I don't usually have too many positive things to say about Bill Gates – he did after all give us the Microsoft operating system – but in an interview with Our World in Data he makes an important point about the responsibilities of rich countries like ours in relation to climate change.
Rich countries, he said, should get their own carbon emissions down to zero, and push what he terms ‘green premiums to zero’ as well so as to help poorer countries to decarbonise. By this he means we should develop zero carbon technology such that it becomes the same price or cheaper than carbon-intensive technologies.
If that were to happen, he says, the whole world could decarbonise without excessive economic pain. This is similar to what Bjorn Lomborg argues, but it's not what we are doing here.
Our net zero target is local as it involves only emissions produced in Britain. It doesn’t include those created elsewhere and then imported here. So, in 2050 (or somewhen), we might try to say that we've reached the net zero goal but we'll be ignoring all our reliance on imported food and other manufactures whose carbon cost we do not pay.
Gates says that we should be less obsessed with getting our own emissions down to net zero – and become rather more active in developing, and reducing the cost of, green technologies which would help the whole world decarbonise.
Something to bear in mind when next a minister crows about how well we're doing, or about how we cannot afford the costs of research.
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