The Role of Business and Government in Addressing Climate Change
Book Outlines Why the Cost of Inaction Outweighs the Price of Creating Solutions
Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan often remarked that government is not the solution to our problems, but that government is the problem. Accordingly, Reagan reduced the scope of government to pave the way, instead, for what he saw as the development of free enterprise. And with Washington laying down that rule a few decades ago, a great part of the world has followed suit ever since.
A read through Bill Gates’ most recent book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and The Breakthroughs We Need, leads one to conclude that Reagan’s maxim was 100% right … and 100% wrong. Microsoft’s business leader-turned-philanthropist makes his case by blending insights from the physical sciences with the potential promises of emerging technologies. But for Gates, both business and government have crucial roles to play in addressing the climate crisis, together.
A Time for Action
Gates’ book makes the essentials of climate science familiar to the general reader and translates every solution into tangible numbers that are easy to visualize and compare. The first three chapters provide an overview of the need and challenges around cutting yearly greenhouse gas emissions from 51,000 million tons to zero. To get from here to there, chapters four through eight then compare the way those of us in fossil-fueled societies move, build, eat, and heat ourselves today with the alternative, carbon-neutral breakthroughs we’ll need tomorrow.
The size of such leaps is determined to a large extent by the “green premiums” (the additional costs) of producing various kinds of supplies without the resource of fossil fuels, chief among them green premiums for alternative energy sources.
Through figures like those above, the book makes evident that a world of net zero greenhouse gas emissions will be more expensive — one reason why Gates is adamant about forging a path forward to lower these premiums through “breakthroughs” and by placing a call for an increase in government-funded research and development.
But even more expensive will be the cost of inaction. For one, Gates outlines that a $1.8 billion investment in climate-resilient infrastructure between 2020 and 2030 will have returns exceeding 380% while costing only 0.2% of global GDP. Conversely, not acting boldly will ruin entire ecosystems and coastal cities, to name just two well-known adverse effects.
In response, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster suggests solutions through a blend of prose and pragmatism. Here are a few of the most critical ones.
Breakthrough Climate Solutions, Come Forward
1) Electricity as Master Resource
Gates begins his program with what should become the underlying resource required to decarbonize all national economies. Electric power generation currently represents 27% of global emissions, with coal and natural gas accounting for 59% of that slice. However, should activities such as transportation, steel production, and heating go electric, the total demand for electricity would double or triple come 2050. The task will not only require all grids to go zero emissions but the ongoing construction of more grids, period. Hence for Microsoft’s former executive, (some kinds) of electricity will be the new kings and queens.
2) Drop-in, Liquid Fuels on Demand
But electricity won’t work for all needs. Should an 18-wheeler go electric, it would leave only one-fourth of its current freight space … for freight. The other three-fourths would be taken up by ion-lithium batteries, whose density makes them around 25 times heavier than a liter of diesel while supplying 35 times less energy.
Hence the book brings second-generation biofuels to the forefront made from organic byproducts such as grass, corn stems, and even food leftovers. Likewise, Gates calls for greater R&D on electrofuels to lower their green premiums.
3) New Tech for New Burgers
Given the methane in their petulance and burps, the nitrous oxide in their poop, and the cutting down of trees to create new crop and pasturelands to feed their bellies, pigs and cows are not great allies for the climate, according to Gates. He welcomes scientific developments in the feeding and breeding of livestock to reduce their GHGs, even if alternatives are to be found as well in vegan and lab-grown meats. Likewise, faced with the 40% of food that is wasted in the United States, he cheers for edible, 100% biobased wrappings to extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables.
While changing habits is a minor piece of his puzzle, Gates regularly evidences a preference for technological solutions instead of deeper cultural and lifestyle challenges. And here is where governments are called up the stage.
3 Suggested Policy Strategies
In his 10th chapter, Gates makes the case for the vital role of robust public policy. Notably, governments can be the main investors in scientific research. They also can create rules and incentives to ease the speed of adoption of less-polluting alternatives. And, in Gates’ words, “governments can help fix some of the problems that markets are not ready to solve.”
To address the climate crisis, he calls for three political strategies:
- Adopting a just transition through carbon taxes.
- Funneling a greater portion of national GDPs toward R&D in advanced biofuels/electrofuels and renewable sources of electricity.
- Creating much more resilient climate-smart building codes (steel, concrete, and plastic amounting to 31% of current global GHGs).
Lovers, Foes, or Friends at a Distance?
Drawing on Gates’ philanthropic work to address global issues like malaria and world hunger, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster proposes ways to make the best of the business world and of governments to address the climate crises.
The book could be amiss not so much in what it says but in what it leaves unsaid, and in what it takes for granted. Here are four observations:
- The book remains silent about financial markets and their unending pressure to grow. This alone is troublesome in the eyes of any sustainability specialist. A word on “servicing,” industrial systems of neutral material throughput, or even alternative ownership and governance structures would have been welcomed. Basic terms such as steady-state economy, B Corps, or social business don’t appear in the book — let alone gratitude or enough. Instead, Gates seems to be at peace with the we-can-do-it-all ethos of modern societies.
- Repeatedly, climate solutions are presented primarily as an economic opportunity for high-income nations to continue to take the lead. But there is no mention of the UN’s Green Climate Fund, let alone of the concept of climate justice, which reminds us that highly industrialized nations host 20% of today’s global population but have been responsible for over 70% of global GHGs since the Industrial Revolution. Climate solutions should be collectivized and made accessible to all nations as a matter of human solidarity, not of greater profit.
- Written by a specialist in technology, it is no surprise that the book risks being techno-centric. In fact, reading between its lines reveals Gates’ preference for gadgets and solutions rather than deeper cultural (and cosmological) changes such as food sovereignty, agroecology, and permaculture movements.
- Last, but not least: upholding alternative movements for climate democracy. While Gates places a slim call in chapter 12 for us all to contribute as citizens and employees in rather individualistic ways, effective government policies that actually work require sustained pressure from collective, people-powered movements and enlightened business coalitions. These are much likely to endure and overcome the often-flickering agendas of elected officials that come and go every four years.
Gates ends with a much-needed warning, summoning all of us across the political and economic spectrums to work together despite our differences and limitations. Avoiding a climate disaster is no small challenge. And arriving at a world of zero greenhouse gas emissions before 2050 is, likely, the greatest task faced during our 5,000-year experiment in urbanized human existence. We have built a civilization on the quicksands of fossil fuels; ironically — and, at times, tragically — a project in which free markets have sometimes served us well.
But there can be no good business on a dead planet. In joining such an undertaking with determination and boldness lies an even greater breakthrough.
A longer version of this article can be found here.
B The Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.
