一次关于气候和全球发展的炉边谈话 | 盖茨笔记
Last month, I participated in a thought-provoking fireside chat at Chatham House in London. The moderator was Hannah Ritchie, the lead researcher at Our World in Data, whose thinking on the environment has influenced my own (and whose forthcoming book, Not the End of the World, I’ve read and loved). Over the course of our conversation, we talked about two of the issues I’m most passionate about—climate change and global development—and why they both demand urgent action or “impatient optimism.” After all, it’s not enough to keep the planet livable. We also need to make it a better place to live, a place where everyone has an equal chance to survive and thrive no matter where they’re born. And we’ll only accomplish that if we believe progress is possible and continue to pursue it.
上个月,我在伦敦查塔姆研究所参加了一场发人深省的炉边谈话。主持人是汉娜·里奇,Our World in Data的首席研究员,她对环境的思考发人深省(我读过并很喜欢她即将出版的书《不是世界末日》(中文名暂译)。在谈话过程中,我们谈到了我最感兴趣的两个问题——气候变化和全球发展——以及为什么它们都需要采取紧急行动或“乐天行动”。毕竟,仅仅维持地球适宜居住是不够的。我们还需要使它成为一个更好的生活场所,一个无论出生在哪里,每个人都有平等的机会生存和发展的地方。只有我们相信进步是可能的并继续追求它,我们才能实现这一目标。
You can read the full transcript of our conversation here:
你可以在这里阅读我们对话的完整文本:
HANNAH RITCHIE: Welcome Bill Gates. I’m really excited to have this conversation. We’re going to dig into some of the specifics of climate, but I wanted to start with a little bit of the backstory on how you got into climate. Your foundation works on some of the world’s largest problems, from polio and malaria to childhood mortality and maternal mortality, and agriculture. The world has many problems, and that’s a prioritization exercise. If you’re putting money here, you can’t put as much money there. Why did you then come to the decision that you have to put a significant amount of money into climate change?
汉娜·里奇:欢迎比尔·盖茨。很高兴能与你进行这次对话。我们将深入探讨气候问题的一些具体细节,但我想先介绍一下你是如何进入气候领域的。你的基金会致力于解决世界上一些最严峻的问题,从脊髓灰质炎、疟疾、儿童死亡率、孕产妇死亡率到农业。世界上有很多问题,这需要分清轻重缓急。如果你把钱放在这里,你就不能把同样多的钱放在那里。为什么你会决定在气候变化问题上投入大量资金?
BILL GATES: At the Gates Foundation, about 70% of what we do is global health. That has been a phenomenal journey, and far more successful than we thought when we set out. When we got started in the year 2000, over 10 million children under five were dying every year. Now that has been cut in half. The primary reason for that is that vaccines were invented, which the Foundation played the central role there, and they were financed through Gavi, so they were getting out to all the world’s children. Vaccines for respiratory disease, diarrheal disease, and things like bed nets, through The Global Fund, to cut malaria deaths.
比尔·盖茨:在盖茨基金会,我们所做的工作中约有70%属于全球健康领域。这是一段非凡的旅程,比我们起步时想象的要成功得多。我们在2000年起步时,每年有超过1000万五岁以下的儿童死亡。现在这个数字已经减半。其主要原因是疫苗的发明,基金会在其中发挥了核心作用,这些疫苗是由全球疫苗免疫联盟(Gavi)资助的,它们被送到了世界各地的儿童手中。在全球基金(Global Fund)的助力下,呼吸系统疾病疫苗、腹泻疫苗以及蚊帐等减少了疟疾导致的死亡。
In Africa, most people in sub-Saharan Africa are smallholder farmers. Sadly, their crop productivity is extremely low. They face a lot of population growth, and the headwinds of climate are at their worst in the tropical zones. If you’re near to the equator, that is where the absolute temperatures are going to make it difficult, both for humans and for the food that they grow. With climate change comes more droughts and more floods, more extreme weather, because more heat is more energy.
在非洲撒哈拉以南地区,大多数人都是小农户。可悲的是,他们的农作物生产率极低。他们面临着大量的人口增长,而气候的逆风在热带地区最为严重。如果你靠近赤道,那里的绝对温度会给人类和他们种植的粮食带来困难。气候变化会带来更多的干旱和洪水,导致更多的极端天气,更多的热量就意味着更多的能量。
The idea of, okay, what are we doing? What is the equivalent of the Green Revolution from the 1970s, where new seeds were created that avoided what was a predicted mass starvation? Are we coming up with those seeds that are going to be climate resilient, and have the productivity to let Africa not only feed itself, but become a net food exporter?
我们在做什么?20世纪70年代的“绿色革命”创造了新的种子,避免了预期中的大规模饥荒。我们是否能培育出具有气候适应能力、生产率高的种子,让非洲不仅能养活自己,还能成为粮食净出口国?
I got educated starting in the year 2000, when I had some climate scientists who would do a lot of sessions with me every year. I started a nuclear energy company in 2008 to do fission, and then at the Paris 2015 talks, I came up with Breakthrough Energy. A lot of Breakthrough Energy is not philanthropic capital. There is for the policy work, and I’ve spent hundreds of millions on climate philanthropy grants related to climate, but the Foundation is $8 billion a year on global health.
我从2000年开始对此有所了解,当时有一些气候科学家,他们每年都会和我一起开很多会。我在2008年创办了一家核能公司,研究核裂变,在2015年巴黎会谈上,我提出了“突破能源”。突破能源的很多资金都不是慈善资金。有用于政策工作的,我在与气候相关的气候慈善资助上花费了数亿美元,基金会每年用于全球健康的资金可达80亿美元。
We are saving lives for less than a few thousand dollars per life saved. I believe that we can use mostly market mechanisms to do the mitigation task. The Gates Foundation does the adaptation and Breakthrough Energy does the mitigation.
我们拯救一个生命的成本不过几千美元。我认为,我们可以主要利用市场机制来完成减排任务。盖茨基金会负责适应气候变化,突破能源负责减缓气候变化。
HANNAH RITCHIE: There is this focus on human welfare, and then seeing that there are problems there, and then climate change has the potential to compound them and make them worse.
汉娜·里奇:先是关注人类福祉,然后看到存在的问题,气候变化有可能让这些问题更复杂并使其恶化。
BILL GATES: Exactly. It’s all through the lens of the human condition and inequity. It is the paradox that people don’t realize how much progress we have made. And yet, if they go to those countries and see, okay, we still have 5 million children dying every year, and in parts of sub-Saharan Africa like Northern Nigeria, 20% of kids die before their fifth birthday, whereas in rich countries, that number is less than 1%.
比尔·盖茨:没错,这一切都是从人类生存条件和不平等的角度出发的。这是一个悖论,人们没有意识到我们已经取得了多大的进步。然而,如果他们去那些国家看看,我们每年仍有500万儿童死亡,在撒哈拉以南非洲的部分地区,如尼日利亚北部,20%的孩子在5岁之前死亡,而在富裕国家,这个数字还不到1%。
It is stunning that not much money is spent on malaria. When we did our first $30 million grant, we became the largest funders of the disease that was killing a million children every single year. Now that number is down to 400,000. We have a path, though we don’t know how long it will take to get to eradication.
