Bill Gates is an optimist when it comes to climate change.
Yes, the Microsoft co-founder and global health philanthropist said, the last four years have been a wasted opportunity to combat the threat of a warming planet and U.S. leadership on the issue waned under Donald Trump.
But he also believes achieving President Joe Biden's ambitious goals of decarbonizing the energy sector by 2035 and attaining net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 is within reach. That is, if clean energy storage and transmission challenges are met, next-generation nuclear power remains part of the portfolio, and the federal government ramps up investment in research and development of carbon-neutral building materials to make them far less expensive.
"My goal is to say we need a plan," Gates told USA TODAY during a recent interview. "People who think a plan is easy are wrong. People who think a plan is impossible are wrong. It's super hard and very broad, but it's doable."
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