Is Bill Gates a sage figure who can help save the world from climate change? Or is he a dreadful old hypocrite who likes to lecture us on climate while flying around the world by private jet, and who pushes certain technologies because he has personally invested in them? There are plenty of people who take the latter view.
Gates was reported to have taken 59 flights in 2017 and admits to have flown to the 2015 Paris climate conference by private jet. Moreover, he claims to have invested $1 billion (£818 million) of his own money in green technologies, so he is not exactly neutral on the subject – he is as much a vested interest as is ExxonMobil.
Britain, with its rigid net zero targets, is very much on the hairshirt track
Nevertheless, he does make a good point in an interview with the website Our World in Data. Rich countries, he said, not only owe it to the world to get their own carbon emissions down to zero, but to drive ‘green premiums to zero’ in order to help poorer countries to decarbonise.
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