Meeting scientists, talking to them about all these problems,
it became clearer and clearer
that getting from 51 billion tons of emissions
down to zero was necessary for the entire world,
particularly for the lives of our children
and grandchildren to not be worse off
and natural ecosystems not to completely disappear.
( theme music playing )
Hi, everyone.
I'm here in my office for a special episode
of "BookTube" on my new book
"How To Avoid A Climate Disaster."
The book is a plan for how the world
can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions
in time to avoid a climate catastrophe.
Through the book, I talk about all the different areas of emissions
and suggest with the right innovative policies,
innovative science breakthroughs,
how we can actually zero out every one of those categories.
Let's get started.
So, when talking to Bill Gates,
you gotta have a clean and clear background.
Sorry, football, you got to get out of here.
Bill Gates, how are you, my friend?
Emmanuel Acho here, former NFL linebacker
turned sports analyst and television host,
but current author. Yes, author.
You know, I feel like the wisdom is invaluable,
and I have questions.
What I realized is this,
climate change and talking about race
are actually very similar
because so many people deny the existence of it.
So my question for you,
to those that are willfully ignorant about climate change
and the existence of climate change,
like so many people who are willfully ignorant about racism
and the existence of racism,
what do you say to people
who just don't think climate change is real?
Emmanuel, it's great to meet you,
and I'll get rid of my football, too,
so that's not distracting me there.
Your question is excellent.
Like a lot of things, climate injustice
is partly because it's out of sight.
Out of sight often means out of mind.
If you could really see the suffering--
people whose crops fail so they can't feed their kids--
if that was in your neighborhood,
just like a lot of the social injustices
within a few blocks of your house,
then I think we would take action
because I do think people care.
I think young people going through school are seeing
not only the science, but also the effects.
The wildfires are kind of undeniable.
The sea level rise is undeniable.
I think if they take the time to look at the data,
whether it's on racial inequities or climate,
they'll go, "Wow, this is clear as can be."
Both: Hi, Bill Gates-y.
- I'm Mitch. - And I'm Greg. This was weird.
We are AsapSCIENCE, queer science educators and comedians
who use social media to try and make science make sense.
Make sense? We began our journey as scientists
and then transformed our passion for science
into a chance to inspire the rest of the world.
We are constantly thinking about the climate crisis,
whether we're making videos with Emma Thompson
to stop the Canadian government
from seismic blasting for oil in Inuit waters...
Or explaining catastrophic truths about climate change
because we just want as many people as possible
to understand what is happening.
Also, if you want to do a dance with us,
we have heels right in your size.
Mitch: We really appreciate your book on the climate crisis.
It can be such a complex and overwhelming subject,
and the fact that you made it so digestible is really powerful.
So, your book is called "How To Avoid a Climate Disaster,"
but many would argue that the climate disaster is already here.
Given the climate disruptions that we are already experiencing,
is it realistic to think that a future disaster can be avoided or averted?
Wow, it's great to meet you guys.
I didn't know you had a shoe size 10.5.
I'll have to think about that. I'm not a very good dancer.
It's true that the temperature increase
that's already taken place is causing a lot of problems.
Every degree makes a gigantic difference here.
As long as you keep putting CO2 up into the atmosphere,
it gets hotter and hotter,
and that's why even though it seems daunting,
we've got to go from 51 billion down all the way to zero.
The clarity of zero is very, very important
because it means that things that are a 20% or 30% reduction,
those should not be the priority if there's a way to innovate
the very process, like with electric cars,
to get it to completely zero and then say,
okay, it's okay that buses are taking kids to school
and people are moving around.
It's not a sin because we've gone all the way to zero.
The bad effects are going to keep growing.
Two degrees centigrade is the best we can do,
and that is a very ambitious goal.
Some people actually are despairing and think it's impossible.
But because of innovation, I don't believe that.
I believe that although it's hard and it'll take us this whole 30-year period
doing our best work every single one of those years,
I absolutely think we can get to zero.
Every degree counts amazingly.
The richest 10% of the world's population
is responsible for more than half
of the carbon emissions that we have seen since 1990.
That is, like, a staggering figure.
And individuals in the richest 1% emit 100 times more
than those in the poorest half of the population.
So what can everyday people do to challenge billionaires
to be responsible for their impact on climate change?
You're absolutely right.
I probably have one of the largest carbon footprints
because of my travel,
so I'm funding things that this year
will eliminate that footprint.
I'm switching to biofuels
that cost almost three times as much.
For the non-aviation pieces,
I'm paying a company called Climeworks
that does the brute force technique
called direct air capture.
And part of the reason I really like
the offsets I'm paying for
is that it's catalytic.
The more people who buy green aviation fuel,
the volume goes up, coming down in price,
and the innovations will be coming along.
Philanthropic things can make a difference here.
I created a group called Breakthrough Energy Ventures funding scientists,
so I've spent a bit over two billion so far.
I'll do an equivalent of that again.
I've been talking with people who do philanthropy,
and that is absolutely critical.
Just like the U.S. as the richest country
needs to drive the innovation,
the better off in the United States
need to fund and speak out on this as a critical issue.
Hey, Bill, for everyone who doesn't know, my name is Ariel.
The last time we met up, we were talking about
your favorite climate change books.
And today, we're talking about your climate change book.