令人震惊的是,用于疟疾的资金并不多。当我们提供第一笔3000万美元的赠款时,我们已成为研究疟疾的最大资助者,而每年有100万儿童死于该疾病。现在,这个数字下降到了40万。尽管我们不知道根除疟疾需要多长时间,但我们已经找到了一条道路。
The human condition is far more inequitable than people know. And yet, the absolute progress has been phenomenal.
人类的境况远比人们知道的更加不公平。但取得的全面进步已经相当非凡。
HANNAH RITCHIE: You talked a little bit about a lot of threats, with one of them being the potential on agriculture, particularly within equatorial regions. What do you see as the biggest threats of climate change?
汉娜·里奇:你谈到了一些威胁,其中之一就是农业的潜在威胁,特别是在赤道地区。你认为气候变化最大的威胁是什么?
BILL GATES: In temperate zone countries, you are going to have sea level rise, you will have more forest fires, and you will have to switch your seed somewhat. But there are people who don’t have air conditioning who will get air conditioning. The effects are not as dramatic in the temperate zone, where people are well off and not doing outdoor farming.
比尔·盖茨:在温带国家,海平面将会上升,森林火灾将会增多,人们将不得不在某种程度上改变种植物。但是,没有空调的人终有一天也会有空调。这种影响在温带地区没有那么明显,那里的人们生活富裕,不从事户外耕作。
In Africa, if your crop fails, your children aren’t going to get enough food and so you get malnutrition. Kids who have malnutrition, it is incredibly tragic. They are four times more likely to die of pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, and even if they survive, their physical and mental development is far short of what it should be. Their ability, individually or for their country, to get educated and contribute has been largely eliminated because of those malnutrition problems.
在非洲,如果庄稼歉收,你的孩子就得不到足够的食物,从而导致营养不良。营养不良的孩子非常悲惨。他们死于肺炎、腹泻和疟疾的几率是正常人的四倍,即使幸存下来,他们的身体和智力发育也远远达不到应有的水平。由于这些营养不良问题,他们个人或国家接受教育和做出贡献的能力在很大程度上已经被剥夺。
To the degree that climate feeds malnutrition problems or causes forced migration, then the human condition can be very bad, mostly in these tropical zones.
如果气候助长营养不良问题或导致被迫移民,那么人类的境况就会非常糟糕,尤其是在这些热带地区。
HANNAH RITCHIE: Changing it up a little bit, on optimism. This year, we’ve seen record breaking heatwaves, we’ve seen it is possible we may cross 1.5 degrees this year, which does not mean we’ve broken the Paris Agreement, but it’s a little bit of a frightening warning. If you go back a decade, are you more or less optimistic about where we are on climate change now, or then?
汉娜·里奇:换个话题,关于乐观。今年,我们见识到了破纪录的热浪,而今年的气温有可能升高1.5摄氏度,虽然并不意味着我们违反了《巴黎协定》,但这是个有些可怕的警告。如果回到十年前,你对我们现在或当时的气候变化状况是更乐观还是更不乐观?
BILL GATES: I’m certainly more optimistic because in 2015, when the Paris Agreement was signed, there were so many areas of emission where there wasn’t any activity. For example, the industrial area, which for most countries is the largest single area. That includes things like steel and cement. There weren’t brilliant people saying, "Gosh, let’s rethink how we do steel.” It has been a long time since there has been a basic change there, or rethinking how we do cement.
比尔·盖茨:我当然更乐观,因为在2015年签署《巴黎协定》时,有很多排放领域都没有任何活动迹象。例如工业领域,对大多数国家来说,这是最大的一个领域。其中包括钢铁和水泥等。没有哪个聪明人说:"天呐,让我们重新思考一下如何生产钢铁吧"。我们已经很久没有在这方面做出根本性的改变,或者重新思考我们如何做水泥。
As part of that 2015 event, President Obama and I, and President Hollande, and Prime Minister Modi did an event called Mission Innovation that said, "Hey, we need to do more R&D, we need to have more venture capital, we need to come up with more solutions." It was a leap of faith whether there would be ideas, and so I raised a billion dollars very quickly from individuals for the first Breakthrough Energy Venture fund. We said we will only invest in things that can get rid of a half-percent of global emissions. It is an extreme single-purpose venture activity.
作为2015年活动的一部分,奥巴马总统和我、奥朗德总统以及莫迪总理举办了一场名为“创新使命”的活动,他们说,“嘿,我们需要进行更多的研发,我们需要更多的风险投资,我们需要提出更多的解决方案。”这是对想法是否会成立的一次大胆尝试,我很快就从个人手中筹集了10亿美元,成立了第一个突破能源风险基金。我们说,我们只投资那些能减少全球一半排放量的项目。这是极端单一目的的风险投资活动。
Now we have raised over $3 billion, we have over 100 companies, and I have to say, instead of not being able to find good ideas, we have found so many good ideas. We have multiple approaches in each of the areas. In steel, we have four different approaches, and in cement, we have four different approaches, like carbon capture, quite a few approaches.
现在我们已经筹集了30多亿美元,投资了100多家公司,我不得不说,我们不是找不到好主意,而是找到了太多好主意。我们在每个领域都有多种方法。在钢铁领域,我们有四种不同的方法,在水泥领域,我们有四种不同的方法,比如碳捕获,有相当多的方法。
Although a lot of these are still lab-level results, and the path to get from the lab level to pilot plants, and then try to scale those things up and get the extra costs, or what I call the green premium down, is still going to be super-hard, as to how we get rich countries, rich companies, rich individuals to help us get to the magic point where the green approach doesn’t cost any more, or the green premium of zero. But what I’ve seen is way more than sitting there in 2015, announcing Breakthrough Energy, as to what I expected to see.
其中很多仍是实验室层面的成果,而从实验室层面到试点工厂,再到尝试扩大规模,降低额外成本或我所说的绿色溢价,这条路仍将是极其艰难的——我们要如何让富裕的国家、富裕的公司、富裕的个人帮助我们达到一个神奇的节点——即绿色方法不再花费更多成本,或绿色溢价为零。但我见识到的,已经远比我在2015年坐在那里宣告突破能源时预期的要多。
HANNAH RITCHIE: I feel the same, but against the common narrative, I would say I feel more optimistic than I did a decade ago. I think the area you are mostly talking about, those hard-to-abate sectors, steel, cement, et cetera, even if you look at the relatively easy sectors to beat—electricity for example—if you go back a decade, solar and wind were the most expensive energy sources we had. Since then, the price of solar has dropped 90%, and the price of wind has dropped 70%, and electric vehicles are now economically viable. When I was sitting in 2015, I could not foresee a future where any of these would be economically viable, not only for rich countries, but for middle- or low-income countries.
