Bill Gates Book Talk

[0] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now.

[1] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[2] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[3] Welcome, welcome, welcome to a bonus episode that we really had no intention of releasing, right?

[4] Correct.

[5] It was a pop out.

[6] It was a big pop out.

[7] We were really flattered, of course, to be asked by the Bill Gates team to moderate a discussion.

[8] about his new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, which we love.

[9] It's an incredible book.

[10] So anyways, we did this.

[11] We moderated it.

[12] It was really fun.

[13] It was so fun.

[14] It's so flattering, so fun, so informative.

[15] I get to ask Bill about my home, which felt very intimate.

[16] And privileged.

[17] And it was put on by the Chicago Humanities Festival.

[18] And what was kind of funny for us as, quote, performers, is we can't see the audience.

[19] And we also don't know who attends this.

[20] So we don't know if it was like 85 -year -olds or 10 -year -olds or whatever.

[21] Yeah.

[22] We just plowed ahead as if it were an armchair expert show.

[23] And we were inappropriate and it was fun, but I was nervous.

[24] The book is so digestible and so interesting and really worth picking up and reading.

[25] So hopefully this will, like, you know, get you in gear.

[26] Yeah.

[27] I love the book sincerely.

[28] It really is the most pragmatic approach I've ever heard about climate disaster.

[29] So please enjoy.

[30] Oh, but also real quick.

[31] So we didn't know we were going to be releasing it.

[32] So if in case the sound isn't as quality as normal, that is why.

[33] It's not going to be because we were not speaking into microphones.

[34] And the whole point of this introduction was to say that.

[35] And I didn't do it.

[36] That was great.

[37] So, yeah, please enjoy a less than perfect sound quality version of Monica Mouse and Dr. Shepard moderating Bill Gates.

[38] In a typical year, the world admits over 51 billion tons of greenhouse gases.

[39] And as we keep doing that, the consequences for human life will be catastrophic.

[40] When I first fell in love with computers as a teenager, they were enormous, expensive, and only the government and big companies could afford them.

[41] But my friends and I became obsessed with a wild idea.

[42] What could we do if there was a computer on every desk?

[43] And now the wild idea is quite tame.

[44] Billions of people, not only have computers on their desks, but even in their pockets.

[45] Now the world needs another breakthrough.

[46] In fact, it needs many breakthroughs.

[47] We need to get from 51 billion tons to zero while still meeting the planet's basic needs.

[48] That means we need to transform the way we do almost everything.

[49] Our commitment to developing these innovations will mean the difference between a future where everyone can live a healthy, productive life and one where we're constantly dealing with the human and financial crises at a historic scale.

[50] Entrepreneurs and investors have to build new businesses and change existing businesses to get these solutions deployed.

[51] Government leaders have to enact new policies that drive the market for clean energy and advocates have to keep their voices loud to hold all of us accountable for rapid progress.

[52] Avoiding a climate disaster, will be one of the greatest challenges humans have ever taken on greater than landing on the moon greater than eradicating smallpox even greater than putting a computer on every desk my basic optimism about climate change comes from my belief in innovation it's our power to invent that makes me hopeful party time what a video that felt like we were at the end of it had kind of an Olympic feel to it we're so excited to talk to you you again, we would, this book could be terrible and we still would have agreed to talk to you and help you promote it.

[53] So that's how much we love.

[54] But it's not, it's wonderful.

[55] I have to say, I think I'm a pretty good person to, well, first let me just thank the Chicago Humanities Festival for having all of us.

[56] It's an incredible honor.

[57] Yes.

[58] I don't know that you picked the right two people, probably Monica, but we'll see.

[59] I want to say, Bill, that I think I'm a great person to ask you about this book because I'm very much a defeatist.

[60] I've not ever really engaged in this topic.

[61] I felt like the solutions that were being presented were naive, that somehow if we all picked the right car that would actually address this problem, I thought the responsibility was being put so much on the individual's shoulders and it feels like it's a much bigger problem than that.

[62] I enjoyed your book so much and it really, really got me engaged because I think it's the first time I've heard a breakdown that really encompasses everything we're up against and the many solutions and most importantly, very pragmatic solutions that have to happen for us to address this.

[63] So I guess my first question for you is why even throw your hat in the spring?

[64] Why would you write a book about this topic?

[65] Well, we have two things that are amazing.

[66] We have this goal to get to zero by 2050, which is because this is going to be hard to do, the earliest we can get it done.

[67] And we have a young generation that's beginning to really speak out and say that this is a moral cause to them beyond their own individual success.

[68] And hopefully, as that strengthens, We're seeing it throughout the country, both parties, even throughout the world.

[69] So when you have those two things, you want to have a plan to go with it.

[70] And yet because most people aren't aware of all these sources of emissions or the scale of emissions and the demanding nature of getting to zero, which means you can't just pick the easy things, you have to pick everything that does emissions, and you can't just pick a few countries that, you know, use brute force and pay, you know, huge amounts to do it, you actually have to come up with green products that will be adopted by all the countries, including middle -income countries like India, that have yet to provide basic shelter or lighting or, you know, now they need air conditioning.

[71] And so I thought, okay, I can contribute to the framework for a plan and the key metrics.

[72] which we'll probably touch on this idea of the green premium where you're paying extra for the clean stuff and that that's way too high and we need innovators to bring that down.

[73] And so, you know, I saw the effects of climate change as I traveled in Africa after the year 2000.

[74] After 2005, I got educated.

[75] 2010, I gave a TED talk about it, not as famous as my 2015 pandemic TED talk.

[76] But it's only in the last few years that I've seen this energy around the topic that made me think, okay, I'll help contribute to the discussion about a plan.

