Speaker 1: Entrepreneur in businessman Bill Gates and his business partner Paul
Speaker 1: Allen founded and built the world's largest software business, Microsoft,
Speaker 1: through technological innovation, keen business strategy, and aggressive business tactics.
Speaker 1: In the process, Gates became one of the richest men
Speaker 1: in the world. In February, Gates announced that he was
Speaker 1: stepping down as Microsoft's chairman to focus on charitable work
Speaker 1: at his foundation, the Bill of Melinda Gates Foundation, and
Speaker 1: Gates sat down with David Rubinstein, co founder of the
Speaker 1: Carlisle Group and hosts of the Bloomberg television show Peer
Speaker 1: to Peer Conversations to discuss global warming, carbon emissions, regulating
Speaker 1: big tech, and why he thinks the impossible foods and
Speaker 1: beyond meat can help the environment. For about twenty years
Speaker 1: or so, you've been the wealthiest man in the world.
Speaker 1: But because you've given away so much money. Recently, Jeff
Speaker 1: Bezos became wealthier. Do you think if you had stayed
Speaker 1: in college and gotten your college degree. I mean, you
Speaker 1: don't feel inadequate now because being only the second wealthiest
Speaker 1: man in the world was at right. No, I mean
Speaker 1: it's a sign that I haven't given them money way
Speaker 1: fast enough to drop out of the top ten, you know,
Speaker 1: and the market has been strong. Actually, the market has
Speaker 1: been strong. Microsoft is up thirty this year. So to
Speaker 1: what do you attribute that? Uh, the company, you know,
Speaker 1: it's doing super well. Such in Ndala is a great CEO.
Speaker 1: You know, the whole dream of the importance of software
Speaker 1: has really come true. The five most valuable companies in
Speaker 1: the world are these technology companies. Microsoft, you know, has
Speaker 1: a good share of that. I get to spend about
Speaker 1: a sixth of my time now is over at Microsoft.
Speaker 1: So recently you said that the biggest mistake you've made
Speaker 1: professionally was that, um, Microsoft should have had the Android technology.
Speaker 1: Why was that the big this mistake when you're in
Speaker 1: a field, you know, we were in the field of
Speaker 1: doing operating systems for personal computers. We knew the mobile
Speaker 1: phone would be very popular, and so we were doing
Speaker 1: what was called Windows Mobile. We missed being the dominant
Speaker 1: mobile operating system by very tiny amount. We were distracted
Speaker 1: during Iron and Trust trial. We didn't assign the best
Speaker 1: people to do the work. So it's the biggest mistake
Speaker 1: I made in terms of something that was clearly within
Speaker 1: our skill set. We were clearly the company that that
Speaker 1: should have achieved that your two million areas of focus
Speaker 1: our cater twelve education, United States, and healthcare in the
Speaker 1: least wealthy parts of the world. Recently, you've decided to
Speaker 1: make another effort, not necessarily through your foundation, but through
Speaker 1: Breakthrough Energy to try to do something about climate change.
Speaker 1: Why are you so worried about climate change? Well, the
Speaker 1: climate change is a problem that gets worse every year,
Speaker 1: and yet what you have to do on a global
Speaker 1: basis is very dramatic and reshaping the entire physical economy
Speaker 1: that we have. And so it's a very complex problem,
Speaker 1: and it's a problem that fits where I see my
Speaker 1: value at it, which is looking at something through the
Speaker 1: lens of innovation, not just the R and D part,
Speaker 1: but the creation of products and the deployment of products,
Speaker 1: and so helping educate people about Okay, what where, what
Speaker 1: are the sources of these greenhouse gases? And how do
Speaker 1: you get on a path of innovation so that you
Speaker 1: can get global adoption and actually bring emissions down dramatically,
Speaker 1: Because that's part of your foundation, or you're doing this
Speaker 1: outside your foundation. Okay, the the part where you mitigate
Speaker 1: and you help the poor countries with better seeds and
Speaker 1: better policies. UH, partly through development aid that is through
Speaker 1: the foundation, that mitigation part the part where you invent
Speaker 1: new ways of making uh fuels, electricity, cement, steal meat
Speaker 1: that is uh done directly by me with a lot
Speaker 1: of investments, including the fund that you mentioned. The so
Speaker 1: called breakto Energy Ventures is a fund that I assembled
Speaker 1: a group of twenty two people uh to put money
Speaker 1: into companies that are trying to commercialize the breakthroughs. Right,