汉娜·里奇:我也有同感,但与一般的论调不同,我想说我比十年前更乐观了。我认为你主要谈论的领域,那些难以减排的行业,钢铁和水泥等等,即使你看看相对容易减排的行业,比如电力,如果你回到十年前,太阳能和风能是我们拥有的最昂贵的能源。自那时以来,太阳能的价格已经下降了90%,风能的价格已经下降了70%,电动汽车现在在经济上可行。回望2015年,我无法预见未来这些方案中的任何一种在经济上可行,不仅对富裕国家,对中等或低收入国家也是如此。
BILL GATES: Yes, the two areas where we have made the most progress on getting green premiums down is parts of electricity generation and the high end of the automotive market. We still have a lot of work to do for the low end of the automotive market, particularly for somebody who doesn’t have a garage where they could charge their car at night. The electricity challenge is still a bit daunting because when you have weather dependent sources, if you have things like a cold snap, and you are relying on electricity to heat buildings, then did you have large energy storage? Or do you have baseload things like fission or fusion that are able to come in with that load that you can’t delay? You can’t say, "Okay, I’ll warm your home a couple days from now," but you have to do it right as the cold snap sinks in.
比尔·盖茨:是的,我们在降低绿色溢价方面进展最大的两个领域是部分发电领域和高端汽车市场。对于低端汽车市场,我们还有很多工作要做,特别是对于那些没有车库可以在晚上给汽车充电的人来说。电力方面的挑战仍然令人望而生畏,因为当你使用依赖天气的能源时,如果遇到寒流等情况,而你又依赖电力为建筑物供暖,那么你是否拥有大型储能设备?或者,你是否有像核裂变或核聚变这样的基荷设备,能够为你处理那些及时的负荷需求?你不能说,“好吧,我过几天再给你家供暖。”你必须在寒流来临时立即供暖。
We haven’t solved electricity, but we can see that the pieces are coming together, particularly if we get better forms of fusion or fission that could come in and play that complementary baseload picture.
我们仍没有解决电力问题,但我们可以看到,这些问题正在逐步得到解决,特别是如果我们能获得更好的核聚变或核裂变形式,就能发挥基荷互补的作用。
The miracle of lithium-ion batteries, the miracle of solar panels, that’s the kind of thing we need to duplicate in all of the areas of emissions. As you say, I organized an extra panel on solar panels in 2015 and had them project how far would it go down, and it has gone down further than even the most optimistic of those people thought it would. These learning curve innovations often can surprise us on the positive side.
锂离子电池的奇迹、太阳能电池板的奇迹,这些都是我们需要在所有排放领域复制的。正如你所说,我在2015年组织了一个额外的太阳能电池板项目,预测其价格会下降多少,结果下降的幅度甚至超过了最乐观的人的预期。这些符合学习曲线的创新往往能在积极的一面给我们带来惊喜。
HANNAH RITCHIE: On deployment, if you look at any of the forecasts for deployment of solar, even the most optimistic ones are really long.
汉娜·里奇:在部署方面,如果你看一下对太阳能部署的任何预测,即使是最乐观的预测,它也需要很长时间。
BILL GATES: Yes, but in a lot of countries, we are now running into, though it varies by country, the willingness to permit wind, or solar in your backyard, and then because those are often far away from where the electricity is needed, there is the challenge in the permitting of the transmission. To build this green grid, which will have to provide probably two-and-a-half times as much electricity as we use today, there are still some obstacles. The rate of installation has to continue to go up. Yet we’re seeing, like offshore wind, where the bid process did not go forward, but I think that will get fixed in some way, and there is onshore permitting and transmission, and so we really have to plan on this mix of policy and innovation to get rid of those bottlenecks.
比尔·盖茨:是的,但在许多国家,我们现在遇到的问题是,虽然各国情况不同,但是否愿意允许在自家后院安装风能或太阳能发电设备,由于这些设备通常远离需要用电的地方,因此在输电许可方面存在挑战。要建造这样的绿色电网,它将必须提供相当于我们现在使用的2.5倍的电力,这仍然有一些障碍。安装速度必须继续提高。然而,我们也看到,比如海上风电,竞标过程没有进展,但我认为这将以某种方式得到解决,还有陆上输电和许可问题,我们必须计划将政策和创新结合起来,以摆脱这些瓶颈。
HANNAH RITCHIE: On optimism, I often try to promote the message of optimism, not that this stuff will just happen on its own, but that we have the ability to solve these problems. These problems are solvable, and we are making progress. I expect you probably do the same. How do you balance trying to promote an optimistic message without sounding like you’re underplaying the issue?
汉娜·里奇:关于乐观,我经常试图传递乐观,不是说这些事情会自然而然地变好,而是说我们有能力解决这些问题。这些问题是可以解决的,我们正在取得进展。我猜你也会这么做。你如何在尝试传递乐观的同时又不让人觉得你低估了这个问题?
BILL GATES: That’s a real challenge. How do you promote the problem without over-depressing people? You can err on the negative side, like just showing pictures of kids dying of malaria, and people are like, "Okay, I’m not going to Africa. I don’t want to hear about this again."
比尔·盖茨:这确实是个挑战。如何在传递这件事的同时又不至于让人们过度沮丧?你会在消极的一面犯错误,比如只展示孩子们死于疟疾的照片,那么人们就会说,“好吧,我不去非洲了。我不想再听到这些了。”
Even in climate, some people are despairing because they see that we’re falling short in a lot of ways. It’s a huge collective action problem in terms of every country, every area of emissions to try and get all the way to zero. It’s striking that balance, and I think in your recent TED Talk, you did a good job of that. Hans Rosling, I think we both think of as someone who has inspired us, where he was much more in the health domain, but I still consider his TED Talk one of the most profound TED Talks ever given, because it was both about the need to do more, but a sense of hope for the incredible progress of what we’ve done on health.
即使在气候方面,一些人也感到绝望,因为他们看到我们在很多方面都做得不够。这是一个复杂的集体行动问题,每个国家、每个排放领域都要努力实现零排放。我认为在你最近的TED演讲中,你在这方面做得很好。汉斯·罗斯林(Hans Rosling),我想我们都认为他给了我们很多启发,他在健康领域做得更多,我仍然认为他的TED演讲是有史以来最深刻的TED演讲之一,因为它既涉及到需要做更多的事情,也涉及到对我们在健康领域所取得的令人难以置信的进展的希望。
HANNAH RITCHIE: Before I spoke with Hans Rosling I was very pessimistic. He has had a profound impact. I think one nice framing that I like is my colleague Max Roser has this Venn diagram that shows the fact that you can hold three thoughts at the same time.
汉娜·里奇:在与汉斯·罗斯林交谈之前,我非常悲观。他对我产生了深远的影响。我喜欢的一个很好的思维建构是我的同事马克斯·罗泽尔(Max Roser)的维恩图,它显示了你可以同时持有三种想法。
One, the world is awful, one the world is much better, and the third one being the world can be much better. If you even take the simple example of child mortality, the world is awful and 5 million children die every year, which is completely unacceptable, because most of those deaths are preventable. But a few decades ago, you had 12 million dying, so the world is better than it was. By looking at that perspective, you can see it is actually possible that we can then make things better in the future.
