Green Premiums have helped solar power plants—like this one near Copiapó, Chile, shown in July 2017—become cheaper sources of energy than fossil fuels Jamey StillingsIDEASBY BILL GATES JANUARY 22, 2021 12:08 PM ESTGates is an entrepreneur and philanthropist and a co-founder of Microsoft. He is a co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and founder of Breakthrough Energy. He is the author of How To Avoid a Climate Disaster, to be published Feb. 16.
Icame to focus on climate change indirectly—through the problem of energy poverty. In the early 2000s, I learned that about a billion people didn’t have reliable access to electricity and that half of them lived in sub-Saharan Africa. (The picture has improved since then, though today roughly 860 million people don’t have electricity.) In remote villages, Melinda and I met women and girls who spent hours every day collecting firewood so they could cook over an open flame in their homes. We met kids who did their homework by candlelight.
I thought about our foundation’s motto—“Everyone deserves the chance to live a healthy and productive life”—and how it’s hard to stay healthy if your local medical clinic can’t keep vaccines cold because the refrigerators don’t work. And it’s impossible to build an economy where everyone has job opportunities if you don’t have massive amounts of reliable, affordable electricity for offices, factories and call centers. I began to think about how the world could make energy affordable and reliable for the poor. But the more I learned, the more I came to understand the dilemma of energy and climate change: although the world needs to provide more energy so the poorest can thrive, we need to provide that energy without releasing any more greenhouse gases. In fact, we need to eliminate our emissions, all the way to zero.
The climate is like a bathtub that’s slowly filling up with water. Even if we slow the flow of water to a trickle, the tub will eventually fill up and water will come spilling out onto the floor. That’s the disaster we have to prevent. To stop filling the tub—to get to zero—we have to understand everything we do to cause emissions. Did you brush your teeth this morning? The toothbrush probably contains plastic, which is made from petroleum, a fossil fuel. If you ate breakfast, the grains in your toast and cereal were grown with fertilizer, which releases greenhouse gases when it’s made. They were harvested by a tractor that was made of steel—which is made with fossil fuels in a process that releases carbon—and ran on gasoline. If you had a burger for lunch, as I do occasionally, raising the beef caused greenhouse-gas emissions—cows burp and fart methane—and so did growing and harvesting the wheat that went into the bun. In short, fossil fuels are practically everywhere.
Some sources of emissions, like electricity and cars, get lots of attention, but they’re only the beginning. The biggest contributor to climate change is manufacturing—making things like steel, cement and plastic—at 31% of global emissions. Second in line is producing electricity, at 27% of emissions; after that comes growing things like crops, at 19%. Transportation comes in fourth, at 16%, followed by the emissions from heating and cooling buildings. These percentages are less important than the overall point: any comprehensive plan for climate change has to account for all the activities that cause emissions, and that’s much more than making electricity and driving cars. Unless you’re looking across all five areas—how we plug in, make things, grow things, move around, and keep cool and stay warm—you’re not going to solve the problem.
It’s also crucial to understand how much getting to zero will cost. Right now, the primary reason the world emits so much greenhouse gas is that fossil- fuel technologies are by and large the cheapest energy sources available. In part, that’s because their prices don’t reflect the environmental damage they inflict. In other words, moving our immense energy economy from “dirty,” carbon-emitting technologies to ones with zero emissions will cost something. These additional costs are what I call Green Premiums. For example, the average retail price for a gallon of jet fuel in the U.S. over the past few years is $2.22. Advanced biofuels for jets, to the extent they’re available, cost on average $5.35 per gallon. The Green Premium for zero-carbon fuel, then, is the difference between these two prices, which is $3.13. That’s a premium of more than 140%.
During every conversation I have about climate change, Green Premiums are in the back of my mind. Once you’ve figured Green Premiums for all the big zero-carbon options, you can start having serious discussions about trade-offs. How much are we willing to pay to go green? Will we buy advanced biofuels that are twice as expensive as jet fuel? Will we buy green cement that costs twice as much as the conventional stuff? I mean “we” in the global sense. It’s not just a matter of what Americans and Europeans can afford. We need the premiums to be so low that everyone will be able to decarbonize. That’s the solution to the dilemma of providing affordable energy for everyone without causing a climate disaster. Green Premiums help us answer questions like these:
Which zero-carbon options should we be deploying now? Answer: the ones with a low Green Premium, or no premium at all. In the U.S., electricity is a good example. The Green Premium is the additional cost of getting all our power from non-emitting sources, including wind, solar, nuclear power, and coal- and natural-gas-fired plants equipped with devices that capture the carbon they produce. Changing the entire U.S. electricity system to zero-carbon sources would cost roughly 15% more than what most people pay now. That adds up to a relatively low Green Premium of $18 a month for the average home, and it’s due largely to substantial drops in the cost of solar infrastructure over the past decade. Europe is similarly well situated.