[77] And it, you know, looks like it's fairly timely because we have a U .S. administration, Europe, UK, we've got a big climate meeting in November.

[78] So, you know, I hope it pushes the thinking forward.

[79] Yeah, so I think that, like you say, that the younger generation is incredibly passionate about this topic, as they should be, it'll affect them the most.

[80] their children.

[81] But there has yet to be, from my perspective, a really tactical approach.

[82] There's a lot of passion, but I've not seen it broken down.

[83] So just one thing I want to point out is I just love how you think.

[84] I feel like everything's reverse engineered.

[85] And maybe I'm wrong about that assumption.

[86] But it's just, I love how you take us through it globally.

[87] Okay, there's 51 billion tons of emissions happening?

[88] By the way, you were excited to say cow fart a lot in the book.

[89] And I'm excited to say emissions a lot tonight.

[90] So just neither here.

[91] We're only nine minutes in.

[92] Yeah, sorry.

[93] But I think it's such a great way to just go, okay, here's the issue, 51 billion tons.

[94] What's making the 51 billion tons?

[95] And I think you have a really sexy pie chart that really breaks down for us that I would love to take a look at because I think it'll be shocking for a lot of people where it's coming from.

[96] I think most people off the cuff would imagine it's all transportation or it's all electricity, but it's a lot of things that are surprising.

[97] Yeah, great.

[98] Let's put that pie chart up because I really hope that takeaways from the book are, you know, the 51 billion, the zero, and then all these different sources.

[99] As you say, the two that people are quite aware of are that one at the bottom there, electricity, 27%, and that's as we burn coal and we burn natural gas to make the electricity.

[100] The second sector that they're mostly aware of is transportation over there on the left, and you see passenger cars is the biggest piece of that, but you've also got planes, buses, trucks, and ships, which are much harder to solve because the total energy they use is much higher than a passenger car.

[101] But then we have these three other segments that are pretty low awareness.

[102] Agriculture, that includes the cow farts and burps, that are actually methane gas.

[103] That's a powerful greenhouse gas.

[104] It's making fertilizer.

[105] It's countries where they're cutting down the forest and that releases carbon.

[106] It's even garbage dumps that also emit methane.

[107] Then we have heating and cooling buildings today in the U .S., a lot of that's natural gas that creates emissions.

[108] But the biggest piece of this pie, that 31 % there, that's this physical economy.

[109] You know, every building you look at has got steel and cement in it.

[110] Your car is steel.

[111] Your road is cement.

[112] There's a lot of that that the world manufactures.

[113] In fact, those are the two by tonnage, two biggest human activities there are.

[114] and then everything else, like plastic, paper, various chemically derived products, add to that.

[115] And so we've got to change and get green steel.

[116] We've got to get green cement to go along with all those other pieces.

[117] And that's why it's daunting is that not only do we have to figure out how to make those green things without a huge price premium, and then we have to roll that out to the steel, all over the world, including India, China, everywhere, not just in the U .S. So we're going to have to use every one of these 30 years that we have remaining in a very intense way.

[118] Yeah, and I think what's interesting and important is that we don't get stuck in, like, oh, 10 years ago we said no plastics and now we actually may be able, well, just earlier.

[119] I was like, oh, we got to bring these water bottles.

[120] We can't bring plastic water bottles because we're talking about climate.

[121] And Dax was like, well, actually, maybe plastic is going to end up being a solution.

[122] Because it traps the carbon in the process of making it.

[123] And perhaps it could trap even more and be a storage device for carbon, which was, again, this is why I love the book.

[124] It's all these things that are kind of knee -jerk and popular.

[125] They get a real trial.

[126] What is it?

[127] What does it do?

[128] What does it cost?

[129] This approach I love, and I just want to point one thing out because another thing that's always kind of rubbed me the wrong way about the environmental movement is just, it seems to be intrinsically anti -development, which troubles me. And what I love in the book, as you point out, Shanghai.

[130] When you see the difference between Shanghai 15 years ago and today, it's startling.

[131] and that represents so much steel and cement, which you talk about, which is troubling.

[132] But it also represents education, higher standard of living, increased life expectancy.

[133] So these are goals that we should have.

[134] And I'm so refreshed by the fact that your approach is, no, we want this stuff.

[135] We want to have air condition that's not destroying us.

[136] We want these things and we've got to figure out how to have them.

[137] Yes.

[138] The air conditioning is a good one because we actually need more of it to deal with the, even the warming will get.

[139] You know, and actually the U .S. today is the only country that has extensive air conditioning.

[140] Other countries need to do that, but, you know, using green electricity so that it doesn't make the problem even worse.

[141] But you're right.

[142] It's the basic needs that, you know, we take for granted that a law of the world hasn't gotten yet.

[143] The U .S., the rich countries can cut back, and that helps a bit, but it's not a path to zero.

[144] You cut back, you can help us get there sooner.

[145] You can reduce some of the emissions.

[146] But asking India to cut back, that's completely unfair.

[147] You know, we should feel good that we'll figure out how they get some of what we have, but without a greenhouse gas footprint.

[148] Okay, so now here's where I want to bring up why I think you are so uniquely positioned to have a fresh take on this, which is just given.

[149] your history with the business you built, which is you created something that had not previously existed.

[150] And I think you have an optimism about innovation that I can't even really relate to.

[151] And then, of course, because you brought so many actual products to market, your comprehension of the economical forces and what it will take are so relevant to this conversation.

[152] because you never, ever look at one of these things and just say, yeah, that makes sense to spend a dollar to save five cents of electricity.

[153] You know, that model would never work in the real world.

[154] So just, could you tell me how it is a proprietary look at this to really be factoring in all these economic forces?

