Bill Gates TED Talk on Innovating to Zero Draws Critics

Bill Gates’ TED talk has hit the internet–it’s almost 30 minutes (Gates speaks for about twenty, and then there’s a Q&A), so the majority of people will likely not make it all the way through it before needing to look busy at work. Luckily, other people have watched the whole thing, and they have responded, so you can sound up-to-speed anyway.

Probably the most important element of the talk for environmental listeners is Gates’ focus on the scope of change that needs to happen. He’s been criticized in the past for limiting his philanthropic focus–which people take as a kind of emphasis on what needs to be done, globally–so that climate change and carbon reduction seems blanketed by an SEP field. That is no longer the case.

World Changing’s Alex Steffen said:

Friday, Gates predicted extraordinary climate action: zero. Not small steps, not incremental progress, not doing less bad: zero. In fact, he stood in front of a slide with nothing but the planet Earth and the number zero. That moment was the most important thing that has happened at TED.

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Steffen goes on to critique the talk in terms of “carbon blindness,” responding correctly to the nutshell version of the speech (“We need energy miracles“), and the notion that every other environmental principle must be thrown overboard if we’re going to get our energy miracle.

Climate Progress‘s Joseph Romm pushes back, too, arguing that deployment of today’s tech today is essential, rather than betting solely on the magic of a fully operational deathstar nuclear infrastructure being wired and ready to go by 2050. When you think about the all the ways the world runs on petroleum and its derivatives, and the process of replacement, it would be amazing if we could press the nuclear button today and still make switchover.

Grist, bluntly, offers a “Why Bill Gates is wrong” rejoinder, and presses hard for energy efficiency. They’re not wrong on the specifics, but their response is wrong-headed. The importance of what Bill Gates says is related to the credibility he has. Take it and use it. It’s not fruitful to square off against someone like Gates at the precise moment he’s lending immense public support to your cause.

In the slightly longer term, he is not wrong. Climate change or not, we desperately need innovation in energy supply. We need to get off petroleum as a primary resource before the needle reads E, and conservation and efficiencies will take us only so far.