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Quote by Bill Gates

“In the same way that when the car got going, people thought it would be an electric car, people thought it would be a steam car. Actually, the dark horse in that race was internal combustion, but because of the energy density of gasoline and discovery of oil in large amounts at that point in first Pennsylvania and then Texas, it won out over those other two, to the point that those other two are actually viewed as obscure footnotes in history.”

Quote by Bill Gates

Author

Bill Gates, born on October 28, 1955, is a renowned investor. He is the co-founder of Microsoft Corporation and served as the CEO and Chairman of the company. Gates has had a profound impact on the computer software industry, particularly in the development of personal computer operating systems. He stepped down as CEO in 1995 and has since focused on philanthropy, using the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to fund global health, education, and poverty reduction initiatives. more

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“When I was trying to figure out why lives have improved so much in the last 300 years, where we've gone from a third of kids dying before 5 to - by 1990 it was down to 10% - now it's down to 5%. And saying why, over all history, there were smart people, but that number didn't change. Average life span didn't change. What's magical about what's been deemed the Industrial Revolution? It's really energy intensity.”

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“It's energy intensification, where we essentially have, through our light bulbs and cars, the manpower of [hundreds of] people working on our behalf, helping our food being created, helping our materials like steel and plastic and wood and paper be created. Our lifestyles are incredibly energy intense.”

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“I've been studying how quickly we can get energy out to the poor countries - a lot of which are in Africa - and how little progress we've made there. There's no more electricity today in sub-Saharan Africa per person than there was 20 years ago.”

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“The world is very disparate, in terms of the US using the most energy per person, and then the other rich countries - Europe, Japan, New Zealand - using about half of what we do, and then the world average being about a fifth of what we use, with China just now surpassing the world average.”

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“When I say "miracle" I mean a kind of thing like a computer on a chip, or the internet, or the cellphone, that are really quite miraculous. Most people would not have predicted them, and their effect has been very, very dramatic.”

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“How much further beyond basic research the role of the government should be, you could have a really good debate about it. Almost nobody would say it's zero. But that's where at least we need the private sector to play a big role.”

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“When I say "an energy miracle," I mean that there will be some form of energy whose 24 hour cost really is competitive with hydrocarbons given, say, 20 years of learning curve. You invent it, then you look at how much its costs go down over the next 20 years, that it really beats hydrocarbons.”

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“There are ecosystems like coral reefs [at risk] through ocean acidification. Those are valuable things that we should protect.”

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“The first big effects will be farmers that live on the edge. Today's weather, they barely get by. Their kids, a high percentage are malnourished, and so if you impose more variable weather and more heat, you're getting more floods, more droughts, and during the germination time, the high heat, most crops...do poorly when there's more heat.”

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“Sorghum is kind of unusual. It can go to very high heats, but it's not as productive in most environments as maize is.”

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