[155] Well, the private sector, you know, works to drive innovation.

[156] You have to have, of course, government setting the rules.

[157] But, you know, it's happened over the last 200 years with electricity and now digital things and improved medicines.

[158] In a way, we'd like to repeat that.

[159] You know, so the U .S. is led in innovation with computers and digital, you know, which is why we can do events like this, even though we have a pandemic going on.

[160] It's led in health products, and that creates companies that create jobs, they do exports.

[161] We need to reprise that for a lot of these areas where the U .S. innovation power, universities, national labs, risk -taking capital, tuned venture capital to this climate problem, step up and not only make these products cheap enough for the U .S. to say, okay, we'll go green, but make it possible for the entire world.

[162] So what we owe the world is not just to reduce our emissions to zero.

[163] We owe the world our share, which is a large share of that innovation, so that they can do it too.

[164] If we just write big checks, I'm not sure we'd be willing.

[165] But if you go about it that way, it doesn't, it only affects our 15%.

[166] And right now we're trying to get China and India to make strong commitments.

[167] They're waiting to see what the price will be as they're dealing with citizens who aren't nearly as well off on average as we are.

[168] And so the fact that the last four years, we didn't have that R &D increase and we weren't pushing to buy these green products.

[169] You know, we'll look back on that a somewhat wasted time that we can hardly afford.

[170] Oh, sorry.

[171] No, go ahead.

[172] You want to say, you ask your pandemic question.

[173] It's really good.

[174] Oh, I had a really good question.

[175] No, actually, first, I feel like there's so many big words around climate change and climate disaster that people pretend they know but don't know.

[176] And when they're in these conversations, they're like, yeah, methane, carbon, yeah.

[177] So I was wondering if you could kind of break down, especially green premiums, because I don't think people really actually know about that and if you could break that down for us.

[178] Yeah, so I've got two examples on a slide here, but it applies to all these services.

[179] You know, how much more do you pay for the process?

[180] or service that has no emissions.

[181] You know, with an electric car, you pay a bit more up front.

[182] You give up some range.

[183] You know, the charge times are higher.

[184] There's less charging points.

[185] And so if you look at that right now, I'm comparing to Chevrolet products, you're paying about 15 % more to go electric.

[186] Now there's a tax incentive that helps with that.

[187] And there's now scale and competition.

[188] You know, Tesla's led the way and the other manufacturers are going, wow, we need to learn from what they did and catch up and compete with that.

[189] And so over the next 10 or 15 years, those batteries will get cheaper, so the range will go up, the costs will go down, and the charging speed will go down to 15 minutes.

[190] There'll be more charge points.

[191] And so we can say this will be the first category of all the emissions where in 10 to 15 years, that green premium will actually be zero.

[192] Without any government help, the electric car will be as a. attractive to the consumer as the gasoline car was.

[193] And that's why you'll see a very important Detroit company, who's CEO I was talking to earlier today, Mary Barra, who declared that by 2035, they see themselves making only electric cars, which, you know, that really stunned people because GM, you know, the gasoline car and GM, GM and Ford are sort of the two, you know, hey, we built this world type company.

[194] companies, and now, you know, they're saying, okay, they're going to change.

[195] Is it true, though, that when you do the Tokyo Humanities Festival, you'll show a Toyota slide?

[196] I feel like because Detroit is part of this festival, we got Chevrolet, which was very clever.

[197] Well, the Chevrolet's in the book.

[198] You know, I have to plead guilty that my first car was a Porsche, and so when I went to get an electric car, I was glad that they had one available.

[199] But there's lots of good choices, and, you know, Tesla's led the way in showing you can make a great electric car.

[200] I think there is a lot of guilt around this because, like, people want, as you, you being Exhibit A, want, like, fancy car.

[201] Well, no, you just grew up in Detroit.

[202] This is what happens.

[203] We grow up with these, you know, dreams of having these certain cars.

[204] And then it feels like, oh, I can't have that.

[205] And then there's a lot of guilt that I think comes a bit and shaming.

[206] And so it's an emotional component, I think, to this.

[207] Or people are like, I don't want to deal with climate change because I don't want to deal with the guilt associated.

[208] Well, that's exactly why I love your book, is it's not in either of these bipartisan silos.

[209] I've seen this topic approached in.

[210] Just as I said, the fact that you are pro -development, pro -education, all these things we know we want.

[211] Let's talk about some of the real hurdles because they were news to me. First off, right out of the gates in the book, I guess when I thought of the time period when crocodiles existed north of the Arctic Circle, that must have represented a difference in temperature of like 40 degrees.

[212] So right out of the gates, I realized, oh, this is much, a small change has a huge impact.

[213] So just tell us the gravity of this small incremental change.

[214] Yeah, so if the Earth was even three degrees cooler in a human life would not have, you know, come to be and thrive like we have.

[215] So these temperatures really affect ice, sea level, and, you know, particularly whether the equator is habitable.

[216] And at times, it hasn't been.

[217] You know, when people say this is bad for the planet, they don't really mean the planet.

[218] I mean, you know, the big ball of rock, it's going to be fine.

[219] What they mean is that the natural ecosystems and the humans who live on the surface of this planet, we're going to be in trouble.

[220] Now, the planet, you know, 10 or 20 million years from now, can evolve back some coral reefs and hopefully beings more intelligent than us.

[221] But in terms of any reasonable time frame, the destruction going on here, because we're driving the temperature up very, very quickly.

[222] You know, this, we haven't seen in natural history this type of temperature forcing.

[223] And it's that speed that means that evolution can't keep up.

[224] The birds don't know where to migrate to.