其一,这个世界很糟糕;其二,这个世界已经好多了;其三,这个世界可以变得更好。以儿童死亡率为例,世界依然很糟糕,每年有500万儿童死亡,这是完全无法接受的,因为大多数的死亡是可以预防的。但在几十年前,有1200万儿童死亡,所以这个世界比以前好多了。从这个角度来看,你就会发现,我们其实有可能在未来把事情做得更好。
I think you can even relate that to climate, where we’re currently on track for around 2.5 degrees, which is completely unacceptable, and we need to bring that down, and so the world is still awful. But a decade ago, we were on track for 3 to 4 degrees, and so we are getting there. We are getting there too slowly, but we can see by looking backwards at progress that we can continue to move things forward.
我认为你甚至可以将其与气候联系起来,目前全球温升或达到2.5摄氏度,这是完全无法接受的,我们需要将其降下来,这个世界依然很糟糕。但在十年前,当时的预估是全球温升或达到3至4摄氏度,这么看我们正在实现这一目标。我们的进展太慢了,但我们可以通过回顾过去的进展看到,我们可以继续向前迈进。
BILL GATES: Yes, these positive datapoints are amazing. For instance, in your book, which is coming out in January, and I was lucky enough to get an early copy, you talked about how emissions in the UK, per person, are actually down quite dramatically, because it was really coal driven, but now it is essentially not at all. That’s fantastic. There’s still a fair bit of natural gas, and so it’s not completely green, but it’s a sign of what can be done, just like the childhood death number.
比尔·盖茨:是的,这些积极的数据令人惊叹。比如,在你一月份即将出版的书中,我有幸提前拿到了一本,你谈到了英国的人均排放量是如何大幅下降的,因为以前英国的排放量确实是由煤炭驱动的,但现在基本上没有了。这太棒了。虽然仍有相当一部分使用天然气,所以还不是完全绿色,但这是一个迹象——我们可以做什么,就像儿童死亡人数一样。
When I showed climate activists that we’ve gone from 10 million to 5 million they were like, "No? What? Why didn’t somebody tell us that?" It’s sort of this report card for humanity, that we should say, "Wow, what did we do right?" How did we build Gavi? The UK contributed to Gavi, and the whole world came together to do something incredible.
当我向气候活动家展示我们已经从1000万减少到500万时,他们说,“不是吧?为什么没人告诉我们?”这是我们人类的成绩单,我们应该说,“看吧,我们做对了什么?”我们是如何建立Gavi的?英国为Gavi做出了贡献,整个世界一起做了一件不可思议的事情。
We set a goal of getting from 5 million to 2.5 million by 2030, and because of the Ukrainian war, interest rates, and the African debt, we will miss that – it will be sometime between 2035 and 2040 when we get that second halving of childhood deaths, all the way down to 2.5 million.
我们设定的目标是到2030年将儿童死亡人数从500万减少到250万,但由于俄乌冲突、利率和非洲债务等原因,我们将无法实现这一目标——到2035年至2040年之间的某个时候,我们才能实现儿童死亡人数的第二次减半,即减少到250万。
HANNAH RITCHIE: Right, I think there’s a difference between what I might call complacent optimism or stupid optimism, where you look at the trendline going down and say, "Yeah, we’ll just continue," but you know what? It won’t continue; you have to push it. I think we would frame that as impatient optimism that, yes, there’s been this progress, but how do we drive more of it?
汉娜·里奇:是的,我认为我的乐观和我称之为自满的乐观或愚蠢的乐观之间是有区别的,在这种情况下,你看着下降的趋势线说,“是的,我们会继续下去”,但你知道吗,它不会自己继续,除非你推动它。我认为,我们可以把这种情况称为乐天行动派,我们已经取得了进展,但我们如何推动更多的进展呢?
BILL GATES: Yes, I just came from Senegal, where the Foundation had its annual science meeting, and I was just so inspired by the scientists. We have new ideas to dramatically reduce maternal mortality and new ideas, particularly within the first 30 days of life, where over half of those deaths in the first five years were actually in the first 30 days. We have had vaccines for the rest of that time which have been miraculous, but we now have very cheap, miraculous interventions for that first 30 days. This will let us make the next stage of progress, but it is by funding those scientists, and then figuring out how do you scale this stuff up, even in tough places, so that we can get the end result.
比尔·盖茨:我刚从塞内加尔回来,基金会在那里举行了年度科学会议,科学家们给了我很大启发。我们有新的想法来大幅降低孕产妇死亡率,特别是在出生后的前30天,在出生后的前5年里,超过一半的死亡实际上发生在前30天。前30天之外,我们使用疫苗而疫苗发挥了神奇的作用,现在,我们有了成本低廉、神奇的干预措施,可以用于生命最初的30天。这将促进我们取得下一阶段的进展,这是通过资助这些科学家,才弄清楚如何扩大这些东西的规模,包括在一些艰苦的地方,这样我们才能取得最终结果。
HANNAH RITCHIE: Bringing it back to climate, I know you get excited about innovation. What are some of the areas that you’re most excited about for innovation? Where do you think the gaps are, where we are not making progress?
汉娜·里奇:回到气候问题上,我知道你对创新感到兴奋。你对哪些领域的创新最感兴趣?你认为差距在哪里,我们在哪里还没有取得进展?
BILL GATES: Across this portfolio of 100 companies it’s hard to pick my favorite. Some are kind of straightforward, like a company that makes windows where the temperature doesn’t cross over, but instead, it blocks getting cold in the winter or hot in the summer, which is very cheap. Or there is a company where you leave your home, and you pump this air through, but it’s got a chemical in it. When it sees cracks, it actually seals those cracks. You don’t have to find the cracks; you just pump the air in.
比尔·盖茨:在这100家公司中,很难选出我最喜欢的。有些是简单明了的,比如有一家公司生产的窗户其温度不会随气温变化,相反,它可以阻挡冬天的寒冷或夏天的炎热,这种窗户非常便宜。还有一家公司,你离开家后,把空气打进去,但里面有一种化学物质。当它看到裂缝时,就会把裂缝封住。你不需要找到裂缝,只需把空气打进去。
You can reduce the amount of heat loss between the windows and getting rid of those cracks. You can reduce the energy bill by a factor of two, which then means less load on the overall energy system. That one is not high tech. It’s not like TerraPower fission, or Commonwealth Fusion Tokamak design, which there are still some risks in that.
你可以减少窗户之间的热量损失,堵住那些裂缝。你可以将供暖账单减少两倍,这意味着整个能源系统的负荷减少。这不是什么高科技,它不像泰拉能源(TerraPower)的核裂变,或者托卡马克核聚变,其中仍然有一些风险。
In areas like industrial heat, today when you want to do an industrial process, which people don’t visit very often, but you burn natural gas, and you get this very high temperature. We have shown with several companies in the portfolio that by using solar panels, and just heating a very cheap, brick-like substance, you can actually get industrial heat cheaper than burning natural gas without any government consideration of the CO2 that natural gas puts out.
