Bill Gates, welcome back to The Daily Social Distancing Show.
-Good to see you. -This is the third time
that you have appeared on the Social Distancing version
of the show, and we've had varied conversations.
One, right at the beginning of the pandemic,
where you told people that we should be prepared
for a really horrible time that was going to, like,
you know, roll out.
People didn't believe it, and then it happened.
You came back the second time and said, okay,
vaccines are gonna be a challenge
and this is what we need to get ready for,
and that is what we're living in now.
It is now your third time on the show.
Are you here to deliver doom and gloom,
or you're telling us about some good news?
-Why are you here, Bill? -Uh, well, for the pandemic,
uh, the vaccines are gonna bring this to an end.
It's, you know, been complicated to get them out,
uh, but, you know, that's really a miracle of innovation.
Now I'm warning about climate change.
I've got a new book that focuses on how we avoid a disaster.
Before we get into the book,
I wanted to talk to you about the vaccines.
You posted a picture of yourself receiving your vaccine,
as somebody who's 65 and older,
and, um, as you know from the Internet,
you made the vaccines to put microchips in them
to control everybody's mind.
So my question to you is:
What are you trying to control your own mind to do?
Are you trying to, like, stop yourself from eating ice cream?
Or, like, what are you trying to do?
Whenever I get lost,
the microchip can help me figure out where I am, I guess.
Uh, the idea I want to figure out where everyone is,
that's a strange one for me.
Yeah, no, I’m lucky, lucky to have gotten the vaccine.
It's the first time I've been happy to be 65.
(laughs)
Let's move on and talk about another looming crisis
facing the world.
You've talked a lot about the pandemic.
Now you are talking about climate change.
In your new book, you talk about how to avoid a climate disaster.
The question is, is it avoidable?
Well, this'll be the hardest thing we've ever done,
because the sources of emissions are very broad.
You know, it's not just electricity or cars,
it's also, uh, cows, it's cement,
it's steel, it's planes.
And so we have to change all those things to be green,
and we only have 30 years.
So only if the younger generation worldwide
is kind of bothering the politicians
and speaking out loudly
that morally this is a cause that they believe in,
only with that, a lot of innovation,
some brilliant policies,
that's what it... what it'll take
to make this grand transformation.
It feels like a theoretical conversation, though.
You know, what I did enjoy in the book is,
you've laid out steps that you think people can actually take
and governments can actually move forward to.
What do you think some of the most concrete steps are
that we can achieve today that can help us tomorrow?
Well, we need to increase R & D funding
on these, uh, key topics.
We need to have, uh, more high-risk companies,
uh, get started who care about these things.
And we need the green products like the green steel.
We need demand out there
so as people are bringing those prices down,
they get volume.
Uh, we've seen with electric cars,
uh, the right things are happening.
The prices are starting to come down.
You know, General Motors said by 2035,
they, uh, don't think,
uh, they'll need to make gasoline cars.
Uh, so, it says that extra cost
where you pay a bit more, you give up range,
over the next 15 years,
that Green Premium, I call it,
will actually go all the way down to zero in that category.
And that's, uh, amazing.
We just need to do that across the dozen or so categories,
uh, by driving innovation faster
than it would normally take place.
You know, one of the things that I've always been struck by
is how sometimes the conversations
are about what needs to be done,
but then oftentimes, there is no buy-in
because nobody, like, sort of wants to do it.
And that's why I think, like, Elon Musk
has done a great job with Tesla.
Yeah, it's an electric car,
but most people don't buy it for that.
They buy it because it's super cool,
it goes really fast and it's technologically advanced.
Are there ways that we can get green energy
to grow exponentially by making cool solutions
as opposed to telling everyone, "You need to switch out
your-your electricity with a windmill"?
Well, as you, you know, move away from coal,
there's a lot of local pollution
that affects health very negatively,
uh, so there's big benefits there.
As you move to artificial meat,
the kind of cruelty to animals,
uh, that's in-involved there
and, you know, perhaps, you know, less cholesterol.
There are a lot of benefits that come with green products.
Sadly, some green products,
like green cement, it's still just cement.
And, so, the fact that it costs more,
you know, the government's got to help,
uh, create some demand there.
-Right. -And, so, we can bring that price down.
So, yes, some categories, um,
can be better products.
But steel and cement are kind of this boring thing
that we just take for granted.
And, so, we've been working too much on the easy stuff,
not enough on the hard stuff here.
Let's talk a little bit about the hard stuff
not just in terms of the products
but about the people who are affected by the products.
How do we implement these ideas
without discarding the lives that are attached
to the old forms of creating energy or food?
Well, the key is going to be,
uh, having lots of new jobs.
You know, for example, the electric network
will have to get a lot bigger
'cause it's now powering the cars
or heating and cooling your, uh, house.
