The day before the inauguration, while Lady Gaga was repeating “The Star-Spangled Banner” in Washington, DC, wildfires in Sonoma, Santa Cruz and Ventura counties in California, shocking weathermen who never witnessed the fire season of state extend until January. NASA had just announced that 2020 was equal to 2016 for the warmest year on record. As the Covid-19 pandemic prompted city dwellers to look for safer, safer places – Vermont, Kansas, Idaho – the FBI began arresting Americans who revolted in the US Chapter. Online sales of prepper equipment (gas masks, food preservation kits) were fast.
Bill Gates was at his lakefront complex in Seattle, preparing for his next effort to save the planet from mass extinction. For 20 years, Gates has been studying the double global impact of disease and poverty. These efforts led him to consider climate change and the painful impact on civilization. This month, Knopf will publish his latest book, How to avoid a climate disaster. Remarkably, given the state of the world, it is an optimistic book, which can do, full of solutions to a problem that President Jimmy Carter began to warn in 1977.
Last month’s inauguration of President Joe Biden had a major impact on Gates’ prospects. An earlier draft of the book included measures for a second term for Donald Trump. In November, after the election, he edited these parts, including provisions on how US state and foreign governments could explain the lack of federal support. Another Trump victory, says Gates, would have allowed us “to hold our breath for four years and try not to turn blue.”
“I hope Joe Biden stays healthy,” he told me during our first virtual interview in December, as he sat in a glass-walled conference room at Gates Ventures known as the Fishbowl, where he had meetings and based on Microsoft teams. platform during the pandemic.
Lake Washington in Seattle shines over his shoulder, where just below a distant motorboat he awakens as Gates slips into his favorite position, leaning with one ankle over his knee in an ergonomic conference room chair. Gates, 65, has already faced unresolved issues, from trying to eradicate polio to epic rivalries with Steve Jobs and Google. Microsoft co-founder also sounded the alarm about the need to prepare for a global pandemic. Climate change is yet another challenge that Gates has made on his own plate.