“Climate change will have worse effects than the pandemic”

Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, has two missions this year: the pandemic and the climate crisis. These are two huge challenges that will transform life on Earth. He has been warning of its consequences for years. The leaders listen to it but do not pay it much attention. Even today, as the temperature keeps rising, he believes the climate crisis is not being taken seriously. “The proof is that there is still no plan to make it happen.”

In 2015, he gave a warning lecture on the risk that humanity faces from suffering from a pandemic. He proposed several solutions on a global scale to strengthen warning systems and answer but little listened to. This conference has been seen by many more people in the past year than it was then. Bill Gates is now working to bring covid vaccines to the poorest countries.

For 20 years, Gates says he has read hundreds of books on the climate crisis and the productive economy. The result of his apprenticeship is a book called How to Avoid a Climate Catastrophe, which Plaza y Janés publishes in Spanish. It is a work of information and, at the same time, a roadmap to achieve the goal of zero emissions by 2050, as stipulated by the Paris Agreement. Gates is the leading private investor in the fight against global warming “I have invested $ 2,000 million in the fight against the climate crisis and I will double that amount over the next five years, ”he said in this interview from his Seattle home.

What should be the first step so that we can reach the year 2050 with zero greenhouse gas emissions?

The area of ​​the climate crisis is in its initial stage of development. We still don’t have a complete plan or the right metrics to measure the effectiveness of the actions we take. We don’t have the investments either. In addition, many people in positions of responsibility do not know much about industrial economics, the way things are produced, steel and cement for example. If we do not change the production of steel and cement, we will not reach the goal of zero emissions by 2050. The world needs steel and cement, but we have to produce it differently. And for that, we need to significantly increase research and development budgets.

The world does not seem to be at its best political and health time to face a common challenge. Do you think China, for example, will work with the US and the EU to reduce emissions?

China manufactures nearly half of the world’s cement and almost half of the steel. Any plan that doesn’t involve China is going nowhere. I think it will be possible to cooperate. I have spoken with the Biden administration and they will work on it.

Producing with clean energy costs more.

Yes, multiply by ten and even by twenty the price of things. I wonder if India in 2050, to provide its people with electricity and housing, for example, will use the cheapest or the cleanest strategy. And it depends on the price premium for green energy, that is, the additional cost that we are prepared to bear to use clean technologies. You can’t tell a poor country with low emissions to pay more. That is why we must reduce this additional cost to almost zero, as is done in the automotive industry.

You are a supporter of nuclear energy. He says it will be difficult to achieve zero emissions without it.

We need safer and less polluting nuclear energy. So far, three things have gone very well: the cost of wind power, solar power and batteries have come down. Hydrogen, however, has not yet succeeded, and neither has fission. We can improve nuclear power.

Ten years ago, you launched TerraPower for this purpose.

The idea was to produce a new generation of nuclear reactors. Today’s ones are derived from those found in submarines and have many unsuitable characteristics. They need an operator to operate and inside the reactor there is a lot of pressure. A safe reactor doesn’t have to have either. TerraPower just won a $ 4 billion US government contract to build the next generation generator. It’s called Reactor Demo. The objective is to have it ready in five years and to offer it to the electricity companies.

It seems difficult to increase the capacity of batteries and, at the same time, to reduce their cost.

We need batteries that have nothing to do with a car. I am talking about batteries capable of storing the electricity that circulates on the network. They must have a storage efficiency twenty times that of a car and, in addition, be inexpensive. and it does not seem that with the known metals we can achieve this. So I think the solution has to come from clean hydrogen and nuclear fission.

You talk to a lot of leaders, but it seems they don’t pay you much attention.

2050 is far enough away that no politician worries too much. It is very easy to say today that you are committing to zero emissions by 2050, because then it is difficult for someone to hold you accountable. You have to ask these politicians what they are doing today with steel and cement. You have to ask them if their research and development budgets are adapted to the climate crisis.

And it seems not.

It is very obvious that the world does not take climate change seriously. The absence of a comprehensive plan proves it. Why else would I be the primary investor in many of these issues? Why would I be the main investor in CO2 capture? She’s crazy. There is too much discussion, when what we need to do is design the plan and invest in it. A few years ago we had almost nothing in green hydrogen. I am happy that Europe is now starting to invest. Any politician will say he is in favor of zero emissions in 2050 because if he is not booed but these same politicians can name the sources of emissions in their country, can they tell us how their steelworks pollute? When do you think you can start producing clean steel? Politicians need to be asked about the steps they are taking today to achieve the zero emissions target and push for compliance.

Electric cars are an example of innovation.

In electric cars, we have made progress. In some European countries, they are already 10%. See what we have left. The bulk of the problem, as we mentioned, is with industrial production, especially steel and cement, as well as aviation fuel, as it is clear that airplanes cannot be electric. The batteries would be too heavy on a passenger plane and could not take off.

Are you optimistic? Do you think we will achieve a neutral climate in 2050?

Yes, I am optimistic. Despite the fact that there is still a lot of talk about poor quality, there are companies that are already working on what it affects. We need to increase the scale of production. We lack a lot of innovation to cut costs, as we have seen with solar panels or lithium batteries. If we reduce clean energy cost overruns to zero, we will be successful. I am optimistic, although it looks like it will be super tough.

Do you think we will have another pandemic?

Certainly, and we are not prepared. In addition to TED Talk 2015, I published in the New England Journal of Medicine an investment plan to prepare for a pandemic. Countries ignored it but now they understand it. For a modest sum, the world could have overcome this pandemic with 10% of the deaths and 10% of the economic impact. In any case, you should also know that there is no way to reduce the risk of a pandemic to zero. Bioterrorism, for example, can produce one.

What should we do?

To start with, we need to have a team of at least 3,000 experts on constant alert to access any part of the world where a new virus is detected. Then we need to produce more vaccines and do it faster. The main factories are in India. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are very good but they will not solve the pandemic because they are not thermostable. Those of AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson and Novavax are and, therefore, will help us more. The GAVI alliance has raised $ 4 billion in the US, Germany and the UK to buy vaccines and I think we will have around 10 billion. We will buy vaccines and distribute them among the 77 poorest countries.

The pandemic has shown us that by damaging ecosystems we increase the risk of new viruses …..

The main reason for the destruction of the environment in poor countries is population growth. Life expectancy increases as malnutrition decreases and health improves. This growth is not happening in Europe or America but a little in Asia and a lot in Africa. Now we need to improve education, especially in Africa. This will help us reduce population growth and better protect the environment. We would have, for example, less deforestation. We must not forget that it is humans who create these problems.

Xavier Mas de Xaxas