Bill Gates unveils massive green-energy plan at start of climate talks
PARIS — Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates unveiled plans Monday by an international coalition to invest billions of dollars in clean-energy projects to combat global warming.
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Gates, whose personal fortune is estimated by Forbes at about $80 billion, said during the summer that he would invest about $1 billion over the next five years to clean-energy projects. In Paris, he said investors have committed about $2 billion so far to the initiative.
"We need to be exploring many different paths — and that means we also need to invent new approaches," Gates wrote in a blog post announcing the project. "Private companies will ultimately develop these energy breakthroughs, but their work will rely on the kind of basic research that only governments can fund. Both have a role to play."
Andrew Steer, president and chief executive of World Resources Institute, a climate research group, said the Gates announcement gives a major boost to the climate talks.
"This unprecedented partnership will unleash significant funds for clean tech, and prompt innovation to deliver clean, affordable energy to billions of people," Steer said.
“India’s leading role in this initiative is particularly noteworthy," he added. "Prime Minister Modi stands alongside other leaders of emerging economies in demonstrating how international cooperation can spur clean-energy access and advance economic development.”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/11/30/bill-gates-obama-hollande-clean-tech-renewables/76557200/
I saw and interview with Gates, and he said in the future ALL energy will be very cheap. Oil and fossil fuels, but also cheap green energy.
He said cheap green energy is the answer to lifting the world's poor up into first world standards and middle class (because that kind of lifestyle requires a lot of energy), and he said green energy is also the answer for climate change.
So he's looking at it from #1 a growth perspective and then #2 it's beneficial to the climate.
The age old paradox though is just that more people is more people -- if we get twice the first worlders as we have now, and everyone's onto mostly green energy, then that adds up to the same as current pollution. So, still too much pollution.
But anyhow I'm not knocking it, putting money into green energy makes more sense than the climate treaty stuff. So far this is just Gates and other private philanthropy -- that's really what government ought to be doing, as well.
