Bill Gates raises the bar for reversing climate change

At a TED talk last week and posted to the Huffington Post, Bill Gates said, "If CO2 reduction is important, we need to make it clear to people what really matters - getting to zero." That's huge in two huge ways. First, when the world's richest philanthropist talks, people listen. Second, the conversation has been elevated from "we need to reduce" to "we need to get to zero." To me this represents a tipping point in the climate change discussion from "is it occuring" to "how do we fix it?" Bravo, Bill.

I should disclose that I'm a little biased. I used to work in the same building as "billg" (we were all known by our email aliases back in 1991 - I was "mikeed"). This was before Bill Gates was a household name. Before I took a job there I had heard that he had a woman follow him around with a notepad to take down his ideas so they wouldn't get lost. I thought it was extremely pious and actually sort of held him in disdain. After a couple months of sharing the same restroom with him I finally asked my coworkers who the stinky guy in the urinal next me was with the dishevelled hair and wrinkled tweed suit. "Dude, that's Bill!" On one another occasion I had to let him in the building because he had forgotten his cardkey. Without thinking I said playfully, "Wow, kind of a bummer you can't get into your own building." Fortunately, he had his mind on bigger things...
I'm really glad he still has his mind on bigger things.