This is a recording of a highly anticipated talk by Bill Gates, who has come up with an equation you see in this graphic. He presented this at the latest TED conference during a short talk on February 12th. This was followed by a short Q&A at TED and on livestream.com which is also in the podcast you can download below. Gates says he’s happy to get Twitter questions, so visit his website and fire off some questions to him. The download link for the talk is below, after the break.

Gates discussed energy, his “equation”, and his goal in life at the TED conference — getting us to zero carbon by 2050. He feels this is doable in a variety of ways. Mainly he feels that a new transformation of nuclear power that he explains in the talk is very promising. He is getting a large amount of criticism from some environmentalists for saying that we need an “energy miracle” and lots of tech development to solve the climate problem. As he defines “miracle”, and in his pursuit of the technology to do that, his ideas are good. It especially helps that he is investing his own money into the company developing the type of energy he talks about. (Read an article discussing this here.) The type of energy he is promoting is not just any nuclear power but specifically, a “traveling wave” type of nuclear power, which is being developed by a company called TerraPower.

Is Gates just another T. Boone Pickens trying to cash in? Nope, Gates actually does understand and believe in the importance of climate change and is really seeking zero carbon solutions, unlike Pickens.

Gates seems to genuinely care about getting us to zero-carbon energy. Check out another article from last Monday for more on what Gates is doing to promote zero carbon energy. “When we talk about zero climate emissions, we sound crazy. When Bill Gates does it, bankers pick up the phone,” from Alternet.

Download this speech here — it’s a short one — or subscribe on the podcast site at Climate Files radio.

Below is an interesting graphic I found of Bill Gates after he left Microsoft, click on more. I wanted to include it for the cover art for the podcast but it needed the equation on it to make sense.

And that translated to this with my help.

How close to reality is this new nuclear power technology? According to this presentation by Gilleland, “operation of a traveling wave reactor can be demonstrated in less than ten years, and commercial deployment can begin in less than fifteen years.” …that’s what Gates was talking about.

***I posted this on the 19th and my wonderful WordPress software ate it up and it disappeared. I had to recover it and repost so I re-dated it the 20th. In my opinion, the WordPress people should stop working on the software and trying [...]