在工业用热等领域,今天,当你想进行工业加工时,人们并不经常去那里参观,但燃烧天然气会产生非常高的温度。我们已经与几家公司合作证明,通过使用太阳能电池板,只需加热一种非常廉价的砖块状物质,就能获得比燃烧天然气更便宜的工业用热,而无需政府考虑天然气产生的二氧化碳。
Those companies are really scaling up because it works. It’s economic, it doesn’t require that much of a policy. You get wins in some of those areas that can move out fairly quickly. The cement and steel ones are the ones, in a way, I’m most impressed by, because I wasn’t sure we’d find anything in those spaces.
这些公司确实在扩大规模,因为它行之有效。它很经济,不需要那么多政策。在这些领域中,你可以很快取得胜利。在某种程度上,水泥和钢铁行业给我留下了最深刻的印象,我不确定我们会在这些领域找到什么。
HANNAH RITCHIE: To explain the cement thing, around half of emissions from cement just come from the energy used to produce it. You could decarbonize that. The problem, I guess, with cement is that you are taking basically limestone, and then you are converting it to calcium oxide. But the byproduct you get in that conversion process is CO2. Basically, you need a way to capture that CO2.
汉娜·里奇:解释一下水泥的问题,水泥的排放量约有一半来自生产水泥的能源。你可以将其去碳化。我想,水泥的问题在于,基本上是使用石灰石,然后将其转化为氧化钙。但在转化过程中产生的副产品就是二氧化碳。基本上,需要一种捕获二氧化碳的方法。
BILL GATES: Yes. Limestone is calcium carbonate, and you use natural gas, which by burning that creates CO2. As you heat the limestone, that releases CO2. It’s exactly as you say, it’s an equal number amount of emissions.
比尔·盖茨:石灰石是碳酸钙,你使用天然气,天然气燃烧会产生二氧化碳。当你加热石灰石时,会释放出二氧化碳。正如你所说,这是等量排放。
One of our companies doesn’t use limestone. They actually go and find another source of calcium, which fortunately turns out to be quite abundant and cheap. They make exactly the same cement that we make today, but not using limestone as the input. I was stunned that you could do that.
我们有一家公司不用石灰石。他们实际上是去寻找另一种钙源,幸运的是,这种钙源相当丰富而且便宜。他们生产的水泥与我们今天生产的一模一样,但不使用石灰石作为原料。我惊呆了,竟然能做到这一点。
We have other companies that make things that are slightly different than Portland cement, that they think is good for many applications, but getting the certification of the building codes and everything, of course, people are very conservative about. Okay, how good is it going to be 20 years from now, when cars are crossing this bridge? Will it work well?
我们有其他公司生产的水泥与硅酸盐水泥略有不同,他们认为硅酸盐水泥在很多应用中都很好,但要获得建筑规范和所有方面的认证,当然了,人们非常保守。20年后,当汽车驶过这座桥时,它的承载力如何?它还能好好的吗?
One company took a risk on the mineral source, another company took the risk on the certification process. They’re rolling out and seeing which geographies the different approaches get adopted in.
一家公司在矿物来源上承担风险,另一家公司在认证过程中承担风险。他们正在进行推广,看看哪些地区采用了不同的方法。
HANNAH RITCHIE: You mentioned a few times the green premium. For those that maybe don’t know what that is, do you want to briefly explain what the green premium means?
汉娜•里奇:你多次提到绿色溢价。对于那些可能不知道这是什么的人,你想简单解释一下绿色溢价是什么意思吗?
BILL GATES: There’s the current way of making things, and then there is a new way of making them that has no emissions. You could say the brute force way is to say, okay, I’ll still make it the old way, but I’ll pay for some direct air capture person to pull those things out of the air. For something like cement, that would mean that cement would be twice as expensive.
比尔·盖茨:目前的制造方式,和一种新的、不会产生排放的制造方式。简单来说,我还是用老方法制造,但我要花钱请人进行碳捕获。对于水泥这样的东西来说,这意味着水泥的价格将是原来的两倍。
When you say to India, please do that, make your cement twice as expensive, they’re like, hey, we have emitted nothing, compared to you, on a per capita basis. We’re still providing basic shelter, and you’re building things that are more than you need. Only if you subsidize us will that work.
当你对印度说,请这样做,让你们的水泥贵一倍时,他们会说,嘿,与你们相比,按人均计算,我们什么也没排放。我们还在提供基本的住所,而你们却在建造超出你们需要的东西。只有你们给我们补贴,这才行得通。
The idea is, you want to go back and rethink the whole cement process, either how you capture that CO2 before it gets emitted. Electric cars are a really good example. It’s a rethink of how you propel the car. Now, it requires you to also take your electricity system and get that to zero, but you’re going to need to do that anyway. It means the size of the electricity system, just for the cars alone, cars and buses, your electricity system has to be about 40% larger than it is today. You have to make it green.
我们的想法是,重新思考整个水泥生产过程,或者重新思考如何在二氧化碳排放之前将其捕获。电动汽车就是一个很好的例子。这需要重新思考如何推动汽车。现在,这需要你同时使用电力系统并将排放归零,但无论如何,你都需要这样做。这意味着电力系统的规模——仅就汽车和公交车而言——就必须比现在大40%。你必须让它绿色环保。
Whenever people say we have a certain percentage of renewables, essentially 200% renewables up from 15%. It is ambitious, but we measure in every area, what is the current green premium?
每当人们说我们有一定比例的可再生能源时,可再生能源基本上从15%上升到200%。雄心可嘉,但我们在每个领域都会衡量,目前的绿色溢价是多少?
Some of you may have tried Impossible Burgers or Beyond Meat. That beef, you can think of the green premium as two things. It, today, has a cost premium, and it doesn’t taste quite as good – it’s close – as the real thing. Those companies have a challenge. Now, people who care about climate, it’s great, they are willing to create that bootstrap market. But the big win is if they get the cost below normal beef, and they get the taste so you truly can’t tell. I’m quite optimistic that a whole set of companies are headed towards achieving that over the next five to 10 years.
你们中的一些人可能尝试过“Impossible Burgers”或“Beyond Meat”。这种人造牛肉的绿色溢价有两个方面。目前,它的成本溢价,另外它的味道并不像真正的牛肉那么好。这些公司面临着挑战。现在,关心气候问题的人们愿意创造这个引导市场,这很好。但最大的赢家是,如果他们能把成本降到低于正常牛肉的水平,而且他们能把味道做到让你无法分辨。我很乐观地认为,在未来五到十年内,会有一大批公司朝着这个目标前进。
HANNAH RITCHIE: You read my mind, because this morning, I put out an article saying that meat substitutes are too expensive. [Laughter]
汉娜·里奇:你读懂了我的心思,今天早上,我发表了一篇文章,说肉类替代品太贵了。[笑声]
BILL GATES: No, they are definitely too expensive. They are around 50% more expensive. I think it is more that they haven’t matched the taste. They’ve got to change both of those in order to be mainstream. Today, only a few percent of beef is made without a cow. [Laughter]
比尔·盖茨:它们确实太贵了。它们要贵50%左右。另外更多的原因是它们的味道不一致。他们必须改变这两点,才能成为主流。今天,只有为数不多的牛肉是在没有牛的情况下生产的。[笑声]
HANNAH RITCHIE: In the last decade, we have seen dramatic improvements in solar and wind. We have seen the costs plummet, and we have seen them take off at pretty rapid rates. At the same time, nuclear has come up against opposition, especially in Western countries. What role do you see nuclear playing in the future energy system?
