How Bill Gates Is Funding the Fight Against Climate Change

Bill Gates was interviewed tonight on the CBS News show 60 Minutes about his efforts to combat climate change:The good news is Gates believes it's possible to prevent a catastrophic rise in temperatures. The bad news' He says in the next 30 years we need scientific breakthroughs, technological innovations and global cooperation on a scale the world has never seen. "I got to participate in the miracle of the personal computer and the internet," Gates tells them at one point. "And so, yes, I have a bias to believe innovation can do these things." CBS points out that Gates has already invested $2 billion of his own money into green technologies, plans to spend several billion more, and in 2016 recruited Jeff Bezos, Mike Bloomberg and nearly two dozen other rich investors for the billion-dollar "breakthrough energy ventures" investment fund. But the newscast clarifies the scope of the task. "He is talking about innovations in every aspect of modern lifemanufacturing, agriculture, transportation, because nearly everything we now do releases earth warming greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere..." Quoting some of the highlights from CBS's report:No one thinks much about cement and steel, but making it accounts for 16% of all carbon dioxide emissions... So one innovative company Gates has been pouring money into is CarbonCure. They inject captured carbon dioxide into concrete...Because cows account for around 4% of all greenhouse gases, Gates has invested in two companies making plant based meat substitutes, impossible foods and beyond meat. But farming the vegetables used to make many meat alternatives emits gases as well, so Gates is also backing a company that's created an entirely new food source. "This company, Nature's Fynd, is using fungis. And then they turn them into sausage and yogurt. Pretty amazing..."Gates isn't just looking to cut future carbon emissions, he is also investing in direct air capture, an experimental process to remove existing CO2 from the atmosphere. Some companies are now using these giant fans to capture CO2 directly out of the air. Gates has become one of the world's largest funders of this kind of technology. But of all his green investments, Gates has spent the most time and money pursuing a breakthrough in nuclear energyarguing it's key to a zero carbon future.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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