As this publication’s name is Ufuk’s Notes, I need to admit I am believing Bill Gates is a very good man, at least for the last 2 decades. We will investigate that guy later, but for now let’s dive into his new podcast series. New and not very deep rabbit hole!

This episode, he and his guest talked about sustainability with the shed of data.

As always, let’s start with his guest

Hannah Ritchie

She1 is a very young (everyone younger than me is very young) data scientist from Scotland. She is now researcher in University of Oxford and Deputy Editor and Science Outreach Lead at Our World in Data2. I think she became famous with her TED talk3 last year and then her book: Not the End of the World4. So she clearly is another biological and walking library for me. For today, let’s keep in context of this podcast.

Podcast Notes

Hannah and Bill started to talk about Hannah, and Hannah started to talk about her book.

By the way, her book has 4.35/5 stars with 820 ratings and I already add it to my antilibrary. Of course, I won’t read it, but it is nice to keep it in list of to-read:)

Air pollution is underrated problem

So she thinks air pollution is still underrated problem. Let’s directly quote from her words:

If you look at the number of premature deaths from air pollution, it’s actually much higher than climate change today. Now, that might change in the future, but, for me, air pollution is one of the biggest health challenges we face. The WHO estimates that it’s around 7 million premature deaths every year. You have outdoor air pollution, which is what we see as the emissions from cars and power stations, et cetera, which is a big problem. But there is also a vastly underrated problem, which is indoor air pollution, which is basically people, mostly in energy poverty, where the only fuels they have are wood or charcoal or crop waste. And they’re basically using this to heat and cook in their homes. And the amount of air pollution that you get from this is really, really damaging to health.

We did solve some global crisis before

It was the ozone layer.

One is the ozone layer, which I just learned about from history books, because I kind of missed the whole ozone layer period, but at the time, that was a massive problem. Countries came together and we reduced emissions of these ozone depleting gases by more than 99%.

And acid rains and local air pollutions:

Acid rain is another one, especially in Europe and North America, acid rain was a massive problem and we’ve basically solved that. And now you’re starting to see it in middle-income countries. So China, for example, has seen really stark declines in local air pollution. But when you take rich countries, so London or Edinburgh where I’m from, you’ve seen really dramatic reductions in local air pollution, which has saved a lot of lives. So there are a range of problems that we have solved

Optimism from Hannah

When asked about are there any good numbers about greenhouse gasses, here is the quote from data scientist (data is talking via her):

Yes, so on greenhouse gas emissions, I guess, across the world, it’s a very mixed picture. On a global level, we did see a very rapid rise in the 1990s and early 2000s. Over the last decade or so we’ve kind of seen a bit of a plateauing, emissions are still increasing a little bit, but they are going up very, very slowly. So rich countries in particular have managed to significantly reduce emissions over the last few decades. In the U.K., for example, emissions have approximately halved, and some of that is because of offshoring, but not all of it is because of offshoring. So even when we account for that, emissions are going down

AI role in Climate Action

This time, Hannah asked Bill If the AI play an important role to solve climate crisis. The answer of the Bill was obvious and expected :) But with one good anecdote:

Well, absolutely, because our ability to model complex phenomena, the AIs are helping a lot with that. For example, looking at the genetics of cows, and saying, “Hey, some cows emit a lot of methane, and some emit very, very little and some cows survive in hot weather very well, and some do not.” And with our ability to edit genes, one of the most dramatic sources of emissions, that at one time I wasn’t sure the path forward, now we can see either making the cows better, or various techniques where they create meat without the cow…

Final Notes

If we can solve a problem better than previous technology for the same price, or cheaper with same performance; people would buy it. It is also fact for energy resources, as renewable become cheaper we are going to use them a lot as humanity.

You can read full episode transcript5 via this link.

Thank you for reading.