汉娜·里奇:在过去的十年里,我们看到了太阳能和风能的巨大进步。我们看到成本大幅下降,而且它们以相当快的速度增长。与此同时,核能却遭到了反对,尤其是在西方国家。你认为核能在未来的能源体系中扮演什么角色?
BILL GATES: Well, unfortunately, there’s enough challenges with both nuclear fission and fusion that we can’t depend on it. It would be extremely helpful if nuclear fission came up with a product that was both economic, and the provable safety was even better than we have in nuclear today. The nuclear industry basically failed, because their product was too expensive. It wasn’t because of the waste or safety-type issues, which we can get into those, but it was economics.
比尔·盖茨:不幸的是,核裂变和核聚变都面临着足够多的挑战,我们不能依赖它。如果核裂变能产生一种既经济又安全的产品,那将会非常有帮助。核工业基本上失败了,因为他们的产品太昂贵。这并不是因为废料或安全问题,我们可以讨论这些,但它是经济问题。
First and foremost, you must have a much different economic proposition. The nuclear reactor I’m involved in, TerraPower, we only generate electricity when the renewable sources that have very little marginal costs aren’t generating. We just make heat all day, and then only when the bid price of electricity is high enough, do we actually generate electricity, because otherwise, you have all this capital cost that half the time, the solar bid into that market is going to be very low.
首先,你必须有一个截然不同的经济主张。我参与的核反应堆,泰拉能源,我们只在边际成本非常低的可再生能源不发电时才发电。我们整天都在制造热能,只有当电力的投标价格足够高时,我们才会真正发电,否则,就会经常产生资本成本,太阳能进入市场的投标将会非常低。
I think fission, we shouldn’t give up on it. I’m involved in that company only because it may be able to make a significant contribution to climate change. There are about 16 fusion companies. They have more challenges. Fission, we understand the science. It is all just engineering and cost. In fusion, there’s even some science of how these plasmas create forces that we are working on. Of the sixteen, Breakthrough Energy is invested in four of them, which are four very different approaches.
我认为我们不应该放弃核裂变。我参与那家公司是因为它有可能对气候变化做出重大贡献。大约有16家核聚变公司。他们面临更多的挑战。我们了解核裂变这门科学。这只是工程和成本的问题。在核聚变中,我们还在研究一些关于等离子体如何产生力的科学。在这16家公司中,突破能源投资了其中的4家,这4家的方式方法截然不同。
I think it’s just a question of when will fusion come along? A cynic might say, okay, it’s always been 40 to 50 years, but the amount of brilliant people working on it is, today approximately 20 times higher than it was 10 years ago. It’s such a variety of approaches, I do think that will come along. But again, we’re not to the point where you can buy one of these things, or even make it part of your plan.
我认为这是一个何时会出现核聚变的问题。一个愤世嫉俗的人可能会说,好吧,四五十年总是有的,但今天从事这项工作的杰出人才的数量大约是十年前的20倍。方法多种多样,我确实认为会出现这样的情况。但同样,我们还没有到可以购买这些东西的地步,甚至还不能把它作为计划的一部分。
HANNAH RITCHIE: We should invest some money in it, and hope that it comes through, but we need to get moving on the rest of the stuff at the same time.
汉娜·里奇:我们应该投入一些资金,希望它能实现,但我们需要同时着手其他的事情。
BILL GATES: That’s right. Certainly, every solar panel we put in, every wind thing we put in is a step forward, because we are going to have this hybrid system that will either be wind plus solar plus a lot of storage, or wind plus solar plus storage, and fission and/or fusion.
比尔·盖茨:没错。我们投入的每一块太阳能电池板、每一台风能设备都是向前迈出的一步,因为我们将拥有这样一个混合系统,它要么是风能加太阳能加大量储能,要么是风能加太阳能加储能,再加上核裂变和/或核聚变。
I can’t overstate how much easier it is to solve the problem if you can mix in some degree of fission or fusion that are there to fill in the periods where renewables are not generating. Cold snaps or where you have these cold fronts just sitting there, that’s when houses need the most heating. That’s when neither wind nor solar are generating. Now, if your transmission grid is big enough, maybe somewhere else, there isn’t the cold front, but building those massive transmission grids, we have to accelerate our work on that as well.
如果能在一定程度上混合核裂变或核聚变技术,在可再生能源不发电时填补空白,那么问题的解决就会容易得多,这一点我怎么强调都不为过。寒流或冷锋来临时,正是房屋最需要供暖的时候。这时,风能和太阳能都无法发电。现在,如果你的输电网足够大,也许在其他地方不会有冷锋,但要建设这些大规模的输电网,我们必须加快进程。
HANNAH RITCHIE: I guess the solar and wind are incredibly cheap. But I can see that once you start getting to the very, very top, that can start to become very expensive. Squeezing out the last 10% or 20% on your total grid could be very expensive.
汉娜·里奇:我想太阳能和风能的价格是非常便宜的。但我可以看到,一旦你开始使用最顶级的设备,价格就会变得非常昂贵。在整个电网中挤出那最后的10%或20%可能会非常昂贵。
BILL GATES: Yes, and all people buy is reliability. They don’t buy electricity. If you say, okay, every once in a while, we have super cheap electricity, there is no bid for that. The bid is 24-hour guaranteed, particularly during heat waves and cold snaps. Breakthrough Energy, its science group is doing a ton of these open source grid models, so people can try out in the face of more extreme weather, okay, how reliable will their grid be?
比尔·盖茨:电力上,人们买的是可靠性。如果你说,我们偶尔提供超低价的电,那么不会有人出价。让人们出价的得是24小时保证的电力,尤其是在热浪和寒流来袭期间。突破能源的科学小组正在做大量的开源电网模型,这样人们就可以在面对更极端的天气时进行试验,好吧,他们的电网有多可靠?
HANNAH RITCHIE: Climate change is a global problem. It needs international collaboration. But one thing I don’t necessarily agree with is it is often framed as this homogenous, global story, where in fact, to me, there are very different stories for climate change, depending on where you are in the world. The high-income countries’ story is very different from the middle-income is very different from the low-income.
汉娜·里奇:气候变化是一个全球性问题。它需要国际合作。但我不一定同意的一点是,气候变化常常被描述成一个同质的全球性问题,而事实上,在我看来,气候变化的问题是千差万别的,这取决于你身处世界的哪个角落。高收入国家的情况与中等收入国家的情况截然不同,与低收入国家的情况也截然不同。
First of all, do you agree with that? How would you frame the differences between those income levels?
首先,你同意这种说法吗?你如何界定这些收入水平之间的差异?
