BILL Gates has claimed it’d be “very easy” to solve the Covid pandemic when compared to the global climate change crisis.
The 65-year-old Microsoft co-founder revealed he isn’t too worried about combating the coronavirus pandemic prior to the release of his new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.
During an interview with BBC News, the American tech tycoon said: “Well, the pandemic will come to an end because these amazing vaccines were invented in a year and we’re trying to scale them up and adopt to the variance.
“But, compared to climate change – that’s very, very easy.
“Sadly, climate change will cause far more deaths – over five times as many per year by the end of the century – but it requires innovation across the entire physical economy.”
Changes would need to be made in steel plants, cement plants, electricity, transport system, and more, Gates noted.
Gates insisted that if greenhouse gas emissions could be completely eliminated it would be “the most amazing thing humanity has ever done.”
According to the billionaire, the world adds 51billion tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere each year.
“We’ve never made a transition like we’re talking about doing in the next 30 years,” Gates explained. “There is no precedent for this.”
He revealed that less than 30 percent of total emissions comes from electricity.
The other 70 percent that needs to be decarbonized includes fertilizer production, transport systems, steel, and cement plants.
Planting trees is another way to reduce emissions – which is mostly made up of carbon dioxide.
Gates added: “Right now, you don’t see the pain you’re causing as you emit carbon dioxide.
“We need to have price signals to tell the private sector that we want green products.”
Gates’ new book – which details “everything you need to know about avoiding the worst climate outcomes” – will be available online and in bookstores on Tuesday, February 16.
Meanwhile, Gates has warned of the next two disasters most likely to hit Earth – six years after he spookily predicted a coronavirus-style pandemic was on the way.
In another recent interview, Gates said that he believes the greatest future threats to humanity are climate change and bioterrorism.
He told the YouTube channel Veritasium that the world also wasn’t ready for the emergence of another deadly virus in years to come.
During a 2015 TedTalk, Gates warned that civilization was ill-prepared for a deadly epidemic.
He said the disaster would involve a virus “where people feel well enough while they’re infectious that they get on a plane or they go to a market.”
The billionaire’s comments came five years before the coronavirus pandemic which has now killed 2.4million people worldwide.
Gates, who with his wife Melinda runs the Gates Foundation, which helps to eradicate infectious diseases around the world, also offered his take on the major threats faced by the world today.
“One is climate change. Every year that would be a death toll even greater than we have had in this pandemic,” Gates said.
He added: “Bio-terrorism. Somebody who wants to cause damage could engineer a virus and that means the cost, the chance of running into this is more than the naturally-caused epidemics like the current one.”
A few days ago, Gates’ medical school student daughter poked fun at conspiracy theorists and said she didn’t get her father’s implant when she got the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.
Jennifer Gates, 24, took to Instagram to fight back conspiracy theorists and advocate for anyone eligible to get the vaccine, saying the first dose “sadly did NOT implant my genius father into my brain.”
Her caption followed accusations that the Covid-19 vaccine contains implants that allows Bill Gates to track people’s movements.
