Bill Gates is in touch with reality. He refuses to ride the global warming alarmist propaganda bandwagon. Bradford Plumer in The New Republic mentions the recent TED Conference in Long Beach where Gates ‘told the audience that climate change was the world’s most vexing problem, but that it would take “energy miracles” for the world to zero out its carbon emissions by mid-century.’
But Gates, being the renowned visionary that he has always been, wants to see ‘radical new technologies’ that are not even existent at the moment. One such “miracle” is a certain ‘“traveling wave reactor” that would turn spent uranium into electricity.’
The low-carbon technologies, touted as alternative sources of energy, such as solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, hydropower, etc., whose resources may not necessarily be finite are, in the grand scheme of things, just enough to slow down greenhouse gas emissions by being alternatives. They cannot significantly reduce emissions in a way that emissions have to be drastically cut at some scientifically determined future date.
Gates is right in saying that technological breakthroughs are needed if the grand aim of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere, being reduced right now to avert a looming climate crisis, is to be met.
These next-generation technologies seem like miracles at this point in time. But there is nothing that research cannot uncover and discover. Investors just need a gigantic leap of faith in these imagined miracles. ‘Gates suggested that we should focus on spending the next 20 years inventing new tech and then spend the next 20 years implementing it.’
Gates had dared on paths men only feared to tread. His voluntary vision helped shape one of the biggest industries known to man today. If necessity is the mother of invention, there’s nothing Gates cannot achieve once he sets his eyes on something. Better an active imagination than a harried alarmist’s mind.
