(In 600 Words)
I got into an argument with some people I respect, which is nothing unusual. But this time it stuck in my craw. We had just watched the 60-Minutes with Bill Gates shilling his new book.
He came across as a strange kind of superhero. I call him Super Boomer. He’s like a muppet character representing that epithet. His sweater (disguised as a vest) makes for a good Super Boomer outfit if you can imagine the big “SB” under his folded arms.
Does Gates really think he’s the guy that will discover the next big tech while tinkering with research papers in his garage? In his attempt to save the world, he is actually helping to destroy it.
In the 60 Minutes interview, Mr. Gates talks about these industrial band-aids to global warming that he will stitch together to save the planet. Dude, if you are going to solve global warming, you have to impact human habits at scale.
We can’t keep acting the way we are acting, only to counteract the harm we do by mixing CO2 into concrete or making nuclear waste more popular (two of Gates’ top strategies to solve global warming). If we are not transforming our wasteful lifestyle, we are not solving global warming. And no, Mr. Gates, you cannot call yourself an environmentalist while flying everywhere in your jet (even if you are buying very expensive gasoline).
You cannot apply top down, corporate, industrial methods to solve problems caused by top-down, corporate, industrial methods. We have to stop destroying the planet before we can start to save it. The solutions Gates offers seem designed to lull us to sleep; as if to say, “Super Boomer is going to offset your bad habits, keep consuming and don’t you worry about it.”
Our only opportunity to forge a new narrative that calls us to action will be using crowd-sourced and network-driven technology. It seems odd to be telling the founder of Microsoft a thing like that, but it seems no one else is.
You have to be at least 65 years of age to think that Mr. Gates’ past performance inventing MS-DOS is an indication of his future success saving the world. His efforts may be commendable, but the results will not be. He’s a snake oil salesman. He’s trying to sell us a new, improved industrial revolution.
At this point it is harmful to subsidize industrial solutions in this digital age. Please help him stop, someone! Furthermore, can you imagine having that much money and still feeling compelled to go on a sales tour for a new book? Go enjoy your massive wealth and try to minimize the harm you cause in the process. The time to hit it big with a new startup is behind you. You don’t need more money, at this point, and you are not going to make any radical discoveries. In fact, you are totally blind to innovation (e.g. bitcoin).
Now, if you ask me to be more constructive, to offer recommendations of what to do with boatloads of money, the best I can offer is to get behind youth leaders. Just in NYC we have Teens Take Charge and Civics Unplugged or Integrate NYC among many others. Today’s youth leaders have a vision for our future that will do more to save the planet than any stodgy old white guy can dream up in his multi-million-dollar garage.
TL:DR—Doing nothing would be better for the environment than subsidizing industrial-scale justifications for our already oversized industrial footprint.
