Bill Gates on his new climate message: There's enough innovation to avoid 'super bad' outcomes

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates publishing a memo that suggests adopting a different view and changing strategy towards addressing Climate change it is a rebuttal to what he calls quote the doomsday scenario Which gate says is quote causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term goal Emission near-term emission goals, and it's diverting resources. He says from the most effective things We should be doing to improve life in a warming world He writes quote this is a chance to refocus on the metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change Improving lives our chief goal should be to prevent suffering particularly for those in the toughest conditions who live in the world's poorest Countries although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else for the vast majority of them It will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare The biggest problems are poverty and disease just as they always have been now I spoke to Bill Gates an exclusive TV interview, and I asked him to explain what he hopes people take away from this new message Climate is a super important problem There's enough innovation here to avoid super bad outcomes We won't achieve our best goal The 1.5 or even the 2 degrees and as we go about Trying to minimize that we have to frame it in terms of overall human welfare not just everything should be Solely for climate how much of your your own view is a function of just contextually what's happening in the world? Versus what I think you've thought for a long time about the climate Well if the aid budgets to poor countries were continuing to go up They way they did over the last 25 years then the trade-offs between climate action and Saving children's lives wouldn't be as acute as it is Now that these budgets are going down and going down quite a bit and so the plea here is to say okay Let's take that very limited money and not have some partitioned off for particular causes Let's measure it all in terms of the the human welfare How do you help those countries you were a huge supporter of the Paris climate accord at the time? And I wonder now when you look back Given that you're changing sort of the metric with which you use do you say yourself that the Paris climate accord and its goals? were Misplaced no not at all that was a key milestone because the countries the world said hey, this is a mutual problem the temperature rise The entire world will experience a temperature rise from the emissions from all these countries so getting countries to commit Was very very important the one thing about that accord that you know turned out not to be realistic Was the ambitious goal of staying to 1.5 degrees we won't be able to do that Even if you took all the money away from health you wouldn't be able to do that so now You know the question is okay? What temperature level are we going to end up at? Very important to minimize that but not at the expense of everything else, okay? But in the context of not at the expense of everything else so many businesses companies including Microsoft Made pledges around being net zero trying to get in some cases negative and net zero meaning going back and and paying for their carbon Production from earlier was that a mistake now not at all that is that's not the message that you're trying to say No, not at all. Okay. I mean the why have we been able to lower? the future emissions, it's because companies like Microsoft and many others Focused on this initiative, and it's very important that those companies Help advance these new technologies by being the early customer for things like nuclear fission fusion clean cement they're driving the prices down and That's the magic thing when you get the clean stuff to be cheaper than the dirty stuff Then you can take that whole area of emissions and saying okay Just normal market economics works there when the climate activists who who have been very supportive of what you've done You've been very supportive of what they done read this And if Greta if Greta Thunberg is reading this and saying to herself my goodness He seems like he is reversing himself. What would you tell her I'd say? wasn't the goal here to improve human lives and Shouldn't we in our awareness of how little generosity there is to help Measure, you know, should we get them a measles vaccine or should we do some climate? Related activity and if if we could take if we stop putting all vaccines and that you know saved you 0.1 degree Would that be a smart trade-off? That's the kind of question we have to ask So I'm a climate activist, but I'm also a child survival activist Okay. So what do you think is gonna be the critique of this? There are gonna be people who are gonna say that you were you are changing the the goalposts Because of this political climate as a way to placate President Trump who has not been on the side of Some of the net zero and obviously the the Paris Climate Accord and things like that Well, I'm glad that some of the provisions that Promoted new climate technologies got preserved. I was disappointed that a lot of that was taken away, but the provision supporting nuclear and geothermal some of those were Maintained the u.s. Has pulled back and that's that's a huge disappointment We really need all the countries working together on this Just like we need them to be generous on their aid budget if you think climate is the only problem and it's Apocalyptic or if you think climates not a problem at all. My memo will will make no sense to you You'll be like, oh, no, it should all be climate or you'll be like, why are you even still talking about this climate thing? Why why do you invest billions of your money into these companies the middle position that climate is super? important but How it has to be Considered in terms of overall human welfare. I didn't pick that position because it's a You know, everybody agrees with it. It's I think intellectually the the right answer And guys that is it's a very nuanced view. I'm so curious Becky hit Joe what you think of it When you read it on the page It really is or at least seems to be somewhat of reversal if you will To some of the comments that he's made in the past though I actually went back and looked some of the comments he'd made in the past even about the pirate Paris Climate Accord He had said that he thought the goals actually were too ambitious even at the time that they would never be achieved but I do know that I'm sure critics of Climate issues and of his will say that this is a complete retreat, which I also think it is not So there's sort of two ideas that maybe you can hold in your head at the same time But I also imagine Greta Thunberg Will not be happy with with with these comments either because it is it is a trade-off and that's what he's presenting here