‍Rethinking the approach to climate change: from temperature targets to welfare and innovation

Gates Notes outlines three `hard truths´: climate change is a serious problem, but it will not be the end of civilization; temperature is not the best way to measure our progress on climate; and health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change.

Far from downplaying climate action, he believes change must happen through advancing technology, and in parallel with human welfare. As he states “To be clear: Climate change is a very important problem. It needs to be solved, along with other problems like malaria and malnutrition. Every tenth of a degree of heating that we prevent is hugely beneficial because a stable climate makes it easier to improve people’s lives.”

Over the past decade, clean energy innovations have already had a measurable impact as in just ten years projected future emissions have been cut by more than 40%. Yet, as global energy demand continues to rise, the path forward depends on making clean power cheaper and easier to rapidly scale.

Therefore, he calls for faster innovation across five key sectors: energy, agriculture, transportation, buildings, and manufacturing. In doing so, he highlights the work of his co-founded Breakthrough Energy investment platform – which invests in companies that accelerate clean energy and deployment. Among these is Baseload Capital, which is recognized in the blog for advancing geothermal energy, a scalable source of constant, clean power.

At Baseload we are proud to be part of this, because progress isn’t just about lowering temperatures it’s about improving human welfare and driving innovation, things that are close to our hearts.

Read the Gates Notes blog