This interview has been edited for space and clarity. Gates is an investor either personally or through Breakthrough Energy Ventures in several of the companies he mentions below, including Beyond Meats, Carbon Engineering, Impossible Foods, Memphis Meats, and Pivot Bio. I spoke to Gates in December about his new book, the limits of his optimism, and how his thinking on climate change has evolved. And while he consistently says we can develop the necessary technology and we can avoid a disaster it’s less clear how hopeful he is that we will. He dedicates an entire chapter to describing just how hard a problem climate change is to address. Gates describes himself as an optimist, but it’s a constrained type of optimism. Gates calls for governments to quintuple their annual investments in clean tech, which would add up to $35 billion in the US. The closing chapters of the book lay out long lists of ways that nations could accelerate the shift, including high carbon prices, clean electricity standards, clean fuel standards, and far more funding for research and development. But Gates also answers some of the criticisms that his climate prescriptions have been overly focused on “energy miracles” at the expense of aggressive government policies. He stresses that innovation will make it cheaper and more politically feasible for every nation to cut or prevent emissions.
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