Why is the Gates foundation a place holder on climate change?

Discussion in 'Off Topic' started by 101101, Mar 2, 2019.

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  1. 101101

    101101 Well-Known Member

    Think about what Bill has said recently in justifying concentrations of wealth but what has his foundation done on the biggest problem we face besides Bill recently taking a jab at his old friend Larry over the viability of electric semis- outrageous in itself.

    And think of all the hedging:
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/we-need-an-energy-miracle/407881/
    Despite the Ted Talks he was late to divest the foundation's fund and apparently still hasn't done so fully and has criticized divestment. He's focused on nuclear. He's made too little too late noises. He's said there's no fortune to be made. He seemed to buy into the notion that electric cars could be dirtier. He seems to think the public investment in rarefied petrol (drugs) is justified. He says we don't know what the right tech solution will be for climate change. As late as November of 15 he was still saying Solar PV isn't economical. He's been critical of the German solar revolution. As late as Nov 15 he was doubting grid scale storage. And he talks like he didn't know fossil fuels were massively subsidized. He's said solar and wind subsidies have been quite generous. He's said we shouldn't be so certain of the negative outcomes of global warming because it undermines credibility.

    Presumably he has access to better info than the rest of us and knows more about it because its a personal focus.

    So why all the hedge speak?

    During the collapse Lockheed color center folds in Forbes touting that they had working economical fusion where a bus sized unit would put out 100MW each- they showed photos of the units. Maybe he is thinking of this or his own Terra Powers clandel stick breeders or Thorium or that countless suppressed zero point approaches will have the dust covers removed? No I don't think so unless he's also aware of a workable geo engineering rapid CO2 capture mechanism to work with accumulation.

    I think what is keeping him sideline is his role in life's rich pageant in the US. You see he is a loss leader as an apparent constructive capitalist with a seeming self made social mobility story that climbed to the top of the list and survived celebrity and kept family and reputation intact and even bothered to get educated and he survived cancer and he's smart and a good bridge player. He spawned a grade A blue chip and then transitioned to philanthropy. He is the American dream and a WASP. He has known friends like himself. He's the kind the kind of loss leader that floats the whole social utility of leisure class franchise. So the members of the government supported fossil fuel welfare club come to him for consolation putting him in a double bind. People he's close to won't be super rich any more if he acts too much on what he knows is right. So its all hedged keeping that's sidelined him. Good friends can be hard to come by and sometimes are hard to reason with.

    So how is it he says he will dedicate his fortune to doing what Musk is doing but the same time he poo poos divestment where not buying fossil fuels would be divestment and talks smack about electric trucks knowing fully well about electric locomotives etc long in use?

    There may be another dynamic at play as well. Maybe the collective fossil fuel industry quietly came to Bill and said: you know Bill we've done business with you for a long time and we feel like we can talk to you but here is how it is, we're in a bit of a bind and we need someone from your neck of the woods to start advocating for our interests or we will start using other people's software as an industry and we will have our pensions divest Microsoft so in essence play ball or we will capital strike you. On the plus side and as a cover you can do whatever you wan't with pushing green technology but advocate against divestment and we may occasionally ask you to talk down certain technologies espoused by your competitors. In turn we'll remain loyal to Microsoft Wintel style. Of course they don't say it like that, they say the exact same thing like this. We feel vulnerable over the way the valley culture is changing and the goals its espousing we need a partner we can trust and in return we will prioritize our business with that partner fully and reliably and we respect that Microsoft has a long history of very successfully maintaining close partnerships but in this case you'ed be partnering with all of us based in part on our long history of working together. Easy enough to check this but its seems quite plausible if looked at that Azure and MS cloud services are the favorite globally or especially in the US for the fossil fuel industry. Further the industry may have snuck up on MS and before they knew it they were so deep in petrol they had to accept offers they couldn't refuse.
     
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  3. 101101

    101101 Well-Known Member

    Better idea with what the Gate foundation should do with its money. Once its got Warren's money in it. It should find a town about with about 40-50K people in it and then hand every working person in that town 1 million after taxes all at once. Or have it pay out at 60K a year. See what happens. I am in favor of paying out all at once so they can pay off houses and retire early and just basically kill the BS of having to be told what to do for money which in this automated society is a crime! Its one thing to be a contractor who negotiates a contractor possibly with someone who never had to work for money and never will- I don't consider that level playing field equal bargaining unless the contractor is in the same position- that is one thing where there is no supervision only substantial performance and then payment or court enforced contract or the bargained for benefit. But this BS we have here where people never have enough education to see they are being subjected to animal husbandry and domesticated and where social mobility is gone and where the wages are never high enough to become a competitor or become free of subsistence and where the time is squeezed through rent seeking and unnecessary debt (from way too low wages) just to keep people too exhausted to resist and too distracted to fight this is a system of fear and cannibalism that needs to be ended because it will burn to the ground one way or another. No one should be told what to do for money in a society that could have been fully automated 50 years ago. Even prior to that it should not have worked that way. This slavery based society that is tending toward idiot royalty (reality show host, hospitality help manager king...) has to end. Think of the idiot petrarchy, pokes a hole in the ground on public lands pays a pittance and then charges the public rent for decades while spending a career bribing politicians through sponsored media.
     

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