Bill Gates: Planting trees to solve the climate crisis is “complete nonsense”

Bill Gates believes that Planting trees in the face of the climate crisis is “complete nonsense”, and that more drastic measures must be taken, although the political will for this does not exist.

The magnate and philanthropist gave his vision of the subject in the New York Times Climate Forward Summit, recently held in New York.

An analysis published this year by MIT and Climate Interactive found that planting a billion trees would avoid only 0.15°C of warming by 2100. They are very poor measures, regarding the seriousness of the matter.

Every year, Bill Gates gives 10 million dollars to Climeworks to develop technologies that capture carbon dioxide directly from the air. This is one of the aspects in the fight against climate change, among others, such as purchase of electric heat pumps and solar panels for low-income households.

But, the billionaire warns, “I don’t use some of the less proven approaches. I don’t plant trees. “It’s complete nonsense.”

“I mean, Are we people of science or are we idiots? “What do we want to be?” he stressed.

According to the journalist Observer’s Sisi Cao There was a “brief and uncomfortable silence” after Bill Gates’ words.

Immediately, the Microsoft founder joked that he would call his friend Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, who is promoting an initiative to plant a billion trees on Earth by 2030.

“I am the person who is doing the most on climate in terms of innovation and how we can achieve multiple objectives,” said Bill Gates.

“I think we should spend a lot of money on climate change,” he proposed. “I think we should have very high carbon taxes. But the political realities are such that without innovation, it is unlikely, especially in middle-income countries, that the brute force approach will succeed.”