Speaker 1: but that's a fund of one billion dollars, right you
Speaker 1: put in two So can one billion dollars really make
Speaker 1: that much of a difference a billion? Uh? It's actually
Speaker 1: been very catalytic so far. They have twenty investments. UH
Speaker 1: late next year will probably raise another billion to a
Speaker 1: billion and a half. You know, this is all about
Speaker 1: innovation some right now. The premium if you said, okay,
Speaker 1: you have to make steal with no emissions, that steel
Speaker 1: would cost you four times what steel does today. Your
Speaker 1: electric bill would more than double. Uh if if we
Speaker 1: just take the technology we have today. So um Yes,
Speaker 1: supporting those companies and drawing other investors in. One thing
Speaker 1: break Through Energy has done has gotten a lot of
Speaker 1: co investors green investing didn't go very well in the
Speaker 1: first round, and so it looked like a field that
Speaker 1: might UH evaporate to some three because d vs come
Speaker 1: in and being able to bring a depth of understanding
Speaker 1: to these things. Not only have they been able to invest,
Speaker 1: the first billing will be UH fully committed within the
Speaker 1: next year. But we've gotten other investors, so that's gone
Speaker 1: quite well. And in the technology they only invest in
Speaker 1: companies who have a chance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions
Speaker 1: by a half a percent each each company. UH. And
Speaker 1: you know they've found twenty and I'm sure they'll find
Speaker 1: another twenty. I'm the smallest investor in that fund, I think,
Speaker 1: So am I going to get my money back and
Speaker 1: make a return? Or Um? What what do you say?
Speaker 1: I'd say it's of the things you invest in. It's
Speaker 1: probably one of the higher risk things. It is being
Speaker 1: done on a commercial basis. UH. You know, we're likely
Speaker 1: to have a few significant successes, so it's not philanthropic
Speaker 1: in the sense that you can deduct it. UH. But
Speaker 1: the time frame of the returns and the riskiness of
Speaker 1: the turns are fairly high. So we do expect UH
Speaker 1: to make a profit out of that fund. So Why
Speaker 1: do you think some people do not believe that there
Speaker 1: is such a thing as climate change. What is propelling
Speaker 1: them to say there's no climate change? Is it's scientific
Speaker 1: evidence or some other political reason. I won't mention anybody,
Speaker 1: but there are some people who don't think that there
Speaker 1: is climate change. Well, you know, they must not have
Speaker 1: taken enough science courses or something. I don't know it. Uh.
Speaker 1: The climate is a complex issue, and you know, just
Speaker 1: understanding how you do the abatement requires a lot of
Speaker 1: in depth study. In the United States, it's become somewhat
Speaker 1: of a partisan issue, which is unfortunate. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it might make it harder to achieve the type of
Speaker 1: agreements we need uh here here in the United States.
Speaker 1: But you know, we have two problems. We have the
Speaker 1: people who deny climate and then we have the people
Speaker 1: who think it's easy to solve, and we need to
Speaker 1: help educate both of those groups. But in the history
Speaker 1: of human civilization, is there any evidence that people will
Speaker 1: do things that will affect their great great grandchildren but
Speaker 1: that they won't see the benefit from. Well, the United States, actually,
Speaker 1: of all governments, has been willing to take on very
Speaker 1: difficult problems like cancer and make gigantic investments knowing that
Speaker 1: the real payoff would be many decades down the road. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know when that was first being pushed. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: people are saying, hey, this is important. Climate change is
Speaker 1: like that where you've got to take a long term perspective.
Speaker 1: And government at its best is when it's taking that
Speaker 1: long term perspective and funding the basic guaranty and the
Speaker 1: policies that lead to scale deployment. Now, a large part
Speaker 1: of the carbon we have in the atmosphere now is
Speaker 1: caused by the electricity grid, which is about so exactly
Speaker 1: so Um, it comes from agriculture and forestry. Why is
Speaker 1: that causing such a big increasing carbon Well, the mat
Speaker 1: category UH is a variety of things. When you clear land,
Speaker 1: you're taking in the carbon that stored, seeing the trees
Speaker 1: or plants there, and you're releasing all of that like
Speaker 1: burning the land, uh saying Indonesia for um palm oil plantations.
