The Daily Show: Ears Edition - Bill Gates - COVID-19 & "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster"

Episode Date: April 1, 2021

Bill Gates talks about the current state of the coronavirus crisis, ways to address the myriad challenges posed by climate change and his book "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster." Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to Comedy Central. Bill Gates, welcome back to the Daily Social Distancing Show. Good to see you. This is the third time that you have appeared on the social distancing version of the show, and we've had varied conversations. One, right at the beginning of the pandemic, where you told people that we should be prepared for a really horrible time that was going to like, you know, roll out. People didn't believe it, and then it happened. You came back the second time and said,

okay, vaccines are gonna be a challenge and this is what we need to get ready for, and that is what we're living in now. It is now your third time on the show. Are you here to deliver doom and gloom or you're telling us telling us telling us to to to to to to tel to to tel, Well, for the pandemic, the vaccines are going to bring this to an end. It's been complicated to get them out, but that's really a miracle of innovation. Now I'm warning about climate change. I've got a new book that focuses on how we avoid a disaster.

Before we get into the book, I wanted to talk to you about the vaccines. You posted a picture of yourself receiving your vaccine as somebody who's 65 and older. And as you know from the internet, you made the vaccines to put microchips in them to control everybody's minds. So my question to you is, what are you trying to control your own mind to do? Are you try to like scoop yourself from eating ice cream or like what are you trying to do? Whenever I get lost, the microchip can help me figure out where I am, I guess. The idea I want to figure out where everyone is, that's a strange one for me. Yeah, no, I'm lucky, lucky to have gotten the vaccine. It's the first time I've been happy to be 65. Let's move on and talk about another looming crisis facing the world. You've talked a lot about the pandemic.

Now you are talking about climate change. And in your new book, you talk about how to avoid a climate disaster. The question is, is it avoidable? Well, this will be the hardest thing we've ever done because the sources of emissions are very broad. You know, it's not just electricity or cars, it's also cows, it's cement, it's steel, it's planes. And so we have to change all those things to be green, and we only have 30 years. So only if the younger generation worldwide is kind of bothering the politicians and speaking out loudly

that morally this is a cause that they believe in. Only with that a lot of innovation, some brilliant policies, that's what it'll take to make this grand transformation. It feels like a theoretical conversation though, you know, what I did enjoy in the book is you've laid out steps that you think people can actually take and governments can actually move forward too. What do you think some of the most concrete steps are that we can achieve today that can help us tomorrow? Well we need to increase R&D funding on these key topics. We need to have more high-risk companies get started who care about these things and we need the green the their their their their their their their their their their their th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. that that, that, thate thate thi thi ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta takes takes takes takes takes takes takes takes takes takes takes takes takes takes ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta. ta. ta. ta. tauu. tau. tauau. tauauauauauau. tau. ta. ta. ta. ta. tics. We need to have more high-risk companies get started who care about these things and we need the green products like the green steel. We need

demand out there so as people are bringing those prices down they get volume. We've seen with electric cars the right things are happening. The prices are starting to come down. You know General Motors said by 2035 they don't think they'll need to make gasoline cars. So it says that extra cost, where you pay a bit more, you give up range, over the next 15 years, that green premium, I call it, will actually go all the way down to zero in that category.

And that's amazing. We just need to do that across the dozen or so categories by driving innovation faster than it would normally take place. You know, one of the things that I've always been struck by is how sometimes the conversations are about what needs to be done, but then oftentimes there is no buy-in because nobody like sort of wants to do it. And that's why I think like Elon Musk has done a great job with Tesla. Yeah, it's an electric car, but most people don't buy it for that.

They buy it because it's super cool. It goes really fast and it's technologically advanced. Are there ways that we can get green energy to grow exponentially by making cool solutions as opposed to telling everyone you need to switch out your electricity with a windmill. Well, as you move away from coal, there's a lot of local pollution that affects health very negatively. So there's big benefits there. As you move to artificial meat,

the kind of cruelty to animals that's involved there, and perhaps less cholesterol, there are a lot of benefits that come with green products. Sadly, some green products like green cement, it's still just cement. And so the fact that it costs more, you know, the government's got to help create some demand there. And so we can bring that price down.

So yes, some categories can be better products, but steel and cement are kind of this boring thing that we just take for granted. And so we've been working too much on the easy stuff, not enough on the hard stuff here. Let's talk a little bit about the hard stuff, not just in terms of the products, but about the people who are affected by the products. How do we implement these ideas without discarding the lives that are attached to the old forms

of creating energy or food? Well a key is going to be having lots of new jobs. You know, for example, the electric network will have to get a lot bigger because it's now powering the cars or heating and cooling your house. So that's, you know, it's going to be th the the the thi thi the thi thi thi the thi the thi thi thi their their thi their thi thi thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, the, the, the, without thi, without the, without thi, without thi, without thi, without thi, without thi, without thi, without thi, without thi, without thi, without thi, without thi, without thi, without thi, without thi, without thi, without thi, without thi, without thi, without thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, the, the, the, the is the is the is theeeeeeean.. We's thean. Weau. Weaugn. So, theean, thean. Wea. Wea. Wea. Wea. Wea. Wea, the powering the cars or heating and cooling your house. So that's, you know, it's going to be three times bigger and building all those transmission lines and power plants will be a big deal. Now that's not to say that some communities that have been really focused on things like oil, they will have a transition.

