From the article: Gate's article is here. It's hard to summarize because he anticipated common criticisms and mostly avoids binary thinking: But maybe the best way to summarize it is that although...
From the article:
Bill Gates' shift from "doomsday" climate warnings to a focus on improving human lives is triggering sharp reactions from scientists and activists.
Gate's article is here. It's hard to summarize because he anticipated common criticisms and mostly avoids binary thinking:
To be clear: Climate change is a very important problem. It needs to be solved, along with other problems like malaria and malnutrition. Every tenth of a degree of heating that we prevent is hugely beneficial because a stable climate makes it easier to improve people’s lives.
But maybe the best way to summarize it is that although an increase in global average temperature has bad effects on everything else, he thinks it's not the best way to measure human welfare:
Temperature is not the best way to measure progress on climate.
...
Health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change.
Gates seems to be a big believer in economic growth:
What happens to the number of projected deaths from climate change when you account for the expected economic growth of low-income countries over the rest of this century? The answer: It falls by more than 50 percent.
Economists are big on economic growth and it's easy to see why: if you compare what life is like for average people in a poor country to a rich country, it's clear that people in rich countries are better off in most ways. So, if you can help poor countries become rich (or at least middle-income), that's a very high-impact intervention.
At least, if you can figure out how to do it. It's more easily said than done.
My criticism of economic growth as a metric is that this is a very zoomed-out way of thinking. Some kinds of economic growth are surely more valuable than other kinds, and GNP doesn't make distinctions.
Still, the specific projects that Gates calls out in the article seem like good ones.
I'm regularly impressed at where, and the level of intensity he puts his energy toward wicked problems. Whether it's funding nuclear reactors run by waste or eliminating disease, we'd be further...
I'm regularly impressed at where, and the level of intensity he puts his energy toward wicked problems.
Whether it's funding nuclear reactors run by waste or eliminating disease, we'd be further out of the mess we're in if more billionaires used their power for good.
It is, practically speaking, impossible with our current economic models. The luxury the rich world has is predicated upon attaining resources from the poor ones at slavery prices. Otherwise,...
if you can help poor countries become rich (or at least middle-income), that's a very high-impact intervention.
It is, practically speaking, impossible with our current economic models. The luxury the rich world has is predicated upon attaining resources from the poor ones at slavery prices.
Otherwise, everyone who lives in the very rare chocolate and coffee producing regions would live like gods.
I completely agree that, collectively for humanity, the correct answer is to bring the bottom up. But it's not solving cliimate change. I have a bigger top-level brewing.
Several Asian countries have grown rapidly within the last few decades, which I think disproves your thesis? And I don't see what producing coffee or chocolate has to do with it; this doesn't seem...
Several Asian countries have grown rapidly within the last few decades, which I think disproves your thesis? And I don't see what producing coffee or chocolate has to do with it; this doesn't seem to be how countries do it.
Unfortunately, it's still hard to get growth going elsewhere.
The big coffee and cocoa producers like Vietnam, Columbia, and the Ivory Coast have developed rapidly into middle-income countries. The Ivory Coast is considered lower-middle income, but for years...
The luxury the rich world has is predicated upon attaining resources from the poor ones at slavery prices. Otherwise, everyone who lives in the very rare chocolate and coffee producing regions would live like gods.
The big coffee and cocoa producers like Vietnam, Columbia, and the Ivory Coast have developed rapidly into middle-income countries. The Ivory Coast is considered lower-middle income, but for years its gdp has grown at 6–7% annually. These countries were extremely poor a generation or two ago.
The anti-globalization movement of the early 2000's has been ideologically defeated: global trade has massively accelerated the development of non-western countries and built a global middle class of billions.
Environmental degradation, on the other hand, is a different, sad story. But economically, the world is unfathomably wealthier than it was 20 years ago.
It's takes a lot to convince me that the Earth doesn't already have too many people on it. Even with all the massive efficiency gains we're making in power generation, growing our food, making...
It's takes a lot to convince me that the Earth doesn't already have too many people on it. Even with all the massive efficiency gains we're making in power generation, growing our food, making houses, etc; we're still consuming the earth's resources (and more importantly causing millions of species of animals to go extinct) at an alarming rate. Climate change is only a piece of the disaster pie that we've cooked ourselves into, ecological collapse is a very real possibility in many parts of the world because of the damage we've done to the ecosystem.
I really do not subscribe to the "line goes up forever" philosophy, but I also understand we don't have any real way to curb population growth in the short term (other than programs like sexual education in developing nations, providing better healthcare for everyone, etc)
The real question is, will we slow down (or even start to reduce) our population in time to stop the massive damage we're doing to the environment around us. And I'm not even talking about...
The real question is, will we slow down (or even start to reduce) our population in time to stop the massive damage we're doing to the environment around us. And I'm not even talking about emissions, mostly things like pollution and deforestation. The biodiversity of our ecosystems has already been devastated, and its getting a lot worse very quickly.
