[✔️] December 21, 2022 - Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*December 21, 2022*/

/[ Bill Gates finally says ] /
*Bill Gates: ‘Our grandchildren will grow up in a world that is 
dramatically worse off’ if we don’t fix climate change*
TUE, DEC 20 2022
Catherine Clifford
*KEY POINTS*

    -- Bill Gates funds climate adaptation through his namesake
    philanthropic venture, the Gates Foundation, and he invests in
    climate tech companies through his investment firm, Breakthrough
    Energy Ventures.
    -- “Getting to zero will be the hardest thing humans have ever
    done,” Gates writes in his year-end letter published Tuesday. “We
    need to revolutionize the entire physical economy—how we make
    things, move around, produce electricity, grow food, and stay warm
    and cool—in less than three decades.”
    -- The bad news is that greenhouse gas emissions are still
    increasing. The good news, writes Gates, is that investment in
    climate tech solutions is exceeding his expectations.

The idea of becoming a grandparent is emotional for Bill Gates to even 
write about.

“I started looking at the world through a new lens recently — when my 
older daughter gave me the incredible news that I’ll become a 
grandfather next year,” Gates wrote in a letter published overnight on 
his personal blog, Gates Notes.

Gates’ 26-year-old daughter, Jennifer, and her husband, Nayel Nassar, 
are expecting their first baby in 2023...
- -
“I can sum up the solution to climate change in two sentences: We need 
to eliminate global emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050,” Gates 
writes. “Extreme weather is already causing more suffering, and if we 
don’t get to net-zero emissions, our grandchildren will grow up in a 
world that is dramatically worse off.”
The implications are enormous — and so is the challenge.

“Getting to zero will be the hardest thing humans have ever done,” Gates 
writes. “We need to revolutionize the entire physical economy — how we 
make things, move around, produce electricity, grow food, and stay warm 
and cool — in less than three decades.”

Gates got started in working on climate change when he learned about the 
struggles of small farmers in countries where his namesake philanthropic 
organization was doing work. The Gates Foundation funds climate 
adaptation work, helping people adjust to the implications of a warming 
world, where there is no profit to be made by a commercial enterprise.

“It starts from the idea that the poorest are suffering the most from 
climate change, but businesses don’t have a natural incentive to make 
tools that help them,” Gates writes...
- -
But Gates says decarbonizing global industry is too large a problem even 
for his deep pockets.

“Philanthropy alone can’t eliminate greenhouse gases. Only markets and 
governments can achieve that kind of pace and scale,” Gates said. Any 
profits Gates makes on investments he makes in Breakthrough Energy 
companies will go back into climate work or into the philanthropic 
foundation, he said.

Plus, if companies working to address climate change can be 
self-sustaining, that will encourage other investors to put money into them.

“Companies need to be profitable so they can grow, keep running, and 
prove that there’s a market for their products,” Gates writes. “The 
profit incentive will attract other innovators, creating competition 
that will drive down the prices of zero-emissions inventions and have a 
meaningful impact on emissions from buildings.”

Greenhouse gas emissions still increasing
The bad news is that greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing.

“Unfortunately, on near-term goals, we’re falling short. Between 2021 
and 2022, global emissions actually rose from 51 billion tons of carbon 
equivalents to 52 billion tons,” Gates writes.

On Monday, the secretary-general of the United Nations also underscored 
the grim reality of the current moment in climate change.

“We are still moving in the wrong direction,” António Guterres said 
Monday. “The global emissions gap is growing. The 1.5-degree goal is 
gasping for breath. National climate plans are falling woefully short.”

Despite the bleakness of the current climate moment, Gates is optimistic 
about the rising investment in decarbonization technologies.

“We’re much further along than I would have predicted a few years ago on 
getting companies to invest in zero-carbon breakthroughs,” Gates writes.

Public money for climate research and development has gone up by 
one-third since the 2015 Paris climate accord, and in the United States, 
laws passed this year will put $500 billion toward moving the U.S. 
energy infrastructure away from fossil fuel-based sources, according to 
Gates.

Private money is also going into climate technologies at a good clip. 
Venture capital firms have put $70 billion in clean energy startups in 
the past two years, Gates writes.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/20/bill-gates-our-grandchildren-will-pay-if-we-dont-fix-climate-change.html 


- -

/[  Published in Seattle PI newspaper in 2009 -  Bill is just starting 
to accept this still valid advice ]/
*First Person: Prodding the sacred cow*
By RICHARD PAULI,
GUEST COLUMNIST
Mar 1, 2009|Updated Mar 25, 2011
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest philanthropy, 
has overlooked the biggest threat to human health and human future -- 
the increasing rate of climate destabilization from global warming.

Last year the foundation co-chairman said about global warming: "The 
fact of the matter is we don't think about it." I urge that immediately 
be changed to: "Every individual, organization and state should be 
thinking about climate change now."
For too long the Gates Foundation ignored extensive research that 
concludes global warming and climate destabilization has extended and 
amplified disease and other human health problems. Foundation science 
advisers can report that global warming is caused, enhanced and 
accelerated by carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by industrial 
civilization. The biggest danger to our future is that we may fail to 
regulate CO{-2} output. Continued global warming causes sea levels to 
rise, which will increase disease vector populations.

If eradicating malaria is the foundation's goal, it must regard the 
compelling data and devastating forces of a changing climate. All of the 
awesomely great works by the Gates Foundation can be undone by the 
horrible realities of global warming to come. If the foundation truly 
wants to support human health and nurture prosperity, it needs to 
refocus and modify priorities in a way that respects climate change.