[225] The corals don't know how to form their outer shell.

[226] And so they just get up, they bleach and they die.

[227] And the dramatic nature of that CO2 rise is putting us in very uncharted territory.

[228] But it means the ice will melt, the seas will get higher, the wildfires will come.

[229] And at the equator, you won't be able to do farming.

[230] And so all the farmers, which are most of the people in those developing countries, there will be incredible unrest, you know, 20 times worse than the Syrians of war, where people will be migrating to the parts of the earth where you can still grow food.

[231] And, you know, that is one of the greatest security, stability risks that we run.

[232] And yet, you know, if you wait until it happens, in this case, you can't do something like, you know, just invent a vaccine and then wait a couple of years that goes away.

[233] This one, because of the scale and the variety of activities, you have to be smart enough to anticipate that the bad stuff you're seeing now will be so acute in the rest of this century that you're willing to invest to drive that innovation cycle and get that green premium down in a very broad way.

[234] Yeah, I think comprehending the timeline is essential for this.

[235] And I do think it's, as you point out, it's self -accelerating in that as it gets warmer, right?

[236] Marshlands now emit more methane, which warms the atmosphere 28 times as much as carbon.

[237] So it just kind of, it really ramps up, as you say.

[238] But let's talk about really quick some of the crazy challenges and just my gratitude that you have breakthrough energy working on this.

[239] So the electricity issue, you point out, you know, we have this huge problem with intermittency.

[240] We can't have the whole world run on solar and wind because of the seasons change.

[241] Daylight changes.

[242] We can't store it well.

[243] There's not really even looking like a future where we'll ever be able to store it incredibly efficiently.

[244] So then we, again, I think it's your reverse engineering where it's like, okay, well, then what's left?

[245] Well, nuclear's left and people hate nuclear.

[246] Why do they hate nuclear?

[247] Well, it's great.

[248] It's great.

[249] Okay.

[250] What else they hate about it?

[251] Well, it melts down.

[252] That's an issue for me. And so your approach to that, I would love for you to walk people through because I think it's, it's gangster.

[253] So electricity is super, super important because it's really the main source of energy that we do see a path to make it completely green.

[254] So the incredible price reduction in solar and wind is key to solving this problem because in the future, like 80%, of all the electricity production will be those renewable sources.

[255] The reason we can't go to 100 % is exactly what you said, which is that when you do get a cold front over the Midwest, those you don't tend not to get sun or wind.

[256] Now, that's not what happened in Texas a few weeks ago.

[257] That was more about a failure to weather -wise.

[258] So there's three things that'll improve that reliability.

[259] We will have some storage, but not enough.

[260] to bear the whole thing.

[261] We'll have some nuclear fission, which is not weather -dependent and is green.

[262] And then third, we'll have more transmission.

[263] We're very lucky that the U .S. is a big country.

[264] And so if you have electric transmission lines all over the country, which it's very limited what we have today.

[265] In fact, Texas is kind of isolated.

[266] There's the West grid and the East grid and the Texas grid.

[267] So they couldn't call on other.

[268] states when they had production messed up and they had people getting cold, they had to deal with it just themselves.

[269] In the future, we'll have 10 times as much transmission.

[270] So if the wind is blowing off the east coast, then power can move into the Midwest.

[271] If the Midwest is windy, but the coastal wind is not running, then the power will move.

[272] We have that today between Washington and California, where you'll have wind in California, in Washington, sometimes will go to California for parts of the day, and then the sun in California will go north.

[273] So that transmission line actually sometimes goes one way and sometimes goes the other.

[274] Now, getting transmission permitted and people feeling good about it being nearby, that's tricky.

[275] That's not nearly as tricky as helping people get comfortable with nuclear.

[276] which unless the storage thing, the cost come down and the scale goes up way beyond what I personally expect, we will have to have that scalable, weather -independent source.

[277] And so I'm investing in a company, and I'm not the only one, but we got support from the government where the private side pays half and the government pays half.

[278] And in five years, we hope to have a reactor with any luck that the cost, the safety, the waste that all the key issues have been dramatically improved.

[279] But, you know, we have to pursue every angle so we can have this grid that will be providing three times as much energy because your car will use electricity, the heating of your house instead of natural gas will use electricity, even some of these industrial processes like making plastic or paper, a lot of those will switch from hydrocarbon.

[280] Carbon's two, electricity is their energy input.

[281] So that's a mammoth task, and we have to model it out to make sure that everybody gets to stay warm, even in tough weather conditions.

[282] Yeah, so, you know, Texas is unfortunate for them.

[283] This is the perfect time to talk about the grid, because what an example of not being linked to some national grid?

[284] And so that, I guess, brings us seamlessly to the government's going to have to really do some stuff, right?

[285] There's not going to be a private here that's going to make a nationalized power grid, right?

[286] We're going to have to have some major Manhattan Project level dedication to this.

[287] Yeah, so it's a mix of the government and the private sector.

[288] If you can clear the right -of -ways, actually, then a lot of the construction and financial risk with the appropriate government framework, the private sector is willing to do.

[289] But getting that permitting has been tough enough that even some very obvious transmission projects like Canada, hydro coming down into New England or there was a line that was going to go from Oklahoma to Tennessee that would have brought lots of wind power out of Oklahoma and benefited both the source and the destination there.

[290] And so I have to look at what's held that back because we're going to want to make it attractive, including how the permitting gets streamlined, hopefully as part of this build back better that the Biden administration is talking about.

[291] You want high -paying jobs.

[292] You want people have a sense that, okay, if hydrocarbons are tending down, not overnight, but over the 30 years, is there something that fills that in?