So, that's... You know, it's gonna be three times bigger.
And building all those transmission lines
and power plants will be a big deal.
Now, that's not to say that some communities
that have been really focused on things like oil...
They will have a transition.
It's a 30-year transition.
We still will be using some oil,
uh, in the decades ahead.
And, so, we have to put into the cost of this transition,
uh, how we manage those communities
that are-are affected.
Because right now, there's almost a temptation
to deny the problem altogether,
uh, because if you feel like
you're going to be left out of the solution,
uh, you just... you just want denial.
There's also no denying that developing nations
are most affected by climate change.
So, you have, you know, farmers in India,
farmers in sub-Saharan Africa
where their climates have changed
to the point where they can't even grow the food.
Is there ever an idea for, like, a penalty,
then, on the countries that do emit?
Because if you're doing a thing...
Like, let's say just on a... on a local level,
if I started a fire in my house
and the smoke blacked up all of your windows next door,
they... someone would say, like,
"Oh, I have to somehow make up for that."
Will there ever be a system like that
where the biggest polluters enter into a deal
and say, "We will... we will sort of pay
or amend what we're doing to-to poorer countries"?
Yes. We owe it to these countries,
uh, to not only mitigate--
that is, get the emissions down to zero,
and that's that huge innovation--
but also, we need to help them
because it will warm up, uh, two degrees centigrade,
and that really will hurt all their crops.
It'll raise the sea level.
We owe it to them to help with adaptation.
That includes a generation of seeds
that actually can grow in the hotter temperatures
and that are more productive
so they don't end up with malnutrition.
And-and we'll face mass migration
from those equatorial areas, you know, where the poorest...
They are farmers, and so the weather
hurts them way more, uh, than it does us.
All the wildfires, sea level rise.
You know, even we're gonna find it tough
to go outdoors a lot of the-the summer.
When we look at the world of climate change,
there's no-no denying that, you know,
it's-it's filled with a world of superstars.
You know, you-you talk to anyone, and you say,
"Who's getting involved in climate change?"
And it's some of the biggest names.
You know, it's-it's Bill Gates,
it's Jeff Bezos, it's Michael Bloomberg,
it's Leonardo DiCaprio, et cetera.
The one thing that becomes a-a, um,
I think a paradox, though, is when people say,
"These people are telling us about climate change,
but all of them also travel around on private jets."
How do you deal with that discrepancy
and the paradox of existing in that way?
Yeah. So, I'm kind of a strange messenger,
because, you know, my primary focus
is global health, and that, you know, is why, uh,
you know, I, uh, talked about the risk of a pandemic
and-and what we should do in advance.
You know, climate change I only came to
because I was traveling in Africa
and seeing, uh, how these farmers
are already being hurt by it.
My personal emissions,
I'm, you know, now paying over $7 million a year
to buy, uh, aviation biofuel
and to pay for carbon capture
and to, you know, put electric heat pumps
into low-cost housing instead of natural gas.
Uh, so, yes.
We all need to, uh,
not only fund, uh, getting rid of our footprint
but also use that to fund these products,
uh, that will eventually be part of the solution.
And, so, this catalytic investing in green products...
Uh, you know, the rich have to-to be the first
to show they're going to do it.
Yeah, you've already put in I think it's over $2 billion
into some of these ideas now to try and capture that carbon.
And as we wrap up,
I would love for you to explain...
And this-this is something you've talked about,
and-and it was nice to read elements of this in the book.
You argue that the pandemic
and climate change are not dissimilar.
Please explain how.
Yeah, so, we count on our governments
to think ahead about earthquakes
so they do building codes
or, you know, about wars
so they, you know, fund a defense department
that does war games.
Uh, in these two cases,
the pandemic and the climate change,
our governments aren't, uh, bringing in the best experts
and figuring out an efficient way
to avoid, uh, this disaster.
Uh, you know, because it didn't seem
like a pandemic would come overnight,
no politician felt like they'd get in trouble.
Uh, and, you know,
so the U.S. looked bad.
Some countries, uh, that were more ready,
like Australia avoided most of those deaths.
So, uh, because climate change is far worse,
and the, and once you get into it,
and the natural eco systems are dying,
you can't just invent one thing like a vaccine,
and get out of it, uh...
This should tell us, wow, let's, let's start now,
uh, to get ready and government
is gonna have to lead the way.
Well, it's a, it's a...
a really ominous warning.
But, uh, one that, I guess, if you're an optimist,
you go, like, "At least there is a game plan,
because we're not dealing with all of it right now."
Uh, Bill Gates, thank you so much for joining us on the show.
Uh, good luck with your endeavors,
and we hope to see you again.
Great to talk to you.