Bill Gates: 'Shutting down' economy 'nowhere near sufficient' to stop climate change

[Geee]

Just the News

Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, said the coronavirus pandemic demonstrates that "simply shutting down" the U.S. economy won't bring about net zero carbon emissions to fight climate change.

Gates said the emissions reductions from the pandemic were "quite modest," despite the drastic drop in air travel and car travel.

"Simply shutting down is not going to get to our goal, so just as we need breakthrough innovation for COVID-19, we also need that to get rid of emissions from all the different sectors and bring down climate change," Gates said during the annual meeting for the National Academy of Medicine. "This crosses many areas — how we make electricity, how we make industrial products, grow food, cool our buildings and all of transportation." 

Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said the pandemic has taught humans a lot about climate change, emphasizing that decreased air and auto travel hasn't made a huge impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero.

"The change in behavior, like driving less or flying less is helpful but nowhere near sufficient — 2020 is a great example of this," he said. "We've cut down carbon emissions ... but the reduction in emissions is actually quite modest. When COVID-19 hit, air travel effectively stopped. Car travel last April was half what it was the year before, and even so the international energy agency estimates that the global emissions only dropped about 8% this year."

Characterizing climate change as "even scarier" than the COVID-19 pandemic, Gates predicted that climate change could result in 3 times more deaths than coronavirus.

[Valin]

17 minutes ago, Geee said:

Just the News

Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, said the coronavirus pandemic demonstrates that "simply shutting down" the U.S. economy won't bring about net zero carbon emissions to fight climate change.

 

I am proof positive you can be very rich famous and still be dumber than dirt!