[293] And, you know, having an electric grid with incredible transmission three times as big, all that wind and solar, that will be a gigantic jobs creators as we get going on it.

[294] Yeah.

[295] Yeah, it feels like it has to be the first step because the last thing I want you to talk about technology -wise and where the innovation will be, and I'm not aware of it, is capturing it.

[296] So you point out, you know, in steel production, in which every human in America is responsible for about 600 pounds of steel and cement individually.

[297] So that's how much we're using.

[298] Now, that thus far has been a huge carbon dioxide emitter, and currently how we're doing it, it's going to continue to be.

[299] So what is the technology that is going to exist or is potentially going to happen that is going to capture the carbon during this process.

[300] And obviously, electricity will have to be a huge component of being able to run that.

[301] Yeah, so we want to ideally change the way we do things so there are no emissions so that the electric car, you know, that battery makes no emissions.

[302] There will be some things that we can't change.

[303] And for those, what we'll do is called direct air capture, where we'll have these big boxes that the wind blows through and they'll have a fan, and they'll pull out of the air, the CO2 molecules that are only 410 out of a million molecules in the air are the CO2.

[304] But, you know, it blows that air through.

[305] There's a way to grab it, and then you pressurize it, it becomes a liquid and then you put it in an underground store where it's got to stay for ideally millions of years.

[306] That kind of direct air capture will be the kind of cleanup thing for the things that just we have no other approach for.

[307] That's very expensive today, $600 a ton.

[308] I think it will come down to $100 a ton.

[309] I hope that somebody surprises us and gets it to be even cheaper.

[310] I'm funding a lot of these companies.

[311] Elon Musk just did an X -Prize for a company to get these costs down in a significant way.

[312] So that's one of these places we need lots of crazy, you know, wild, new approaches.

[313] I've seen five or six and, you know, usually have pretty high failure rates, but just one or two of those could bring the cost of that down along.

[314] and that would take care of the entire set of things that you don't have even cheaper ways of doing like we'll have with the electric car where we just never make the emissions in the first place.

[315] So $100 a ton, that would be $5 .1 trillion to clean up our current emission?

[316] That's right.

[317] Yeah, so $51 billion times 100.

[318] And that's way too much.

[319] somebody can say, okay, hey, the world economy, you know, that's only like 7%, but it's not going to happen.

[320] And so only through innovation that would bring that number down by about 95 % to like 250 billion, then I can see how between the rich countries and the middle income countries and helping out the poorest countries, that overall the planet could, you know, reach this agreement, hey, you know, if you don't go green, we'll not trade with you.

[321] So we really need everyone involved in making sure that this disastrous heat increase isn't continuing past 2050.

[322] Yeah, I guess my question on that topic is how do we get everyone on the same page?

[323] Because if we look at the pandemic as a kind of precursor of, I mean, I mean, I was just telling that, like, in my life, and I think for a lot of people, like, this is the first thing that's happened that feels truly global.

[324] Like, every single person is affected, and you feel that.

[325] You feel it on a day -to -day.

[326] And climate disaster is the exact same thing.

[327] I'm not sure we handled this great.

[328] I don't think the dress rehearsal went great.

[329] So how do we get people all on the same page?

[330] about this?

[331] Yeah, that's a great question.

[332] The pandemic, it's awful.

[333] You know, trillions of dollars of economic costs, you know, mental health, things that are hard to measure, you know, loss of education years, particularly in the inner city.

[334] You know, so a lot of the dimensions of inequity, the pandemic is just made worse.

[335] And, you know, I feel guilty almost that I have a nice house so I can work from home with lots of room.

[336] I have a great internet connection.

[337] The nature my job is such that, you know, I can sit and wave my hands in front of a computer screen all day.

[338] And now we should say, okay, how did we do?

[339] Well, we didn't do nearly as well as we should have.

[340] We didn't listen to the warnings in advance and make some investments.

[341] but the vaccine manufacturers who got all but Pfizer got a lot of U .S. government money.

[342] That's the one thing that U .S. government, and it's a program called Barta that had been put in place over a decade ago, but it did fund that.

[343] And amazingly, the success rate of the vaccines is very high.

[344] You know, the first five are working quite well.

[345] Now, the variants mean we may have to tune this a little.

[346] bit, but we can see the end here because of the vaccine work.

[347] So that's innovation at work, but that was innovation after the problem hit us.

[348] And so you're right.

[349] The number of people speaking about the pandemic was too small.

[350] And, you know, even though I was very loud.

[351] And it's not much fun on that one to say, hey, I told you so.

[352] Jesus.

[353] You know, now the crazy people say that, you know, I like it, but that, that is dead wrong.

[354] Anyway, the, you have a lot of conflicting motives, but when I read the attacks, I'm like, well, wait, does this guy want to control everyone or kill everyone?

[355] I make up your mind.

[356] They say, they say I want to track people, but I haven't figured out why I do.

[357] Somebody's got to tell me what I'm going to do with all that information.

[358] Anyway, the serious piece here is that the, The commitment and advocacy on this one will have to be a million times greater than the voices in the wilderness who didn't get heard relative to pandemic preparedness.

[359] This is a generational thing.

[360] No single philanthropist can tackle some high percentage of this one.

[361] I mean, and it's great.

[362] We've got, you know, Jet Bezos, myself, Elon.

[363] We've got lots of the companies now coming in on this.

[364] but it's really the voters will have to say, is this a priority?

[365] And so the advocates exposing people to, you know, these scary negative things, we're going to have to get even better at that.

[366] And I, you know, that advocacy creativity, I probably won't be able to add much to it.

[367] So, you know, the creative community that you're part of, I, you know, I challenge them.