For the last ten years,
I've been making videos on YouTube
encouraging everyone to read.
I know that books can change minds and teach us new things,
which is why I'm so excited about your book.
In many habitats, so much of the damage that has been done
may be already too great to be reversed.
There's a really difficult balance between
how much money and time do we spend on
trying to salvage things
that our climate change has already destroyed
versus how much money and time
do we put into creating the new technologies
and trying to stop more damage from happening.
Do you think we should be taking
a triage approach to the natural world,
preserving the things that can still be saved
but focusing more on eliminating the conditions
that cause the most harm?
So nice to be talking to you again, Ariel.
And that's a great question.
The damage of climate change, as you say,
it's not just that people will suffer,
it's also the beauty of the natural world,
including the Arctic with polar bears
or coral reefs, that are such an incredible thing.
The extra heating is a gigantic problem.
Coral reefs start dying off in that higher temperature,
and so you have these bleaching events that are big die-offs.
We haven't given up on any of those natural ecosystems.
If we can limit the temperature rise,
we hope that some species of coral,
we'll be able to deal with the problem
and we can repopulate the areas
where the corals have died off with those corals.
For humans as well,
we do need to help out the poorest
to do farming near the equator.
So, adaptation,
which means making better seeds for them,
that's greatly underfunded.
Most people think about mitigation,
which is the effort to get emissions from the 51 billion
all the way down to zero,
and so we do need to do both in parallel--
help the people who are suffering
while at the same time,
we stop causing more of a problem.
wish we could get to zero before 2050,
but that's probably our best case.
We'll have to have adaptation and mitigation
to deal with all these problems.
How's it going, Bill? My name is Destin Sandlin.
I live here in north Alabama.
I have a YouTube channel called Smarter Every Day.
I like to explore the world using science,
and I'm an old-fashioned mechanical
and aerospace engineer.
In your book,
I want to hone in on chapter six.
You talked about nuclear energy,
and I'm a fan of nuclear energy.
In fact, my house is powered
by the Browns Ferry nuclear power plant.
And I just view nuclear energy as a very smart,
intelligent bridge to green power.
I know there's a lot of people that worry about nuclear energy
because of things like Fukushima and Chernobyl.
There's this worry about safety,
but I find them to be extremely safe
when I dig into the research.
So what are your thoughts on strategies
to communicate the efficiency and safety of nuclear power?
Hi, Destin. Great to meet another fan of nuclear energy.
Nuclear has an amazing starting point
because nuclear energy emits no greenhouse gases.
There are very few technologies that do that.
Hydro does that, but we can't add much new hydro.
Wind and solar do that, but they're intermittent,
and so if you get a cold front over the Midwest,
those will be shut down for several weeks at a time.
Unfortunately with nuclear power,
the design we started with back in the 1950s,
there's never been a time when that got changed.
And even though the deaths, as you say, are extremely low,
mainly due to one big accident in the USSR, Chernobyl,
and that's what's plagued the nuclear industry.
But they're never actually gone and done a design from scratch
whose safety and economics
can be far beyond anything we have today.
And so I am funding a nuclear fission company called TerraPower,
and the plan is to build a plant starting from scratch
and saying, hey, we can't rely on an operator to push the right button.
I know we have a lot of convincing to do,
but I think as people think about climate change
and this reliability equation, they'll have to say,
"Well, I'm a skeptic,
but it could be a absolutely critical part
of the solution, not just in the U.S.,
but around the entire world.
Hello, everyone.
I am Prajakta Koli,
a YouTuber and an actor based in India
that chooses comedy to show real life in a new way.
I'm very passionate about using my platform
to create conversations
that bring about positive change.
I've traveled to the U.N. headquarters
to participate in the International Day of Tolerance,
and for the Goalkeepers program, which is an initiative
by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
You've been working towards a better world
for many years now through your work
with Gates Foundation.
Was there a specific incident or an insight
that sparked your interest
in making all these conversations
about climate change?
Hello, Prajakta.
I'm impressed by all the different ways
you're using your voice.
I came to this work by going to Africa
and seeing that the energy poverty there
was holding those countries back.
Melinda and I realized that getting electricity,
getting air conditioning, getting lighting at night
was going to be important,
and so I had to study what about this climate problem?
Should that be a constraint on just building coal plants,
which in many places would be the cheapest way to make electricity?
Or do we need to do it a better or different way for these countries?
And what I've learned is actually the places
that will suffer the most from climate change
are actually these developing countries.
The rich countries are more
in the temperate parts of the world,
and the poorer countries are more in the equatorial regions
where the poorest are people who do subsistence farming.
So the basic idea of justice,
that everyone can live a healthy and productive life,
brought me to climate change.
I wrote this book because I'm excited
that we have a goal--
getting from 51 billion tons of emissions
down to zero by 2050.
And I'm excited that lots of people
are very committed to this cause,
particularly young people.
So those are two of the three ingredients to solve the problem.
The third one is that we need a plan.
Our only hope is to follow that model that worked
for the electric car and have innovation.
You know, it's only 30 years,
so the whole planet's going to have to collaborate on this
and innovate our way all the way down to zero.
Boy, we need a dozen more, you know,
Elon Musk, Steve Jobs-type people.
There's a lot of room for heroes in this space.