Speaker 1: Another thing is that UH, cows and other grass eating
Speaker 1: species have a digestion system that emits methane, and methane
Speaker 1: is a very powerful greenhouse gas, and so cows alone
Speaker 1: account for about six percent of global emissions. And so
Speaker 1: we need to change cows just cows alone. How are
Speaker 1: we going to do that? Well? Actually, of all the categories, uh,
Speaker 1: the one that has gone better than I would have
Speaker 1: expected five years ago is this work to make what's
Speaker 1: called artificial meat. And so you have people like Impossible
Speaker 1: or Beyond Meat, both which uh I invested in. You
Speaker 1: eat it as well, and you like it, that's absolutely.
Speaker 1: You can go to Burger King and by the Impossible burger.
Speaker 1: All right, is it healthier for you or just healthier
Speaker 1: for the It's slightly healthier for you in terms of
Speaker 1: less cholesterol. It's of course dramatic reduction in methane emissions,
Speaker 1: you know, animal cruelty, manure management, and the pressure that
Speaker 1: meat consumption puts on land use. What about electric cars?
Speaker 1: Do you think that's a solution. Absolutely? They If you
Speaker 1: look at the transport sector, passenger cars with about another
Speaker 1: factor of two to three in battery improvement, which is possible,
Speaker 1: the mainstream for passenger cars can become electric. So you
Speaker 1: have to make that transition. Uh, you've got to scale
Speaker 1: it up. You've got to make sure electricity is zero emission.
Speaker 1: But for trucks and planes, uh, there's almost no chance
Speaker 1: the batteries will be good enough, and so there you'll
Speaker 1: still need to create liquid fuels, either with electricity or biofuels.
Speaker 1: Uh some way. Fuels are amazing. You know, the energy
Speaker 1: density of gasoline is thirty times the energy density of
Speaker 1: the best battery we can make. And so if you
Speaker 1: look at like a a container ship that crosses the ocean,
Speaker 1: having your fuel be thirty times less efficient would mean
Speaker 1: that nine of the weight you're carrying would be the
Speaker 1: batteries instead of the cargo. And so trucks and planes
Speaker 1: and boats, electrification is unlikely to work in those cases.
Speaker 1: So we need ways of making fuels that are are
Speaker 1: zero carbon. When you talk to heads of state about this,
Speaker 1: do they roll their eyes and say, we're happy to me,
Speaker 1: do you can I have a selfie with you? And
Speaker 1: so forth? But do they really do anything? And what
Speaker 1: are you trying to get heads of state to do? Well?
Speaker 1: In the um Paris Climate Conference, one of the things
Speaker 1: that was missing was to focus on R and D
Speaker 1: and uh. So actually France said yes, we want that
Speaker 1: to be for the first time at a COP a
Speaker 1: real issue that gets discussed. And so what was called
Speaker 1: Mission Innovation, which Prime Minister MODI got to pick that name.
Speaker 1: That idea of a commitment of over thirty governments to
Speaker 1: double their energy R and D was a significant milestone
Speaker 1: that came out of that conference. Uh. In order to
Speaker 1: get that commitment, UH I had to make the commitment
Speaker 1: that there would be breakthrough energy that would take things
Speaker 1: out of those labs and help get them into the marketplace.
Speaker 1: So there's been some progress. Climate is complicated enough that UH,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't want you want a broad set
Speaker 1: of people in the government to understand the the complexities
Speaker 1: and in terms of the R and D work that
Speaker 1: needs to be done, unless the US is deeply engaged,
Speaker 1: it's unlikely to happen because so much of the world's
Speaker 1: capacity to do that innovation is here in the United States.
Speaker 1: States pulled out more or less of the Paris Accord,
Speaker 1: though not technically so for another year or so. UM.
Speaker 1: Is that of concern to you? And do you think
Speaker 1: this is going to hurt the effort to change climate
Speaker 1: change around the world. Yeah, it's a huge step backwards.
Speaker 1: Even if you meet all the current commitments in that
Speaker 1: climate accord, you're still way over two degrees of warming
Speaker 1: and most countries are behind the commitments they made. Those
Speaker 1: commitments were a set of reductions where you would compare
Speaker 1: your two emissions to your two thousand five emissions. And
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of that, that's easy. The shift
Speaker 1: from cold and natural gas, which is one kind thing,
Speaker 1: is a lot of that. Uh. And yet the world
Speaker 1: is falling in short and so to him, people like
Speaker 1: the United States say, Okay, that's even that's not important. Uh.
