Billionaire software tycoon Bill Gates has pontificated that businessmen who operate in free markets are too greedy and incompetent to reduce concentrations of carbon dioxide that he believes are disastrously heating the planet.
Gates held forth on his anti-capitalist views in an interview published in this month’s issue of The Atlantic.
Gates, who made his billions in free markets, declared that “there’s no fortune to be made” in private-sector attempts to lower CO2 levels.
“Even if you have a new energy source that costs the same as today’s and emits no CO2, it will be uncertain compared with what’s tried-and-true and already operating at unbelievable scale and has gotten through all the regulatory problems,” Gates told The Atlantic.
As such, the Microsoft mogul wants to force high taxes on carbon dioxide, a naturally occurring chemical compound.
“Without a substantial carbon tax, there’s no incentive for innovators or plant buyers to switch,” Gates, a vendor of computer software and videogames, claimed.
“Since World War II, US-government R&D has defined the state of the art in almost every area. The private sector is in general inept.”
Gates also asserts that wealthy nations have an obligation to use massive government action and philanthropy by rich people to reduce CO2 levels, then provide the technology to poorer countries at a low cost.
“The climate problem has to be solved in the rich countries. China and the US and Europe have to solve CO2 emissions, and when they do, hopefully they’ll make it cheap enough for everyone else,” Gates said. (RELATED: The Insane Numbers That Explain Why China Abolished Its One-Child Policy)
Gates granted The Atlantic interview in order to publicize his plan to spend $2 billion on green energy initiatives. He urged other billionaires to give away money in an attempt to wean the United States from fossil fuels by 2050.
Via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates has also poured hundreds millions of dollars into other initiatives including efforts to develop and promote Common Core. Last month he complained that his ambitious quest to force a set of one-size-fits-all national education standards on America’s obstinate, noncompliant parents is much harder than finding a cure for malaria. (RELATED: Bill Gates: Imposing Common Core On America Is Way Harder Than CURING MALARIA)
Gates, who dropped out of Harvard University, has attained a high school degree from Lakeside School, a posh prep school in Seattle where Common Core is not mandated and where annual tuition currently runs $30,850. (RELATED: Bill Gates Loves Common Core For Your Kids, BUT NOT HIS)
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