I'm blanking on the term in sociology, but its pretty well established that humans are good at regulating birth rates without needing external controls. There's a bit of lag when modern medical...
I'm blanking on the term in sociology, but its pretty well established that humans are good at regulating birth rates without needing external controls. There's a bit of lag when modern medical technology diffuses into a population, but after that it balances out around replacement rates.
Perhaps, but with developing nations starting to build towards prosperity, what makes us so sure they won't follow the pattern that countries like the US, China, and Europe have? Sure our...
Perhaps, but with developing nations starting to build towards prosperity, what makes us so sure they won't follow the pattern that countries like the US, China, and Europe have? Sure our population growth has slowed down significantly now, but we still have MASSIVE amounts of people who all require food, housing, and luxuries. I think we're already past the point where the damage done to the ecosystems is becoming irreconcilable; what do we do when most of our biodiversity is gone?
Mirror: https://archive.is/zdaMP And direct link to Gates' memo: https://www.gatesnotes.com/work/accelerate-energy-innovation/reader/three-tough-truths-about-climate
From the article:
Gate's article is here. It's hard to summarize because he anticipated common criticisms and mostly avoids binary thinking:
But maybe the best way to summarize it is that although an increase in global average temperature has bad effects on everything else, he thinks it's not the best way to measure human welfare:
...
Gates seems to be a big believer in economic growth:
Economists are big on economic growth and it's easy to see why: if you compare what life is like for average people in a poor country to a rich country, it's clear that people in rich countries are better off in most ways. So, if you can help poor countries become rich (or at least middle-income), that's a very high-impact intervention.
At least, if you can figure out how to do it. It's more easily said than done.
My criticism of economic growth as a metric is that this is a very zoomed-out way of thinking. Some kinds of economic growth are surely more valuable than other kinds, and GNP doesn't make distinctions.
Still, the specific projects that Gates calls out in the article seem like good ones.
I'm regularly impressed at where, and the level of intensity he puts his energy toward wicked problems.
Whether it's funding nuclear reactors run by waste or eliminating disease, we'd be further out of the mess we're in if more billionaires used their power for good.
It is, practically speaking, impossible with our current economic models. The luxury the rich world has is predicated upon attaining resources from the poor ones at slavery prices.
Otherwise, everyone who lives in the very rare chocolate and coffee producing regions would live like gods.
I completely agree that, collectively for humanity, the correct answer is to bring the bottom up. But it's not solving cliimate change. I have a bigger top-level brewing.
Several Asian countries have grown rapidly within the last few decades, which I think disproves your thesis? And I don't see what producing coffee or chocolate has to do with it; this doesn't seem to be how countries do it.
Unfortunately, it's still hard to get growth going elsewhere.
The big coffee and cocoa producers like Vietnam, Columbia, and the Ivory Coast have developed rapidly into middle-income countries. The Ivory Coast is considered lower-middle income, but for years its gdp has grown at 6–7% annually. These countries were extremely poor a generation or two ago.
The anti-globalization movement of the early 2000's has been ideologically defeated: global trade has massively accelerated the development of non-western countries and built a global middle class of billions.
Environmental degradation, on the other hand, is a different, sad story. But economically, the world is unfathomably wealthier than it was 20 years ago.
It's takes a lot to convince me that the Earth doesn't already have too many people on it. Even with all the massive efficiency gains we're making in power generation, growing our food, making houses, etc; we're still consuming the earth's resources (and more importantly causing millions of species of animals to go extinct) at an alarming rate. Climate change is only a piece of the disaster pie that we've cooked ourselves into, ecological collapse is a very real possibility in many parts of the world because of the damage we've done to the ecosystem.
I really do not subscribe to the "line goes up forever" philosophy, but I also understand we don't have any real way to curb population growth in the short term (other than programs like sexual education in developing nations, providing better healthcare for everyone, etc)
It seems we are successfully curbing our own population growth. The second derivative is promising.
The real question is, will we slow down (or even start to reduce) our population in time to stop the massive damage we're doing to the environment around us. And I'm not even talking about emissions, mostly things like pollution and deforestation. The biodiversity of our ecosystems has already been devastated, and its getting a lot worse very quickly.
I'm blanking on the term in sociology, but its pretty well established that humans are good at regulating birth rates without needing external controls. There's a bit of lag when modern medical technology diffuses into a population, but after that it balances out around replacement rates.
Perhaps, but with developing nations starting to build towards prosperity, what makes us so sure they won't follow the pattern that countries like the US, China, and Europe have? Sure our population growth has slowed down significantly now, but we still have MASSIVE amounts of people who all require food, housing, and luxuries. I think we're already past the point where the damage done to the ecosystems is becoming irreconcilable; what do we do when most of our biodiversity is gone?
Mirror: https://archive.is/zdaMP
And direct link to Gates' memo:
https://www.gatesnotes.com/work/accelerate-energy-innovation/reader/three-tough-truths-about-climate