Speaker 1: It just shows how daunting this is going to be.
Speaker 1: There's no way we'll get there without the US coming
Speaker 1: back in in a strong way. You think if you
Speaker 1: met with President Trump you could convince him on Paris
Speaker 1: to maybe get back in. Or is that beyond your
Speaker 1: capabilities to do that? I I someone else should do that. Um.
Speaker 1: All right, now, the largest companies in the world and
Speaker 1: the United States today are technology companies Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft,
Speaker 1: and so forth. UM. Do you worry that there's too
Speaker 1: much power and too much data in the hands of
Speaker 1: these technology companies? And are you surprised that government hasn't
Speaker 1: done something more than they've done today about this? Well,
Speaker 1: technology has become so central that government has to think, Okay,
Speaker 1: what does that mean about elections? What does it mean
Speaker 1: about bullying. What does it mean about why are tapping
Speaker 1: authorities that lets you find out uh what's going on
Speaker 1: financially or uh, you know, drug money laundering, things like that.
Speaker 1: So yes, the government needs get involved. I for the
Speaker 1: earliers of Microsoft break two people that I didn't have
Speaker 1: an office in Washington, d C. And eventually I came
Speaker 1: to regret uh that statement because it was kind of
Speaker 1: almost like taunting Washington, d C. Uh. And so now
Speaker 1: the technology companies, partly because of the lesson of Microsoft,
Speaker 1: uh of course, you know, they could have seen that
Speaker 1: lesson through a T and T R IBM or codact
Speaker 1: or a lot of innovators as well. They're very engaged.
Speaker 1: There will be more regulation of the tech sector, things
Speaker 1: like privacy, I'm sure though, and there should be at
Speaker 1: some point federal regulation that relates to that. The fact
Speaker 1: that now this is the way people consume media, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, has really brought it into a realm that uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we need to shape it so that the
Speaker 1: benefits outweigh outweigh the negatives. So if you were twenty
Speaker 1: years old today and you wanted to start a new
Speaker 1: company drop out of Harvard, what company or what area
Speaker 1: would you want to start it in Well, this is
Speaker 1: a great time to be doing innovation because the tools
Speaker 1: of innovation are so much better. There are lots of
Speaker 1: things in biology that are very interesting. Uh, there are
Speaker 1: lots of things in energy that are interesting. Given my background,
Speaker 1: I would start an AI company that whose goal would
Speaker 1: be to uh teach computer's kind of read so that
Speaker 1: they can absorb and understand all the written knowledge of
Speaker 1: the world. That's an area where AI has yet to
Speaker 1: make progress, and it will be quite profound when we
Speaker 1: achieve that goal. So are you worried about the power
Speaker 1: of AI to disrupt our civilization and put people out
Speaker 1: of work? Those kind of things. The increased productivity that
Speaker 1: will come from a I will create dilemmas about what
Speaker 1: should people do with that extra time? And you've got
Speaker 1: to consider that a good thing, even though it will
Speaker 1: be an interesting set of adjustments that have to take place.
Speaker 1: You assess the two most urgent issues were K to
Speaker 1: twelve in the United States and health in the less
Speaker 1: developed areas. How did you pick those two? Any regrets
Speaker 1: about picking those two? And have you made progress on
Speaker 1: either of those two? Well, global health is our biggest area,
Speaker 1: and there the progress has been really unbelievable, not just
Speaker 1: because of our work, but our partners that include the
Speaker 1: US government spending on pet far the European donors who
Speaker 1: have really stepped up on these health issues. One of
Speaker 1: the metrics of importance is the number of children in
Speaker 1: the world who died before the age of five. When
Speaker 1: we got started in the year two thousand, that was
Speaker 1: over ten million a year. Now it's about five million year,
Speaker 1: and so you know, it's just mind blowing, and and
Speaker 1: people aren't that as aware of it. Iss you'd like
Speaker 1: them to be. The those deaths. Because of getting out
Speaker 1: vaccines and understanding a bit more about nutrition, those deaths
Speaker 1: have been cut in half. Now the goal is to
Speaker 1: cut them in half again. Our US education work, uh
Speaker 1: that is not just K through twelve, that includes higher
Speaker 1: it as well. They're the key metrics, uh, dropout rates, UM,
Speaker 1: math and verbal achievement. Those metrics have moved essentially not
Speaker 1: at all. And even as the US is spending more
Speaker 1: resources on education, we spend by far more than any
Speaker 1: any country in the world, and yet our results are
Speaker 1: quite a bit worse. Uh then, Uh, almost all the
Speaker 1: other rich countries and even some middle income countries. You know,
Speaker 1: even Vietnam now is passing us in terms of their
Speaker 1: math results. So the there, the fields as a whole
Speaker 1: in our work has not had the impact we hope for.