Investment policy for the foundation trust forbids trading in tobacco 
stock since that industry so obviously harms health. Similarly, I ask 
the foundation to halt investments in carbon fuel companies and other 
polluting industries.
It may derive revenue from more than $1 billion invested in oil company 
stocks, but the resulting greenhouse gas emissions will further increase 
the rate of warming. Until the foundation decides how best to be part of 
the solution, it shouldn't be part of the problem. The foundation should 
completely divest from any hydrocarbon energy company stock holdings.

We all praise the Gates Foundation for generosity and laudatory good 
works saving lives and giving hope for the future. But gradually, 
inexorably, everyone is beginning to feel the aggravation, pain and real 
suffering from our destabilizing climate. To further ignore the problem 
is misguided, shortsighted and squanders the opportunity for change.

At the very least, the foundation should accept climate change as a real 
cause of suffering and include it when evaluating the global health 
metrics that underlie its good works. With such an honest view, others 
can share in its objective: for all people to have healthy and 
productive lives.
Failure to act is the biggest sin. Knowledgeable people of wealth and 
power should take a stand -- because it is right, because it is needed 
and because inaction brings harm to us all.
By RICHARD PAULI
https://www.seattlepi.com/local/opinion/article/First-Person-Prodding-the-sacred-cow-1301367.php

/
/

/[ wishes are fishes for this nifty idea,  11 min video ]/
*The entire internet on a single chip! MASSIVE energy savings.*
Just Have a Think
83,554 views  Dec 18, 2022
Internet usage is projected to account for 20% for all global 
electricity consumption by 2025. So anything that can help to reduce 
that catastrophically large number must surely be  good thing. Now 
scientists in Copenhagen have successfully demonstrated a chip that can 
send enough data every second to cope with the entire internet's 
traffic, all at a fraction of the energy demand. So, how did they do that?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHahy_NtMDI



/[  video interview with cultural scholar  ]/
*Douglas Rushkoff (Dec 2022) | What Could Possibly Go Right?*
Post Carbon Institute
Dec 19, 2022
#97 Interview with Douglas Rushkoff
Douglas Rushkoff makes another appearance on our podcast, sharing his 
latest thoughts on What Could Possibly Go Right? Listen to his previous 
interviews in episodes 28, 52 and 83.

Douglas Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human 
autonomy in a digital age. Rushkoff’s work explores how different 
technological environments change our relationship to narrative, money, 
power, and one another. Named one of the “world’s ten most influential 
intellectuals” by MIT, his twenty books include Team Human, based on his 
podcast. Others include bestsellers Present Shock, Throwing Rocks and 
the Google Bus, Program or Be Programmed, Life Inc, and Media Virus. He 
also made the PBS Frontline documentaries Generation Like, The 
Persuaders, and Merchants of Cool.

As 2022 comes to a close, enjoy this casual chat between Douglas and Vicki.

    - The need to “adopt and invent alternative narratives of success
    that involve mutuality, rather than singularity; that are collective
    and communal, rather than alienated and isolated”

    - The importance of tolerating ambiguity, having a tender heart and
    embracing difference

    - The “idea of asking the right questions at the right times… to
    reduce the cognitive harm imposed by propagandists and media people
    who don't have our best interests at heart.”

Complete show notes and transcript here: 
https://www.resilience.org/what-could...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fRs8vYKySc



/[The news archive - looking back at the beginnings of ethical 
statements on global warming ]/
/*December 21, 2015*/
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman discusses the political and 
cultural dynamics that fueled the rise of climate-change denier and 
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump:

"Why don’t Republican voters seem to care?

"Well, part of the answer has to be that the party taught them not to 
care. Bluster and belligerence as substitutes for analysis, disdain for 
any kind of measured response, dismissal of inconvenient facts reported 
by the 'liberal media' didn’t suddenly arrive on the Republican scene 
last summer. On the contrary, they have long been key elements of the 
party brand. So how are voters supposed to know where to draw the line?

"Let’s talk first about the legacy of He Who Must Not Be Named.

"I don’t know how many readers remember the 2000 election, but during 
the campaign Republicans tried — largely successfully — to make the 
election about likability, not policy. George W. Bush was supposed to 
get your vote because he was someone you’d enjoy having a beer with, 
unlike that stiff, boring guy Al Gore with all his facts and figures.

"And when Mr. Gore tried to talk about policy differences, Mr. Bush 
responded not on the substance but by mocking his opponent’s 'fuzzy 
math' — a phrase gleefully picked up by his supporters. The press corps 
played right along with this deliberate dumbing-down: Mr. Gore was 
deemed to have lost debates, not because he was wrong, but because he 
was, reporters declared, snooty and superior, unlike the affably 
dishonest W."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/21/opinion/the-donald-and-the-decider.html?ref=opinion

/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/ 

/Archive of Daily Global Warming News 
https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/


/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe 
<mailto:subscribe at theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request> 
to news digest./

Privacy and Security:*This mailing is text-only.  It does not carry 
images or attachments which may originate from remote servers.  A 
text-only message can provide greater privacy to the receiver and 
sender. This is a personal hobby production curated by Richard Pauli
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain cannot be used for commercial 
purposes. Messages have no tracking software.
To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote 
<mailto:contact at theclimate.vote> with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe, 
subject: unsubscribe
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at 
https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for 
http://TheClimate.Vote <http://TheClimate.Vote/> delivering succinct 
information for citizens and responsible governments of all levels. List 
membership is confidential and records are scrupulously restricted to 
this mailing list.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/attachments/20221221/de343d7f/attachment.htm>