BILL GATES: Absolutely. The high-income countries have to lead the way. We have the greatest historical emissions, and we have the most risk capital and ability to innovate on these new technologies. We not only owe it to the world to get to zero, we also owe it to them to play the primary role in driving green premiums to zero.
比尔·盖茨:当然。高收入国家必须带头。我们的历史排放量最大,我们拥有最多的风险资本和创新这些新技术的能力。我们不仅有责任让全球实现零排放,我们也有责任让全球在推动绿色溢价实现零排放方面发挥主要作用。
Middle-income countries, where you have China as the richest middle-income, India’s the least, and Indonesia, Brazil, Vietnam, almost 70% of all people live in those countries, which is a miracle, because that wasn’t true 50 years ago. They need to reach out and help with the adoption, that’s where this thing is going to be won or lost, is how easy we’ve made it for them to go for adoption.
中等收入国家中,中国是最富裕的中等收入国家,印度是最不富裕的中等收入国家,印度尼西亚、巴西、越南,几乎70%的人口生活在这些国家,这是一个奇迹,50年前还不是这样。他们需要伸出援手,并助力适应,而整件事的成败所在,就在于我们让他们更愿意接受气候变化适应。
The low-income countries, they’re about 4% of emissions. In a sense, they should generate electricity however it is cheapest for them to do, because it is kind of a rounding error. The equities would say that we shouldn’t burden them with this problem, in terms of their energy generation, even though the vast majority of the suffering from climate will be low-income countries.
低收入国家的排放量占总排放量的4%。从某种意义上说,他们应该以最廉价的方式发电,因为这几乎是可舍去的误差。公平主义者会说,就能源生产而言,我们不应该让他们负担这个问题,尽管绝大多数受气候影响的将是低收入国家。
HANNAH RITCHIE: Right, you were talking about sub-Saharan Africa earlier, and I think cumulatively, the continent as a whole has contributed around 1% of the total emissions. On that note, a question I get asked a lot, because we’re in the UK, is the UK only emits around 1% of the emissions today. Why should we care? Why should we care about reducing our emissions? What role should the UK play in climate change if it only contributes 1%?
汉娜·里奇:是的,你刚才谈到了撒哈拉以南非洲地区,我认为整个非洲大陆的累计排放量约占总排放量的1%。关于这一点,我经常被问到一个问题,因为我们在英国,英国目前的排放量只占总排放量的1%左右。我们为什么要关心这个问题?我们为什么要关注减排?如果只占1%,英国在气候变化中应该扮演什么角色?
BILL GATES: Well, this is a collective action problem. There will be countries, like maybe Russia, that bringing them into this collective action might be difficult. If you really want to get to true zero, you might have to use direct air capture to cancel out the most recalcitrant, and maybe the low-income emissions as well. That’s where it might play a role.
比尔·盖茨:这是一个集体行动问题。将会有一些国家,比如俄罗斯,将他们纳入集体行动可能会很困难。如果你真的想达到真正的零排放,你可能必须使用直接空气捕获来抵消最顽固的排放,也许还需要抵消低收入国家的排放。这就是英国可能扮演一个角色。
Overall, the Paris Agreement was a milestone. It’s not an enforceable thing. Even the U.S. would not have adopted it. In fact, we de-adopted it for four years and then re-adopted it. [Laughter]
总的来说,《巴黎协定》是一个里程碑。但这不是一个可强制执行的事情。美国也没有采纳它。事实上,我们退出了四年,然后又重返回来。[笑声]
This will never get solved if the rich countries take that type of approach of, okay, we’re not that big a piece of the problem.
如果富裕国家采取这种态度——好吧,我们不是问题的一部分——这个问题永远不会得到解决。
The UK has done a lot of things very well. I have on my phone where I can look for all the countries and see, okay, the electricity they’re generating, exactly how much carbon is coming out of the different systems. It’s come a long way, and the overall global footprint for electricity generation has come a long way.
英国在很多方面都做得很好。我可以在手机上查到所有国家的发电量,以及不同系统的碳排放量。我们已经走过了漫长的道路,全球发电的总体足迹也已经有了长足的进步。
HANNAH RITCHIE: In the climate space, the focus is on emissions reduction. Now, there are a few things that people would say can come across as a way to get out of reducing emissions or a moral hazard for not taking this seriously enough. One of them is carbon removal, and the other one is adaptation. How do you think about the balance of those within the total mix of addressing climate change?
汉娜·里奇:在气候领域,重点是减排。现在,人们会说,有几件事可能会被认为是逃避减排的一种方式,或者是对这一问题不够重视的一种道德风险。其中之一是碳消除,另一个是气候变化适应。你如何看待这些措施在应对气候变化的整体组合中的平衡?
BILL GATES: Adaptation covers a broad range of things. In rich countries, that means you have to look at forest fire risk and see, okay, exactly where it might happen? Do you have the appropriate barriers? You have to think about sea level rise and where are you insuring homes, and where do you actually have to make changes? There are very complex engineering projects that sometimes will make sense, sometimes they won’t.
比尔·盖茨:气候变化适应涉及的范围很广。在富裕国家,这意味着你必须审视森林火灾的风险,看看它究竟会在哪里发生?有适当的屏障吗?你必须考虑海平面上升的问题,你在哪些地方为房屋投保,哪些地方实际上必须做出改变?有一些非常复杂的工程项目,有时它们有意义,有时没有意义。
To me, adaptation is the strongest case, that it is a moral argument that you are going to take all this progress in human development, and reverse a lot of it, if you don’t help the farmers in these tropical zones, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, but also in parts of Asia as well.
在我看来,气候变化适应是最需要关注的,这是一个道德论证,如果你不帮助这些热带地区的农民,主要是撒哈拉以南非洲地区的农民,也包括亚洲部分地区的农民,你将失去人类发展取得的所有进步,并使很多进步发生逆转。
The most scarce money in this is grant money. There is investment money, where you expect a return. That’s going to have to be trillions as we get these green premiums down to go full bore, and make them fully investable, which once you scale them up, you get there.
这方面最稀缺的是赠款。还有投资资金,因为你期望得到回报。当我们把这些绿色溢价降到最低,并使其完全可投资时,这将需要数万亿的资金。
Adaptation will always be grant money, and it has to be considered with the health grants you do, with the education grants you do, and within an amount that is sadly limited. I wish rich countries would give three times as much to poor countries, but it is not a big number. We have to make sure it is extremely well spent at a time when the African countries’ interest burden, food costs, and an inability to take more loans is meaning that the cash flows into Africa are actually going down quite a bit right now.
气候变化适应将永远依赖于赠款,必须与卫生赠款和教育赠款一起考虑,而且令人遗憾的是,其数额是有限的。我希望富裕国家向贫穷国家提供三倍的援助,但这不是一个大数字。我们必须确保这笔钱花得非常合理,因为非洲国家的利息负担、粮食成本以及无法获得更多贷款意味着流入非洲的现金流现在实际上正在大幅减少。
HANNAH RITCHIE: And carbon removal?
汉娜·里奇:那碳消除呢?
