{"id":8445,"date":"2023-11-09T08:58:24","date_gmt":"2023-11-09T08:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=8445"},"modified":"2023-11-09T08:58:24","modified_gmt":"2023-11-09T08:58:24","slug":"cheers-for-bill-gates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2023\/11\/09\/cheers-for-bill-gates\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheers for Bill Gates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don't usually have too many positive things to say about Bill Gates \u2013 he did after all give us the Microsoft operating system \u2013 but in an interview with <em>Our World in Data <\/em>he makes an important point about the responsibilities of rich countries like ours in relation to climate change.<\/p>\n<p>Rich countries, he said, should get their own carbon emissions down to zero, <em>and<\/em> push what he terms \u2018green premiums to zero\u2019 as well so as to help poorer countries to decarbonise. \u00a0By this he means we should develop zero carbon technology such that it becomes the same price or cheaper than carbon-intensive technologies.<\/p>\n<p>If that were to happen, he says, the whole world could decarbonise without excessive economic pain. \u00a0This is similar to what Bjorn Lomborg argues, but it's not what we are doing here.<\/p>\n<p>Our net zero target is local as it involves only emissions produced in Britain. It doesn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>Gates says that we should be less obsessed with getting our own emissions down to net zero \u2013 and become rather more active in developing, and reducing the cost of, green technologies which would help the whole world decarbonise.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don't usually have too many positive things to say about Bill Gates \u2013 he did after all give us the Microsoft operating system \u2013 but in an interview with Our World in Data he makes an important point about...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}