Divestment from fossil fuels would be ineffective on its own as a means of halting global warming, software billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gates said on Friday.
Pulling money out of carbon-heavy industry must be coupled with large spending on alternative technologies to make any difference, Gates said.
The Microsoft mogul is under fire for his charitable Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s reported US$1.4 billion investment in carbon-spewing companies such as BP PLC.
Photo: AFP
The Financial Times reported an announcement on Friday by Gates that he would invest US$2 billion in green energy, but would not pull his money out of companies that pump out carbon dioxide emissions blamed for climate change.
“I think the solution is investment,” Gates said later in Paris on the sidelines of the Solidays anti-AIDS-themed concert, which he backs.
“My concern is that I love the fact that students and people care about climate change, and I do not want to make them think that if they get people to divest that they have solved climate change,” he added.
Gates, who speaks of climate change as a major threat to the planet, said he was “not really against divestment,” as long as it was coupled with “some serious investments in breakthrough technology.”
People might become cynical “if we do not tell them which actions really make a difference and which ones do not,” Gates said.
In response to a grassroots movement modeled on 1980s opposition to apartheid in South Africa, companies, banks and investment funds, primarily European, have in recent weeks announced that they would halt investments in coal and other carbon-emitting industries.
High-profile examples include the Church of England, the University of Glasgow in Scotland and Stanford University in California.
The Norwegian legislature this month voted to pull its sovereign wealth fund — the world’s biggest — out of coal and French energy group Total SA has said it plans to end its coal activities.
The world’s nations are negotiating a new, global pact to be inked in Paris in December that would curb climate change through emission cuts.
The goal is to limit average global warming to 2?C over pre-Industrial Revolution levels.
According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this would require annual emissions cuts of 40 to 70 percent by 2050, compared with levels in 2010 — and to zero or below by 2100.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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