[368] There are things like this David Attenborough movie that showed, he nature looked even better back when he was a, young man, and now this population growth means that a lot of those beautiful scenes from his youth, you go back and you say, wow, those forests are gone, those coral reefs are dying.

[369] You know, I think there's a lot of ways to motivate people, but, you know, this is the cause, kind of in a sense, the ultimate cause that we have to orchestrate humanity around.

[370] Okay, we're going to go to some audience questions, but before we're going to go to some audience questions, we do, you're going to have to listen to one more compliment.

[371] So in regards to the pandemic, I think what really hamstrung our response to it was it becoming politicized.

[372] I mean, it was the most disheartening thing to watch that your political party would dictate how you responded or thought about this.

[373] It was so troubling.

[374] And I think likewise, this issue suffers from a similar politicizing.

[375] And I think this book, you've written how to avoid a climate disaster, is as straight up the middle as you can be.

[376] I think it's the most bipartisan look at this.

[377] I think it's so pragmatic.

[378] I think it's practical.

[379] I think it's responsible economically and fiscally and morally.

[380] And I think you've somehow spanned that whole thing.

[381] And it's incredibly impressive.

[382] And genuinely, we are so grateful that you exist and that you're you we really do that you're bringing everything you've created over your life to bear on these hard hard problems and thank God for you sincerely now we'll have some audiences ask you what your favorite socks and shoes are perfect green Katie but we kind of talked about that Oh, we talked about it.

[383] Okay, Monica's making on -the -fly edits.

[384] Sorry, Katie.

[385] As I do, the question's not going to be.

[386] My scissors.

[387] Okay, there's a question from Shira.

[388] She says, one of your podcast episodes with Rashida Jones, also, by the way, we were very jealous to hear you at a podcast.

[389] We felt a little bit betrayed, and we don't like this question.

[390] Sorry about that.

[391] We did a pretty good job.

[392] We would have thought you would ask us.

[393] But anyways, kind of what we just touched on, But you talk about whether people can really change.

[394] And do you think climate deniers will ever change their mind?

[395] Is it a waste of time to think about converting them?

[396] Well, we do need a lot of the younger generation, not 100 % to be familiar with climate change and to see those negatives.

[397] I mean, we have three types of people that are a problem.

[398] The denialists, and now that the oil companies are not promoting that, you'll see that die down because the science is just super strong.

[399] There's a range of, you know, how quick the temperature goes up and how much you map that temperature into bad things, you know, and the high end of that range is super bad.

[400] Even the low end of the range is bad.

[401] So you've got deniers.

[402] You've got people who think that it's going to be easy to solve.

[403] And those are mostly the other political party.

[404] And they're, again, education, you know, talking through all the scale and sources will help us there.

[405] And then you have people who think it's impossible.

[406] And then they're just like, oh, we give up, you know, let's go party before this thing boils over.

[407] And did that jump in the case?

[408] Okay.

[409] And so all three of those camps hold us back in the sense that we are asking for this huge level of engagement for this, this monumental task.

[410] And so along with the green premium, I agree it would be good to track attitudes towards climate change.

[411] Maybe that's the leading indicator of whether we're going to get this done, even more than my favorite number, which is that green premium thing.

[412] But attitudes will lead on this.

[413] And, you know, we're short, you know, the science courses teaching us in a fair ways so that everyone who graduates kind of comes out saying, okay, I have that basic knowledge and I can argue over the tactics to get to the goal.

[414] But the goal seems, you know, like fighting a war or solving health problems to be something that shouldn't be partisan.

[415] We have to agree on who the enemy is.

[416] 51 billion tons of carbon dioxide.

[417] Okay.

[418] Question number three is from an anonymous person.

[419] So this might be a little dicey.

[420] They wanted to run.

[421] We obviously haven't pre -read these.

[422] Yeah.

[423] How are the roles of individuals, corporations, and governments different regarding climate change solutions?

[424] Well, the individual, that's where you get the, you know, buy an electric car if you can, try out the artificial ground beef from people like Impossible and beyond.

[425] And there'll be lots of food products that are low emission type products, that the quality is getting better, the price is coming down.

[426] That's one sector where, if you'd ask me five years ago, I would have put it up as high as cement and steel in terms of difficulty, but because a lot of these companies have come out, and even as they were offered in restaurants and grocery stores, the demand actually was beyond what they expected.

[427] And so as a consumer, you're buying the green products helps drive that R &D budget and the improvement and the price going down, you know, educating other people where you get extra credit if you convince somebody who's not in your political party, you know, because you vote.

[428] And, you know, you're an employee and these big companies, they can reach.

[429] And when they build a new building by, you know, at least some green steel and cement, maybe all over time, you know, the tech companies use electricity in their data centers.

[430] They can make sure there isn't any hydrocarbon ever used, not just net, but never used because they are pioneering customers of these storage solutions that we need to scale up.

[431] And so, you know, we all play a lot of different roles.

[432] The government is huge.

[433] It's got to fund the R &D.

[434] It's got to create the tax credits.

[435] It's got to, you know, demand visibility that nobody can hide their activities and these measures are there so investors and customers can see all of that.

[436] And so it's good to see that, you know, the Biden administration is really, you know, pushing this and picked very strong people across many parts of the government.

[437] Yeah, and we need to be able to build coalitions internationally to help everyone go in the same direction, which hopefully is starting to happen.

[438] David and Darson?

[439] I'm going to ask one from second and ottoman.

[440] I'm hopping around.

[441] Okay, wow.

[442] What is the coolest climate change, innovation, or technology?

[443] Well, one that I don't know if we'll achieve, but would solve a lot of problems that we could, is being able to make hydrogen in a clean way, so call it green hydrogen and make that super cheap.

