Bill Gates on How Business Leaders Can Fight Climate Change

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Business, Marketing, Teams, Business/entrepreneurship, Harvard, Management, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Hbr, Business/management, Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Business/marketing, Innovation, Communication

4.3 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 16 February 2021

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Bill Gates, philanthropist and founder of Microsoft, argues that, even as we work to end the global pandemic, we can't lose sight of another existential threat: climate change. He says that we need to take aggressive action to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and insists that regulation isn't enough. Businesses need to pave the way forward by investing much more heavily in climate-friendly innovation. Gates speaks with HBR editor in chief Adi Ignatius about his new book, "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need."

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	So you got the job. Now what? Join me, Eleni Mata, on HBR's new original podcast, New
0:08.1	Here, the Young Professionals Guide to Work, and how to make it work for you. Listen for
0:13.8	free wherever you get your podcasts. Just search New Here. See you there!
0:30.0	Welcome to the HBR Idea Cuss from Harvard Business Review. I'm Allison Beard. Bill Gates is one
0:50.3	of the world's best known entrepreneurs and philanthropists. After founding Microsoft and leading it for
0:55.8	25 years, he stepped down a CEO in 2000 to focus on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And he and his
1:02.8	wife have to date donated more than 50 billion dollars to improve health, sanitation, financial
1:08.5	services for the poor, and agricultural development around the world. This is a man who works with
1:14.2	governments, nonprofits, and private organizations to try to solve massive global problems. And right now,
1:21.0	in addition to the pandemic, he's paying a lot of attention to climate change. This is obviously an
1:26.6	issue that affects all of us, from emerging market farmers to develop country CEOs, and it's one
1:32.2	that's expected to create exponentially bigger challenges in the future if we don't do something
1:36.7	about it now. His new book is called How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, the solutions we have and
1:43.3	the breakthroughs we need. It's written for leaders in every sector, and it's a blueprint for fixing
1:48.6	this mess we're in. He recently sat down with Harvard Business Review Editor-in-Chief Audi Ignatius
1:54.6	to speak about how we work together to tackle the climate crisis and other big ones like COVID-19.
2:00.6	Here's their conversation. So Bill, welcome to HPR IdeaCast. Thank you. So let's get right into it.
2:09.3	Your call in this book, and obviously others have replicated this, to get down to net zero
2:14.6	carbon emissions. Your argument is to do that by 2050. Can you talk a little bit about where we are
2:21.4	now and the magnitude of getting from where we are now to net zero? Well, if you ignore economic
2:29.3	crises of the pandemic, we really haven't gotten on a track to reduce emissions at all. They keep
2:34.9	going up. To go all the way down to zero by 2050, you need to start having every year in and out
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Harvard Business Review, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Harvard Business Review and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.