These low Green Premiums mean that renewable energy sources like solar and wind can play a substantial role in getting the U.S. and Europe to zero. In fact, we need them to. We should be deploying renewables quickly wherever it’s economical to do so, and building the infrastructure to let us make the most of them—things like power lines capable of carrying clean electrons from wherever they’re created to wherever they’re needed.
Unfortunately, few countries are as lucky as the U.S. in this regard. They might have some sun but no wind, or some wind but little year-round sun, or not much of either. And they might have low credit ratings that make it hard to finance big investments in new power plants. So, they’ll have to get their electricity from other zero-carbon options.
Here’s another question the Green Premiums can answer: Where do we need to focus our research and development spending, our early investors and our best inventors? Answer: wherever we decide Green Premiums are too high. For example, advanced bio-fuels cost 600% more than the bunker fuel that cargo ships run on. No shipping business is going to voluntarily raise its fuel costs by that much.
In cases like this, there’s an opening for new technologies, companies and products that make it affordable. Countries that excel at research and development can create new products, make them more affordable and export them to the places that can’t pay current premiums. Then no one will have to argue about whether every nation is doing its fair share to avoid a climate disaster; instead, countries and companies will race to create and market the affordable innovations that help the world get to zero.
There’s one last benefit to the Green Premium concept: it can act as a measurement system that shows us the progress we’re making toward stopping climate change. What would it cost to use the zero-carbon tools we have now? Which innovations will make the biggest impact on emissions? The Green Premiums provide the answer by measuring the cost of getting to zero, sector by sector, and highlighting where we need to innovate.
Leaders around the world will need to articulate a vision for how we can lower the Green Premiums and make the transition to zero carbon. That vision can, in turn, guide the actions of people and businesses. Government officials can write rules regarding how much carbon that power plants, cars and factories are allowed to emit. They can adopt regulations that shape financial markets and clarify the risks of climate change to the private and public sectors. They can invest more in scientific research and write the rules that determine how quickly new products can get to market. And they can help fix some problems that the market isn’t set up to deal with—including the hidden costs that carbon-emitting products impose on the environment and on humans.
In the U.S., states can play a crucial role in demonstrating innovative technologies and policies, such as using their utilities and road-construction projects to drive technologies like long-duration storage and low-emissions cement into the market. And cities can do things like can buy electric buses, fund more charging stations for electric vehicles, use zoning laws to increase density so people travel less between work and home, and potentially restrict access to their roads by fossil-fuel-powered vehicles.
But you don’t have to be a politician or a policymaker to have an impact. If you’re a voter, you can hold your elected officials accountable for having plans to reduce Green Premiums and put us on a path to zero. As a consumer—or someone running a business—you can also send a signal to the market that people want zero-carbon alternatives and are willing to pay for them. When you pay more for an electric car, a heat pump or a plant-based burger, you’re saying, “There’s a market for this stuff. We’ll buy it.”
With the threat of climate change upon us, it can be hard to be hopeful about the future. But as my friend Hans Rosling, the late global health advocate and educator, wrote in his amazing book Factfulness: “When we have a fact-based worldview, we can see that the world is not as bad as it seems—and we can see what we have to do to keep making it better.” When we have a fact-based view of climate change, we can see that we have some of the things we need to avoid a climate disaster, but not all of them. We can see what stands in the way of deploying the solutions we have and developing the breakthroughs we need. And we can see all the work we must do to overcome those hurdles.
Well, besides Wall Street moving to Florida, so are Hollywood stars. Sylvester Stallone listed his LA mansion for $130M heading to Florida. Everyone knows I like sports cars and I had bought a BMW I8. I went to a rather famous restaurant in Tampa, Berns Steak House which takes often months to get a reservation. When I pulled in, they came running over to my car and when I got out, they were very disappointed. I knew that Tom Cruise also had an I8 but I didn’t realize he moved down the road from me.