[444] That would help with many of the manufacturing problems because, you know, you could make steel where it's actually the hydrogen that does the work of taking the iron ore and converting it to the metal.

[445] And, you know, when you make fertilizer right now, use natural gas.

[446] So there's a kind of a cool level of activity now where people are looking at, okay, how could you do that?

[447] Can we get that price down enough?

[448] And it'll start out with the high green premium.

[449] But if you get the volume up, then these components that they use called electrolyzers, those could get extremely cheap.

[450] And so I'm enthused.

[451] There's a lot of talk about doing that.

[452] And that wasn't there three or four years ago.

[453] And the number of cool companies is large.

[454] Breakthrough energy.

[455] In our first fund, we have 40.

[456] We just started our second fund where the candidates for our second 40 look very, very strong.

[457] In the first one, we got a lot of storage and food.

[458] So in the second fund, we're looking at that direct air capture, the green hydrogen I mentioned, and the work on aviation fuel.

[459] What's the timeline for fusion?

[460] Well, fusion is a wildcard because the science isn't well understood.

[461] Basically, if you get hydrogen up at a ridiculous temperature, 10 million degrees, then it bounces around so fast that even though it kind of repels electrically, it still runs into each other.

[462] And that's what the sun is doing.

[463] And when they do hit each other, that releases energy.

[464] They combine to make helium, but there's energy left over.

[465] And that, you know, that's why the sun does a good job heating us up.

[466] And so it's doing that.

[467] Right now we do that with hydrogen bombs.

[468] We don't want that.

[469] That's sort of an uncontrolled fusion reaction.

[470] There are about 13 companies, but that's one where I say I'd be very surprised if by 2050, that's a significant piece.

[471] Now, there's people working on that, Breakthrough Energy's invested in one of those.

[472] We track them.

[473] but it's not mature like fission is, where you take a big thing like uranium, and when it breaks in two, it releases a lot of energy.

[474] So fission is what all the electric power reactors had been, although we're talking now about designing that from scratch in a cheaper, safer way.

[475] Fusion, we've done experiments, but we're not even at the energy break -even level yet, because it takes energy to make those insane temperatures.

[476] Yeah.

[477] Okay.

[478] Anonymous wants to know what's one thing that helps you stay optimistic about the state of the world right now?

[479] And if you're optimistic, they want to know why are you so delusional?

[480] That's right.

[481] Okay.

[482] The pandemic is a huge setback.

[483] So let me just plead that, yes, you know, that for some issues is a two.

[484] year setback.

[485] For some, it's a five years, some it's a tenure setback.

[486] But before the pandemic, you know, we were making progress on reducing childhood deaths.

[487] You know, we'd cut it in half since the year 2000.

[488] We were more aware of, you know, gender inequality.

[489] You know, the George Floyd incidents has made us, you know, redouble our efforts that look at all these people of color and how, you know, the outcomes for them.

[490] whether it's jobs or income or health, you know, just aren't as good as we'd expect they would be.

[491] And so when society gets upset about something, you know, we focus on it and we make progress.

[492] Sometimes it's social awareness that we have better values.

[493] Sometimes it's innovation.

[494] You know, without electricity, it'd be hard to have the civilization that we have today.

[495] And so I get to work in the digital world, which, you know, it's mostly good news that that is moving so fast.

[496] I get to work in the health world where progress on things like cancer and malaria, you know, finally getting rid of polio.

[497] All those things are in our future.

[498] And so there's a lot to feel good about while we still, you know, are disappointed about the inequality and difficulties that remain.

[499] Yeah, you've seen firsthand progress and you've been a part of it and you had big ideas that ended up happening.

[500] So I think that leads to optimism.

[501] He's in a closed feedback, positive.

[502] He's in my best.

[503] I have a provocative question.

[504] I'm like, I've been blowing a lot of smoke this whole time.

[505] But has it crossed your mind?

[506] What if you're Paul Earleck?

[507] What if this warming opens up all this fertile land in the northern hemisphere and everything's honky dory.

[508] Has that crossed your mind?

[509] That's from Anonymous, not for that.

[510] Yeah, he's crazy.

[511] Most of humanity lives in either tropic zones, tropical zones or temperate zones.

[512] And so the idea that, okay, the way we'll deal with this is we'll move everybody to Siberia or, you know, near the Arctic Circle, that's just not going to work.

[513] That is countries, you know, that type of mass movement, you know, won't work.

[514] It is true that the suffering, the further north you are, will be less.

[515] And yet, you know, our overall ability to make food and, you know, to have stable countries, there is no, hey, let's just abandon the equatorial regions that works out.

[516] out for this.

[517] We've got to preserve those tropical forests.

[518] We've got to make those areas livable.

[519] You know, India alone, you know, it's 1 .4 billion people.

[520] And that, if we don't act by the end of the century, their farming output will be so reduced that they will be facing starvation, which is what Paul Lerlich predicted before the Green Revolution and the reduction in family birth rate made his prediction foolish, which was super good news that that negative view turned out to be wrong.

[521] We need again to, you know, help families in Africa, where most of the population growth is, have access to birth control and improve their lives where families voluntarily decide to have smaller family size.

[522] And we need to make sure they have enough to on their farm that they're not feeling like they have to move.

[523] So, you know, wholesale transportation isn't going to get us out of this one.

[524] Okay.

[525] I should not be investing in Canadian real estate.

[526] Is that here?

[527] Well, it's hard to say.

[528] You know, maybe Siberia.

[529] We have one last question from the audience, and it is from Elaine.

[530] And she wants to know will eliminating fossil fuels entirely become prohibitively expensive for the average person or household?

[531] That's a very, very good question.