Speaker 1: So today people come to you all the time for money.
Speaker 1: I assume everywhere you go people say, by the way,
Speaker 1: I have this thing you should invest in. By I
Speaker 1: have a couple of myself I've mentioned later, No, not
Speaker 1: just gonna do now, a couple of things you should
Speaker 1: invest in or things you should give money to. So
Speaker 1: how do you resist it you have some person who
Speaker 1: says no for you, or how do you do that?
Speaker 1: Let many people? How many people say no? Well, once
Speaker 1: you pick what you care about. If somebody has something
Speaker 1: that can make a difference in global health, we're super interested.
Speaker 1: And you know we have staff people and if it's
Speaker 1: to do with global help, some of those people will
Speaker 1: come out and talk through with you whatever your innovation
Speaker 1: is and how we can partner with you on that.
Speaker 1: You know, so that's clearly in our area. If it's
Speaker 1: something that can substantially improve K through to welve education,
Speaker 1: then we're going to be very interested in it. If
Speaker 1: people are asking outside of those things, then you know,
Speaker 1: fortunately you can say no, because focuses is key to philanthropy.
Speaker 1: So people have recognized over the years that raising children
Speaker 1: is difficult. Jackie Kennedy famously said, if you mess up
Speaker 1: raising your children, nothing else matters. You have three children,
Speaker 1: seem to be well adjusted, and you've kept them out
Speaker 1: of the newspapers and so forth. How do you avoid
Speaker 1: spoiling kids like that? I think that's a huge problem.
Speaker 1: You know. Obviously our kids have benefited from having a
Speaker 1: great education and an opportunity to travel and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: so they're very lucky in that sense. Making sure that
Speaker 1: the visibility or the way people treat them is not unnatural.
Speaker 1: There're some challenges that come with that. So far, they've
Speaker 1: handled it well. You know, Melinda uh is the one
Speaker 1: who deserves any are certainly almost all the credit uh
Speaker 1: for the kids so far doing very well. You know,
Speaker 1: our kids, we've said to them that that, you know,
Speaker 1: the money is going to the foundation, and so they
Speaker 1: don't think of themselves as sort of aristocratic. What do
Speaker 1: they say to tell them that? They say, can you
Speaker 1: give me a little bit or something? Or they don't
Speaker 1: they don't ask for some they'll get a little bit.
Speaker 1: How much money has your Foundation given away today about
Speaker 1: forty billion dollars. Yeah, we're now up to giving six
Speaker 1: billion dollars a year. So finally, UM, if people are
Speaker 1: watching now and they say, all right, I want to
Speaker 1: do something about climate change, but I'm just one person.
Speaker 1: I don't have the resource of Bill Gates says, what
Speaker 1: can any average person do to have some impact on
Speaker 1: climate change? In your view? Well, certainly they can take
Speaker 1: things like, uh, these new meat products or how they
Speaker 1: buy electricity, and they can help, uh draw hive up
Speaker 1: the scale of the green solutions. The most important thing
Speaker 1: at this stage is their political voice. Uh, there's going
Speaker 1: to be a need to put substantial resources into this effort,
Speaker 1: and you know we need will need a bipartisan solution
Speaker 1: and to send the right signal to the market. You
Speaker 1: actually don't if you just win one year and then
Speaker 1: it gets repealed, that doesn't help at all. The key
Speaker 1: is what people see the policies will be over the
Speaker 1: next thirty years on a consistent basis, and that means
Speaker 1: it's a much higher bar than just a one time victory.
Speaker 1: That was Billy Melinda Gates Foundation co chair and Microsoft
Speaker 1: co founder Bill Gates