As the global climate talks in Scotland enter their second week, Bill Gates on Monday shared his customarily upbeat assessment of what he experienced while attending the early days of the United Nation’s COP26 summit.
In a GatesNotes blog, the Microsoft co-founder cited a number of hopeful signs that humanity is heading in positive directions in its effort to quit its carbon addiction and stave off the most dire climate outcomes.
“My main impression is how much things have changed since the last summit, back in 2015 — and I don’t mean because of COVID. The climate conversation has shifted dramatically, and for the better,” Gates wrote.
His three takeaways:
- The importance of innovating and deploying new, carbon-cutting technologies was front-and-center at COP26. Gates himself spoke at a session focused on the issue.
- The private sector is stepping up as a major player in combating the climate crisis, joining governments and nonprofits.
- There is more attention on helping people survive in a hotter world, and particularly those in lower-income countries that are going to be hardest hit, despite the fact that they’ve done the least to stoke the warming. In the past, climate adaptation raised concerns among some parties for putting resources into dealing with climate change, rather than fighting it.
In the blog post, Gates went on to promote initiatives in these areas where he’s playing a role, whether through Breakthrough Energy, a Gates-backed effort to fund climate research, partnerships and investments in climate tech startups, or from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That includes participation in the Net Zero World Initiative, and the foundation’s pledge of $315 million to an effort to help farmers adapt to warming.
“If we keep this up — if the world puts even more effort into innovations that reduce the cost of getting to zero and help the poorest people adapt to climate change — then we’ll be able to look back on this summit as an important milestone in avoiding a climate disaster,” he wrote.
Gates isn’t the only Pacific Northwesterner sharing optimistic news from COP26.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee also traveled to Glasgow, leading a coalition of 68 state, regional and city governments that created their own carbon-cutting pledges. On Sunday, the governor announced an executive order to make the state’s vehicle fleet all electric by 2035 for light-duty vehicles and 2040 for medium- and heavy-duty trucks.
“We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to effectively mitigate climate change. The actions we take in the next five years will determine the fate of our species. I’m proud to stand with this global coalition of governors and mayors to go beyond pledges,” Inslee said in a statement.
An analysis published last week in the journal Science examined the carbon-cutting pledges made by the world’s countries before the summit kicked off. Researchers tallied up the emissions under the pledges and found that if fulfilled, there’s a 34% chance that we can limit the planet’s warming to 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. They’re not stellar odds, but it’s better than pre-COP26 promises: under pledges made in Paris in 2015, the odds of hitting that mark were only 8%, according to the study.
“New commitments, technological advances and the near- and long-term recovery from the pandemic have set us on a different course than what laid before us at the 2015 Paris Agreement,” said Gokul Iyer, co-lead author and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) research scientist.
The analysis, however, found that the preferred goal of a 1.5 degree increase (the planet has already warmed 1.1 degrees) was largely out of reach considering current efforts.
And serious challenges to reaching emissions goals are still unresolved. Nations are struggling to set up a carbon market that puts a price on warming pollutants, and two key players — China and Russia — failed to send their leaders to COP26 and have been less than supportive of aggressive climate fighting efforts.
The summit is scheduled to end on Friday, but the previous 13 climate summits have all blown their timeline, according to Bloomberg.