Traffic has clearly gotten worse lately. So please! Those coming to Florida, try the East Coast.
QUESTION #2: Please Mr. Armstrong,the alternative media is going bazurk with all sorts of crazy talk!Now they claim the US is a Corporation that Trump dissolved last year, and Biden is now president over the District of Columbia, not over the US?!?C
ANSWER: This new claim that Biden is not the President because Trump dissolved the corporation is just crazy. This is a Psychological operation (PSYOP) but it is intended to identify people who they will track and then target for imprisonment as Domestic Terrorist Act. I have stated many times that you have to be careful because the opposition in politics will always infiltrate and create false theories and narratives. That is why I am cautious about conspiracy theories. This is the standard operational procedure. Please do not buy into this being some secret military operation that will come back and somehow bring in Trump to save the day. They were swearing Trump was going to be sworn in by 11 AM and Biden would be arrested.
I do not believe there is any legitimate Q and mislead people who hope for something that is not to be. There was no way Trump would have called in a military coup because he actually had an old-fashion belief in America. This guy Simon Parks I believe perhaps was deliberately misleading people which contributed to the siege on the Capitol giving people the false idea that they were on the right side and supported by the military or he is just delusional. I do not know which! Given his claims with aliens, I am not sure how people could have taken this guy seriously, to begin with.
Just look at Operation Trust which was a counterintelligence operation of the State Political Directorate (GPU) of the Soviet Union. They pretend to be part of the opposition to actually mislead people and disrupt the opposition to ensure they will become disoriented and easily conquered. Operation Trust was established by GPU’s predecessor Cheka, It was in full operation between 1921 to 1926. They created fake anti-Bolshevik resistance organizations just like the Q today. This was the strategy to identify real monarchists and anti-Bolsheviks. In Russia, this Q equivalent was called the Moscow Municipal Credit Association (see New Lies for Old).
Look, this is all a clever ploy to smoke-out people who they think would participate in a revolution. Do not listen to this nonsense. Trump was defeated! He is not staging some secret military coup. While our model warns that there will be rising civil unrest and that there will be the risk of a revolution, that may not take place until AFTER there is an international war that these people are pushing because they see that to succeed in their climate change war, they must conquer the entire world. We have had Bill Gates declaring to defeat COVID, he must vaccinate the entire world. That is absurd. So if COVID does not go away, then we blame the countries that did not vaccinate?
Communism fell because it is unsustainable. There was no military confrontation. The West did not defeat Marxism by invading. The system is unsustainable – PERIOD! What these people are doing is highly dangerous for they have employed the very same tactics they did to take over Russia. There is no military coup and Trump did not dissolve the United States. They are doing this to identify those people who are their enemies.
Others have written in asking what is going on in the gun world. Ammunition prices are skyrocketing. This began with the Black Lives Movement and it has continued with the election and will continue because of the trial of Trump. What used to sell for 20 cents a round is now going for $1-$1.30 a round and is limited at that price. There is a lot of concern that Biden will try to eliminate guns. But this trend was set in motion by the riots.
Beware… it is likely the JoeBama amnesty plan will pass through the Senate in exactly the same way as Obamacare. Through manipulation of the budgetary reconciliation process.
According to numerous outlets the JoeBama amnesty legislation has been created by the White House for congressional approval.
The House will likely pass such a proposal along party lines, just like ObamaCare; and then it goes to the Senate where Chuck Schumer will likely do the same reconciliation process to pass amnesty with a simple majority.
By stripping out a budget bill of substance, or using a COVID relief bill, the Senate amnesty bill will be inserted. It will pass along party lines and then be reconciled with the same amnesty bill from the House. The conniving leftists will do anything regardless of public support.
Watch carefully for them to move the execution of this up right after the House sends the impeachment article to the Senate. They will use the period between receiving the article and the February 8th trial to pull-off this amnesty scheme when everyone is distracted. It’s how they roll. Remember, at the time Harry Reid passed Obamacare (Dec ’09 reconciled in 2010) it was opposed by 74% of the voting electorate. They did it anyway… Expect the same here.
(Vox) – […] The bill, known as the US Citizenship Act of 2021 and outlined in a four-page summary shared with reporters, would represent the most sweeping immigration reform package passed since 1986.
