbon dioxide—not just from burning fossil fuels, but as a result of the chemical reactions that are essential to their creation. Right now, the answer is clear: Short of simply shutting down these parts of the manufacturing sector, we can do nothing today to avoid these emissions.

How long will the tree survive? If it burns down, all the carbon dioxide it was storing will be released into the atmosphere. What would’ve happened if you hadn’t planted that tree? If a tree would’ve grown there naturally, you haven’t added any extra carbon absorption. In what part of the world will you plant the tree? On balance, trees in snowy areas cause more warming than cooling, because they’re darker than the snow and ice beneath them and dark things absorb more heat than light things do. On the other hand, trees in tropical forests cause more cooling than warming, because they release a lot of moisture, which becomes clouds, which reflect sunlight. Trees in the midlatitudes—between the tropics and the polar circles—are more or less a wash. Was anything else growing in that spot? If, for example, you eliminate a soybean farm and replace it with a forest, you’ve reduced the total amount of soybeans available, which will drive up their price, making it more likely that someone will cut down trees somewhere else to grow soybeans. This will offset at least some of the good you do by planting your trees.

By the middle of this century, the cost of climate change to all coastal cities could exceed $1 trillion…each year. To say that this will exacerbate the problems most cities are already struggling with—poverty, homelessness, health care, education—would be an understatement.

It might seem ironic that I’m calling for more government intervention. When I was building Microsoft, I kept my distance from policy makers in Washington, D.C., and around the world, thinking they would only keep us from doing our best work.

The project took 13 years and billions of dollars, but it has pointed the way to new tests or treatments for dozens of genetic conditions, including inherited colon cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and familial breast cancer. An independent study of the HGP found that every $1 invested by the federal government in the project generated $141 in returns to the U.S. economy.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative is a good example of how this can work. In 2011, the program’s leaders set a goal of driving down the cost of solar energy to $0.06 per kilowatt-hour within the decade. They focused on early-stage R&D, but they also encouraged private companies, universities, and national laboratories to concentrate on efforts like lowering the cost of solar-power systems, removing bureaucratic barriers, and making it cheaper to finance a solar-power system. Thanks to this integrated approach, SunShot met its goal in 2017, three years ahead of schedule.

Prioritize innovation in low-carbon solutions. Investing in new ideas used to be a point of pride for most industries, but the glory years of corporate R&D are gone. Today, companies in the aerospace, materials, and energy industries spend on average less than 5 percent of their revenue on R&D. (Software companies spend upwards of 15 percent.) Companies should reprioritize their R&D work, particularly on low-carbon innovations, many of which will require long-term commitments. Larger companies can partner with government researchers to bring practical commercial experience to research efforts.