[532] If we just said today that everyone has to use green products, the impact at the household level would be gigantic.

[533] We don't even have the capacity to make them, so they'd be in short supply and the prices would go up.

[534] it would be, you know, super inflationary.

[535] And so even in the U .S., doing this kind of brute force, you know, is not the solution.

[536] You know, I can afford to pay for gold standard carbon offsets like direct air capture, you know, so that I'm at zero, but, you know, that's many millions of dollars for that green aviation fuel and all the things that get me there.

[537] And so it's not a scalable way to solve this problem.

[538] So, you know, if you told me we couldn't innovate, I would join the, hey, it's impossible, I'm pessimistic crowd.

[539] But then again, you know, if you look at human life today versus 200 years ago, that's a story of innovation.

[540] If you look at the work I was lucky enough to be part of it, Microsoft.

[541] You know, we exceeded any expectation.

[542] Likewise at the Gates Foundation, you know, we knew we wanted to reduce child to deaths with our partners, but the fact we were able to get it from $10 million to $5 million, I wouldn't have expected that.

[543] You know, we got new vaccines done, we got them out.

[544] So when things go well, they don't somehow get as much attention.

[545] You know, like once we get rid of polio, people are not going to go around saying, hey, where are the people who got polio?

[546] They just won't even think about it, which, okay, that's fine.

[547] But, you know, things, the absolute progress, we've made and that with the right focus we will make on climate always is wondrous to me. We've all been there.

[548] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[549] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[550] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[551] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Balin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[552] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[553] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[554] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[555] Prime members can listen early and add free on Amazon music.

[556] Well, I think your way of looking at things must include how a holistic situation is.

[557] So yes, if your kid does not have clean diapers, guess what you don't care about, the temperature in 2050.

[558] So as you, it all is working together, right?

[559] Like if you're solving these really pressing and immediate problems for people, that thing clears the path to worry about some more long -term issues.

[560] Yeah, and governments and people who are lucky enough to have, well, like I do, you know, it's up to us.

[561] We have kind of a responsibility to think about those long -term scenarios and, you know, invest in them and really, you know, figure out the science why that's happening and how to avoid it.

[562] And, you know, I see the early stages of that coming together with both governments and individuals.

[563] I have a quick last personal question.

[564] I just moved about a house and some, and I want to make it eco -friendly as eco -friendly as possible.

[565] So what's like the one thing that if someone's moving into a house or building a house that they should prioritize?

[566] Yeah, I'll mention too.

[567] You're heating and cooling.

[568] You should use what's called an electric heat pump.

[569] It connects to the electricity, which will be green.

[570] And then in some jurisdictions, the incentives and the weather such that putting solar panels on your roof is a very good investment.

[571] In California, it tends to be a very good investment in a few other states.

[572] But this electric heat pump thing, unless you're in the very coldest parts of the U .S., it works phenomenal.

[573] well.

[574] Okay, great.

[575] So first I knew that we both love Diet Coke, and now I know that we both say Roof.

[576] This could be the foundation of the best friendship.

[577] I want you to be my Warren Buffett.

[578] The invitation has been put on your table, accept it or not, but I think just those two things, if we're pounding some Diet Coke and saying Roof.

[579] That's all you need.

[580] That's a lot.

[581] No, I mispronounce other words, too.

[582] But, yeah, I look forward to having the Diet Coke together when the pandemic's over.

[583] Us too.

[584] Such a pleasure to get to talk to you about this book.

[585] I genuinely loved it.

[586] And it genuinely converted me. It felt overwhelming.

[587] It felt not realistic that no one was really evaluating.

[588] What's going to take, but the realities of all this are.

[589] And it's all there and how to avoid climate disaster.

[590] I hope so many people read it and get motivated.

[591] And it's digestible.

[592] Yeah.

[593] It's very digestible.

[594] It is not a dent.

[595] Yes, no one did one like, Bill Gates wrote it.

[596] I want to see a damn thing.

[597] But it's kind of like how to avoid for dummies.

[598] You know, you get a good job at making it for the lame.

[599] No, the four dummies books are actually very good.

[600] I hope I rose to that standard.

[601] Yeah, we try to keep it short, but it's fun.

[602] And cow farts and burps are in it excessively, more than even needed.

[603] And you just do a great job at breaking down some, you know, really basic understanding of how all these things are created and consumed.

[604] And it's just perfect.

[605] And I hope everyone gets it and reads it and gives it to a family member of another political persuasion at Thanksgiving and all hell breaks loose, but it'll be worth it.

[606] Yeah.

[607] Thank you, Bill.

[608] Yeah.

[609] And thank you to the Chicago Humanities Festival.

[610] Yeah, great to see you guys.

[611] Good job.

[612] I don't know.

[613] You can maybe bring us to your next one.

[614] I think we did a pretty good job.

[615] Okay.

[616] We did.

[617] He only set emissions like six times.

[618] Yeah, that's true.

[619] I need to get a dozen more.

[620] Well, I hope everyone enjoyed it.

[621] And Bill, thanks again for all your time and your dedication.

[622] And Monica's going to give you some of her money as well to help solve this.

[623] Yeah, she told me beforehand.

[624] She would like to.

[625] Yeah.

[626] I will.

[627] I will.

[628] All right.

[629] See you guys.

[630] Thank you so much.

[631] Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[632] You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[633] Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry .com slash survey.

[634] What's up, guys?

[635] It's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is best.

[636] with a new season and let me tell you it's too good and I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest okay every episode I bring on a friend and have a real conversation and I don't mean just friends I mean the likes of Amy polar Kell Mitchell Vivica Fox the list goes on so follow watch and listen to baby this is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast