[wonderflpancake]

Title on this referenced article is "Bill Gates thinks the 1% should foot the bill for renewable energy, and he's offering the first $2B." It does look to be spinning off the Atlantic 2015 interview.

The 1% headline is just a left-wing dog whistle. Gates said "private sector" and didn't make a divisive statement.

For those that the class-warfare-esque headline speaks to ("Oh yeah! Those 1% need to pay!"), the "1%" are the reason we have nice things - because they want them. Put everyone in equal misery and then lets see how clean the air and water is, how many technology and medical breakthroughs we get, and so on.

[cbayram]

You are contradicting yourself. First you oppose class warfare evoked by the headline. Later, you recreate it on your own terms.

Wanting clean air or medical advances isn't exclusive to the elite. Nor is the "misery" of others due to size of their wallet. The elite have political and fiscal means of dictating and incentivizing others to work towards a common goal; some positive and some negative. As decision makers in our capitalism, they need to be held responsible and accountable proportionally to the benefits and accolades they reap; you gotta take the bad with the good. Fwiw all things equal, we are all responsible for the air pollution and its cleaning.

You make an interesting point. Society needs leadership to initiate and orchestrate the big projects.

Kudos to Bill Gates for pursuing cleaner air.

[Shikadi]

I'm going to have to disagree and say their influence is the reason we don't have nicer things... Planned obsolescence, massive oil lobby, general Mills basically writing the food pyramid completely unbacked by science, I could go on forever.