Hacker News Reader

Comment by potbelly83 | Hacker News Reader

In all fairness, Gates does fly around the world in his private jet, live in huge energy consuming mansions, all the while expecting us commoners to live an ascetic life. If these people where serious in instrumenting change, maybe they could start setting an example by the life they lead?

View on HN

He's not advocating for "commoners to live an ascetic life". On the contrary, he keeps pointing out that we want the few billion people who currently live in Africa, Asia, South America and consume one tenth the energy consumed by the average American to be able to increase their standard of living, and thus, their energy consumption.

Where are you on this topic?

If you then envision a doubling of energy consumption, how do you square it with achieving net zero? Bill Gates has a plan, and he bothered to write it down in details.

As for his personal carbon footprint, he's rich enough to afford carbon offsets, which he buys [1]. Does that constitute "setting an example by the life he leads" ?

[1] https://www.greenbiz.com/article/bill-gates-doing-his-part-c...

It's hard to take anything that Gates says seriously anymore.

Any or all of it could be a smoke screen to distract attention away from this:

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/gates-microsoft-...

Carbon offsets are a lie that is "worse than doing nothing"[1]. They "don’t actually cancel out – er, offset – the emissions to which they are linked".[2] Instead, they greenwash additional emissions.

1: https://www.nature.com/articles/484007a

2: https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/the-biggest-problem-with-...

Maybe so.

But on the other hand, maybe whatever Bill Gates does, he would still be guilty in your eyes.

I'd give him credit if he actually did reduce his emissions down to that of an average American.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com