Innovating to zero

Bill Gates, owner of Microsoft and one of the world’s largest charity organisations, has come out on the side of the greenies. He’s realised the importance of fixing climate change, and he’s come to that realisation via his interest in relieving extreme poverty around the world.

Last week, he gave a fascinating TED talk. You might have heard me mention TED talks before, they feature speakers who are leaders in their field talking about their ideas for making the future a better place.

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Gates has an equation for how much CO2 is created by our world. He puts it like this:

CO2 = P x S x E x C

where P is population (currently at 7 billion and rising), S is services (from basics like electricity and running water to McMansions and SUVs), E is energy required to create S, and C is the amount of carbon in our E.

If you want to get CO2 down to zero, at least one of those multipliers has to come down to zero as well. I think we can all agree that zero population or zero services doesn’t sound like the kind of future we’re hoping for!

So how do we get to zero CO2 emissions?

Gates thinks we can get a reduction in energy of maybe two-thirds, by efficiency methods. But the amazing thing is that Gates is aiming for a 100% reduction in the carbon dioxide created by our energy.

No other public figure of his importance has set this as a goal – no one else in that league even thinks it’s possible. But Gates is a man with big ideas, and if he says zero-carbon is a realistic target, a lot of people will be convinced by him.

So he’s listed the ‘miracles’ we need to get zero-carbon energy. And he’s found the people working on making those miracles happen, and is offering them his support.

I don’t agree with the details of his position: I think efficiency needs more effort than he realises, and I’d prefer less nuclear. I’m not the only one quibbling with him. Alex Steffen at Worldchanging (Most Important Climate Speech of the Year)  and David Roberts at Grist (Why Bill Gates is Wrong) have some comments which I hope will keep the ball rolling.

But I firmly believe that the conversation Gates is bringing to the mainstream is a million times more important than the squabbling in the media over typos in air temperature reports. Gates is moving on to the next stage of the climate discussion: solutions.

I hope he can bring more people to this next stage. This talk lays things out simply and clearly, so that everyone can feel like they understand what’s at stake and what we need to be working on. I’ll be showing it to as many people as possible!