It marks both a symbolic and substantive break with the restrictionist immigration policies that have defined the last four years under Donald Trump, setting the tone for what Biden promises will be a more welcoming era for immigrants in the US. At its core is a long-awaited proposal to legalize the more than 10.5 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the US, many of whom have lived in fear of being deported and uprooted from their families for years.
It’s an early signal that the Biden administration is prioritizing immigration, despite an otherwise full agenda in Congress, including confirming the president’s Cabinet officials, conducting Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate, and passing additional Covid-19 relief. That draws a contrast with the Obama White House, which faced criticism for squandering its best opportunity to pass comprehensive immigration reform in 2013.
“We made a mistake,” Biden said when asked about why voters should entrust him with passing comprehensive immigration reform during an October presidential debate. “It took too long to get it right.”
[…] But even if the bill doesn’t survive in its entirety, Democrats and immigrant advocates are working to ensure that at least parts of it go on to become law in other forms, including through a budget reconciliation bill, which could pass by a simple majority, and in future pandemic relief packages. (more)
A rare but solid piece of reporting from the New York Times connects and outlines an issue that CTH 2.0 has been reviewing for several years with increased attention.
Essentially the U.S. security apparatus uses private sector data on cell phone users; purchasing as if they were commercial consumers of data; as part of their investigative and monitoring processes for Americans. This is a big privacy issue that has been the subject of several hours of backroom discussion amid the CTH 2.0 tech team.
WASHINGTON — A military arm of the intelligence community buys commercially available databases containing location data from smartphone apps and searches it for Americans’ past movements without a warrant, according to an unclassified memo obtained by The New York Times.
Defense Intelligence Agency analysts have searched for the movements of Americans within a commercial database in five investigations over the past two and a half years, agency officials disclosed in a memo they wrote for Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon.
[…] The disclosure sheds light on an emerging loophole in privacy law during the digital age: In a landmark 2018 ruling known as the Carpenter decision, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution requires the government to obtain a warrant to compel phone companies to turn over location data about their customers. But the government can instead buy similar data from a broker — and does not believe it needs a warrant to do so.
[…] The government’s use of commercial databases of location information has come under increasing scrutiny. Many smartphone apps log their users’ locations, and the app makers can aggregate the data and sell it to brokers, who can then resell it — including to the government.
It has been known that the government sometimes uses such data for law enforcement purposes on domestic soil. (more)
On the whole this issue has been the subject of much research and discussion amid our archives. When CTH was deplatformed by WordPress/Automattic; and anticipating a new regime in the White House would/could weaponize user data for political targeting; we began an exhaustive review of how to secure the CTH community and create a place where the rebel alliance could assemble without concern of metadata exploitation. That effort is ongoing and more information will available soon with updates to the CTH optimization process currently underway.
Knowing the objectives of a JoeBama administration and aligned with the ideological intents of Big Tech we can easily see how “contractors” within the U.S. intelligence apparatus would likely operate as brokers to retrieve private sector information from big tech suppliers of user data. This process allows U.S. intel organizations like the DIA to purchase information without search warrants exactly as described in the New York Times article.
When you overlay the intent of the JoeBama team to identify subversive voices, and then accept they will assign the “domestic terrorist” label to those who stand against the totalitarian policy of the regime, you can see how the privacy issue can be weaponized.
From our perspective…. Why would the government need a warrant if the information is available to anyone who wants it, for a fee or otherwise? The real solution would be to prohibit collection in the first place; anything else is chaff and countermeasures.
The Rebel Alliance is currently formulating anti-fragile technology platforms that block this intrusive exploitation. CTH is leading this process.
Yes, there are more of us than them…. and we are smart. Stay small, live Bigly.
The Fraud In Chief, barely 24 hours into his illegitimate presidency, betrays our troops.
Contrary to the glowing praise heaped upon Biden from Marxist boot-licker news networks such as CNN, Joe is a screw up. He always has been a screw up and he always will be. He used thousands of military men to protect him at his inauguration. He also wanted them there to provide an illusion that there were actually people there in attendance. After he was done with them, he tossed them aside like a kid does when he’s finished playing with plastic army men.
After Pelosi screamed for more and more troops to protect ‘her’ capitol from a non-existent threat, our military were forced into a cold parking garage instead of being provided sleeping quarters in a warm building.