It's a 30-year transition. We still will be using some oil in the decades ahead. And so we have to put into the cost of this transition how we manage those communities that are affected. Because right now there's almost a temptation to deny the problem altogether, because if you feel like you're going to be left out of the solution, you just want denial. There's also no denying that developing nations are most affected by climate change. So you have farmers in India, farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, where their climates have changed to the point where they can't even grow the food. Is there ever an idea for like a penalty then on the countries that do emit? Because if you're doing a thing like, let's say, just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just a the the the their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their to their their, their, to to to to to toe. toe. their, you. their, you. their, you. their, you. their, their, their, their, their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their, their, their, their, thiiii. thi. thi. thiii. theuuii. thiiii. thii. thii. thii. thi. thii. their their their the on the countries that do emit? Because if you're doing a thing, like, let's say just on a local level, if I started a

fire in my house and the smoke blacked up all of your windows next door, someone would say like, oh, I have to somehow make up for that. Will there ever be a system like that where the biggest polluters enter into a deal and say we will sort of pay or amend what we're doing to poorer countries? Yes, we owe it to these countries to not only mitigate that, that is get the emissions down to zero, and that's that huge innovation, but also we need to help them because it will warm up two degrees centigrade, and that really will hurt all their crops, it'll raise the sea level. We owe it to them to help with the adaptation.

That includes a generation of seeds that actually can grow in the hotter temperatures and that are more productive, so they don't end up with malnutrition and we'll face mass migration from those equatorial areas, you know, where the poorest, they are farmers. And so the weather hurts them way more than it does us, although wildfires, sea level rise, you know, even we're gonna find it tough to go outdoors a lot of the summer.

When we look at the world of climate change, there's no denying that, you know, it's filled with the world of superstars. You know, you tell you talk to anyone and you say, who's getting involved in climate change and it's some of the biggest names, you know, it's Bill Gates, it's Jeff Bezos, it's Michael Bloomberg, it's Leonardo DiCaprio, etc. The one thing that becomes a, I think, a paradox though, is when people say, these people are telling us about climate change, but all of them also trel a thrii........ th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. thi, thi. thi, thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. to, to, to, to, to, to, toe, the, the, their, to, to, their, to, their, their, their, their, their, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it, it, it, it, it, it, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, toe. their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, How do you deal with that discrepancy and the paradox of existing in that way? Yeah, so I'm kind of a strange messenger because, you know, my primary focus is global health, and that is why, you know, I talked about the risk of a pandemic and what we should do in advance.

You know, climate change I only came to because I was traveling in African seeing how these farmers are already being hurt by it. My personal emissions, I'm now paying over $7 million a year to buy aviation biofuel and to pay for carbon capture and to put electric heat pumps into low-cost housing instead of natural gas. So yes, we all need to not only fund getting rid of our footprint, but also use that to fund these products that will eventually be part of the solution. And so this catalytic investing in green products, you know, the rich have to be the first

to show they're going to do it. Yeah, you've already put in, I think it's over two billion dollars into some of these ideas now to try and capture that carbon. And as we wrap up, I would love for you to explain, and this is something you've talked about and it was nice to read elements of this in the book. You argue that the pandemic that tha tha tha tha tha tha than than than than the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the theateateateateate. the. the. theateate. the. the. the. the the the the the the the thi thi. thi. thi thi. thi. the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the. the. the. the. the the the. the to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to th climate change are not dissimilar. Please explain how. Yeah, so we count on our governments to think ahead about earthquakes so they do building codes or, you know, about wars so they, you know, fund a defense department that does war games. In these two cases, the pandemic and the climate change, our governments aren't bringing in the best experts

and figuring out an efficient way to avoid this disaster. Because it didn't seem like a pandemic would come overnight, no politician felt like they'd get in trouble. And, you know, so the US looked bad. Some countries that were more ready, like Australia, avoided most of those deaths. So because climate change is far worse, and once you get into it, and the natural ecosystems are dying, you can't just invent one thing like a vaccine and get out of it, this should tell us, wow, let's start now to get ready and government is

going to have to lead the way. Well it's a really ominous warning, but one that I guess if you're an optimist you go like at least there is a game plan because we're not dealing with all of it right now. Bill Gates, thank you so much for joining us on the show. Good luck with your endeavors, and we hope to see you again. Great to talk to you. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Ears Edition. Watch the Daily Show Weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central and the Comedy Central

Act. Watch full episodes and videos at the Daily Show. to the Daily Show on YouTube for exclusive content and more. When 60 Minutes premiered in September 1968, there was nothing like it. This is 60 Minutes. It's a kind of a magazine for television. Very few have been given access to the treasures in our archives. But that's all about to change. Like none of this stuff gets looked at.

That's what's incredible. I'm Seth Done of CBS News. Listen to 60 Minutes, a second look on Apple podcasts starting September 17.