Bill Gates, the world richest man, in an interview with Atlantic said that the “private sector is inept” and only socialism can save the planet.
He said that government research and development is far more effective and efficient than anything the private sector could do.
“Since World War II, U.S.-government R&D has defined the state of the art in almost every area,” Gates said. “The private sector is in general inept.”
The philanthropist and billionaire tech magnate announced his plan to spend 2 billion dollars of his own wealth on green energy investment and called the other private sector billionaires to make the US fossil-free by 2050.
He said that free market will not develop new forms for energy fast enough because the private sector is too selfish and inefficient.
“Well, there’s no fortune to be made. Even if you have a new energy source that costs the same as today’s and emits no CO2, it will be uncertain compared with what’s tried-and-true and already operating at unbelievable scale and has gotten through all the regulatory problems, like “Okay, what do you do with coal ash?” and “How do you guarantee something is safe?” Without a substantial carbon tax, there’s no incentive for innovators or plant buyers to switch”, Gates said.
Gates argued that the factors that prompt a profit-driven corporation to invest are different than those of the state. Climate change is an area where it would be an illogical investment from the corporate view, but where the state has a clear and logical role.
To the argument that that the major stumbling block in developing a state-driven resolution was the nature of US politics and the fact that there is no consensus that climate change even exists, Gates replied that ““If you’re not bringing math skills to the problem,then representative democracy is a problem.”
Gates said that even if he is a “big believer in foreign aid” the climate problem has to be solved in the rich countries.
“China and the U.S. and Europe have to solve CO2 emissions, and when they do, hopefully they’ll make it cheap enough for everyone else. But the big numbers are all in the developed economies, where China’s defined into that term”.
In July, Germany set a new record by generating 78 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources, beating its previous record of 74 percent in May of 2014. Over the past year Germany decreased its CO2 output by 4.3 percent turning its gas emissions to their lowest point since 1990.
While China is the world's biggest polluter and coal remains its biggest source of electricity, the country aims to have its use of fossil fuels peak in 2030, and trend downward after that.
China increased its solar output by 67 percent between 2013 and 2014 alone and it actually powers more homes with wind energy than every nuclear power plant in the US put together.
In 2014, China actually managed to decrease its CO2 emissions by 1 percent, with further reductions expected in the coming years.
Bill Gates remain confident about the future.
“If you told me that innovation had been frozen and we just have today’s technologies, will the world run the climate-change experiment? You bet we will. We will not deny India coal plants; we will run the scary experiment of heating up the atmosphere and see what happens.
The only reason I’m optimistic about this problem is because of innovation. And innovation is a very uncertain process”.