BILL GATES: Well, carbon removal is the one thing that will never have a green premium, because anything you do, it’s going to cost money. It doesn’t give you a product other than negative carbon emissions. Part of my personal offset is I pay Climeworks about $600 a ton to do removal. There are technologies that will clearly get us to $100. We have several, I think, that could get us to $50. It’s not an excuse in any way for not switching to electric cars or not changing cement and steel, because the scale would be too large.
比尔·盖茨:碳消除是一件永远不会有绿色溢价的事情,因为你做的任何事情,都是要花钱的。我个人拿出来的补偿是,我向Climeworks公司支付每吨600美元的除碳费用。有一些技术可以让其费用降至100美元。我认为,有几项技术可以让其达到50美元。但些这绝不是不改用电动汽车或不改变水泥和钢铁的借口,因为它们的规模太大了。
If it is usable at all, it is for the part that we can’t get rid of otherwise, the recalcitrant countries, the low-income countries, or if we actually want to have a year that, if we get past where we want to be, that you can actually, maybe have a year where you’d have net negative emissions, because you’re not only emitting so much less, but you do carbon capture greater than the remainder there.
如果说它是可用的,那也是针对我们无法摆脱的部分,即那些顽固不化的国家和低收入国家,或者说,如果我们真的想在某一年,如果我们能达到我们想要的目标,那么你就可以在某一年实现净负排放,因为你不仅排放少了很多,而且你的碳捕获量比其他国家更大。
That is a very high reach, because the speed with which this thing is going to come down will not hit the 1.5 degree. If you just look at the different industry groups and countries, unfortunately that is not within practical reach at this point.
这是一个非常高的目标,以这个目标的速度,全球升温将不会达到1.5摄氏度。如果你只看不同的行业组织和国家,不幸的是,这在这一点上是不切实际的。
We fund a lot of amazing carbon removal companies. How much that ends up being part of the solution, that will be up to governments. I think having the low-cost solutions there at least give us some very important options.
我们资助了很多了不起的碳消除公司。至于最终有多少能成为解决方案的一部分,这将取决于各国政府。我认为,低成本的解决方案至少为我们提供了一些极为重要的选择。
HANNAH RITCHIE: We’ve got some questions from the audience, so I’m going to move in the last five minutes to a few of those.
汉娜·里奇:我们有一些观众的提问,所以我将在最后的五分钟里讨论其中的几个问题。
We have a question from Professor David Halpern, from Behavioural Insights Team. It sounds like he’s watched your documentary many times. He said, “In your documentary, About Bill, you had a copy of the book, Behave, on the table. How does Bill see the role of behavioral science blend with more conventional technology and his strategy to take on infectious diseases, climate change, and poverty?”
我们有一个来自行为洞察小组的戴维·哈尔彭(David Halpern)教授的问题。听起来他已经看过你的纪录片很多次了。他说,“在你的纪录片《关于比尔》(中文名暂译)中,你在桌子上放了一本《行为》(中文名暂译)。比尔是如何看待行为科学与更传统的技术相结合的作用,以及他应对传染病、气候变化和贫困的策略的?”
BILL GATES: Well, the main area that behavioral science has come into the work I do is in health-seeking behaviors, what’s the reputation of antenatal care visits, or what are the rumors about vaccines, or how do you get farmers to take a risk on different seeds? Behavioral issues where we are a lot more sophisticated now than we have ever been, that’s a big deal in the health world.
比尔·盖茨:我工作中主要领域包含的行为科学,是求医行为,产前检查的声誉如何,或者关于疫苗的谣言是什么,或者你如何让农民冒险种植不同的种子?在行为问题上,我们比以往任何时候都更加复杂,这在健康领域是一个大问题。
It is a big deal in the climate world, because people want to feel a sense of engagement. What are the messages that get them to switch their purchasing to the degree that they can afford to do so? What is the thing that gets them politically activated? Can we have, across the political spectrum, people who largely believe this is an important cause? Those are areas that I don’t bring a lot of expertise. But being smart about how you draw people in, and how they choose to be exemplars in this area, is a very necessary part of the solution.
这在气候领域是个大问题,因为人们希望有一种参与感。是什么信息让他们在有能力的情况下改变购买方式?是什么让他们在政治上活跃起来?我们能否让不同政治派别的人都普遍认为这是一项重要的事业?在这些方面,我没有太多的专业知识。但如何吸引人们参与进来,以及他们如何选择成为这一领域的模范,是解决方案中非常必要的一部分。
HANNAH RITCHIE: A question from Raman Bhatia from OVO energy. He says, “In the UK and many other parts of Western Europe, net zero has become a political battleground, often pitched as a false tradeoff versus economic growth. What are your thoughts on the framing of the net zero opportunity for wider acceptance?”
汉娜·里奇:来自OVO能源公司的拉曼·巴蒂亚(Raman Bhatia)提出了一个问题。他表示,“在英国和西欧许多其他国家,净零已成为一个政治战场,通常被标榜为经济增长之间的虚假权衡。你对实现更广泛接受的净零机会有什么想法?”
BILL GATES: Well, I absolutely believe that the economic model of having growth, we are not going to move away from that. That is why I am so glad that innovation lets India have better lifestyles, or sub-Saharan Africa, over time, have more energy intensification without that being a threat to the planet.
比尔·盖茨:我绝对相信经济增长的模式,我们不会改变它。这就是为什么我很高兴创新让印度有了更好的生活方式,或者撒哈拉以南非洲,随着时间的推移,有了更多的能源集约化,而不会对地球构成威胁。
The idea that the political parties would have different strategies for how you go about doing climate change, that’s probably okay. But the idea that it calls into question, okay, is this a real thing, should this be a priority, that almost, to me, is like election denialism where it really undermines government to think about threats in the future, including weather disasters and things that it is supposed to think about – earthquakes and it being too hot for people to live. To some degree, a limited amount, they’re supposed to care about all of humanity and the stability of the globe, whether for moral purposes or reducing the migratory pressure that you come under. There are a lot of reasons why having solidarity with poor countries make sense.
对于如何应对气候变化,各政党会有不同的策略,这也许没什么问题。但这种想法会让人产生疑问,好吧,这是真的吗,这应该是优先考虑的吗,对我来说,这就像否认选举结果,它真正破坏了政府对未来威胁的思考,包括天气灾害和政府应该考虑的事情——地震,天气太热,人们无法生存。在某种程度上,一定程度而言,政府应该关心全人类和全球的稳定,无论是出于道德目的还是减少所面临的移民压力。有很多原因可以解释为什么与贫穷国家团结一致是有意义的。
I would be very sad if climate in the political dialogue becomes like it is presently in the United States, in other countries.
如果政治对话的气氛变得像目前在美国和其他国家一样,我会非常难过。
HANNAH RITCHIE: I would like to thank everyone for coming. Thank you very much, Bill Gates. [Applause]
汉娜·里奇:感谢大家的到来。非常感谢你,比尔·盖茨。[掌声]
BILL GATES: Thank you.
比尔·盖茨:谢谢。