The story is that a member of the National Guard was not wearing a mask on federal property (just like the Cheater in Chief) and some Democrat congressworm freaked out. This resulted in the troops being forced into an underground parking garage with no sleeping mats and only ONE bathroom.
Compare this disgusting treatment of the military to how President Trump treated the troops…tells you everything!
Cheater in Chief Biden is not our president, and many in the military seems to agree with our opinion!
This morning OANN reported that President Trump has given permission for the troops to stay at his lavish Trump Hotel in Washington DC.
TRUMP LOVES THE TROOPS. BIDEN USES THEM AS DECORATION AND CANNON FODDER.
I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.—United States Uniformed Services Oath of Office
I have a question for our military: Did you not take an oath, a solemn oath, to “support and defend” the United States Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic?” And is it not your DUTY to protect and defend the American republic and its citizens?
We the People have just experienced an in-your-face “what you gonna do about it” election fraud of historic proportions
That’s what I thought. So why aren’t you doing it? Why are you standing around with your thumbs up your butts and ignoring your DUTY while your country gets flushed down the toilet. And don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You know damn well what I am talking about.
Although some in our military have no doubt been paid off by the Chicoms, or are hypnotized by some twisted ideology, or are weak and feckless for other reasons, I believe that there are still enough true patriots, strong, committed patriots, to save our republic from its imminent ruination. It is to you uniformed patriots that I direct this article. You are our last hope…and that is not hyperbole.
What we have here is a unique situation in America’s history. We have no legal sitting president at this time. By legal I mean a president elected in accordance with the rules set down in the Constitution. I assure you that nowhere in the Constitution does it condone the winning of a presidential election through fraud and chicanery – in fact, quite the opposite.
Those who believe that it will mean anything if Trump starts a new political party, or the Republicans take back Congress are idiots. We the People have just experienced an in-your-face “what you gonna do about it” election fraud of historic proportions. There will never again be free and honest elections of any importance. In the future The Powers That Be will elect who they wish to see elected and block who they don’t want. It’s a given, you can take it to the bank.
Each branch of the military has its own intelligence service, and unless they are doing one piss poor job of gathering intelligence, then they know, THEY KNOW, that the only reason that Biden “won” this past presidential election was through deceit and foreign interference. You are fine with that; you are just going to let that slide? If so, then you are a disgrace to your uniform and nothing but a sad, sick joke.
America stands on the brink of an abyss
Unless you are prepared to turn your back on your country and your oaths (and perhaps you are) then you need to step up and DO YOUR DUTY, now. Your country needs you like never before; this is no time to go all weak-kneed and spineless on We the People.
Now is an excellent time for you to step up and take charge. As I say, there is currently no legal POTUS, so you would not be committing a coup – there is no president to commit a coup against! You would simply be filling in this peculiar gap that presently exits between one legally elected president and the next.
America stands on the brink of an abyss, and she is going over the edge for sure unless you step up and take charge. Or would you prefer to be held on a short leash by Chinese communists? Some of you no doubt would…but I am betting that most of you would not. Ask your intelligence services what the Chicoms have in mind for you. If your intelligence services are worth anything then I doubt very much that you will enjoy what they have to tell you.
You didn’t enjoy President Trump’s financial largesse – you would rather go back to the “more porridge if you please sir” begging of the Obama/Biden years? Somehow, I doubt that.
For your own blasted self-interest, if for no other reason, you need to support your country in this direst of times…and I mean SUPPORT YOUR COUNTRY. Honor your oaths, and dust off the perhaps neglected virtues of honor, integrity, bravery, righteousness, and love of country.
Do it for yourself, for your pride. Do it for We the People, do it for past patriots, and future generations. Do it because it is the right thing to do. Do it for the United States of America. Do your DUTY, or go down in history as the craven spineless cowards that you will have proven yourselves to be.
Under the timeline outlined by Senator Chuck Schumer [01:40 of video] the House will deliver the article of impeachment Monday evening January 25th. Senators will be sworn-in Tuesday January 26th, and the trial will officially begin the week of February 8th.
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
Green Premiums have helped solar power plants—like this one near Copiapó, Chile, shown in July 2017—become cheaper sources of energy than fossil fuels Jamey StillingsIDEASBY 
Centinel2012 