Bill Gates: Some problems require doing far more than just letting market incentives take their course.The first critical area is climate change. Without a large global carbon tax (which is, unfortunately, politically unachievable), market forces do not properly incentivize the creation of technologies to reduce climate-related emissions.
Yet only by replacing all emitting activities with cheaper alternatives will we stop the temperature increase. This is why I started Breakthrough Energy 10 years ago and why I will continue to put billions into innovation.
The world has made meaningful progress in the last decade, cutting projected emissions by more than 40 percent. But we still have a lot of innovation and scaling up to do in tough areas like industrial emissions and aviation. Government policies in rich countries are still critical because unless innovations reach scale, the costs won’t come down and we won’t achieve the impact we need.
If we don’t limit climate change, it will join poverty and infectious disease in causing enormous suffering, especially for the world’s poorest people. Since even in the best case the temperature will continue to go up, we also need to innovate to minimize the negative impacts.
This is called climate adaptation, and a critical example is helping farmers in poor countries with better seeds and better advice so they can grow more even in the face of climate change. Using AI, we will soon be able to provide poor farmers with better advice about weather, prices, crop diseases, and soil than even the richest farmers get today. The foundation has committed $1.4 billion to supporting farmers on the frontlines of extreme weather.
I will be investing and giving more than ever to climate work in the years ahead while also continuing to give more to children’s health, the foundation’s top priority. The need to ensure money is spent on the most important priorities was the topic of a memo I wrote in the fall.
