Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has separated from charitable work fighting against poverty and disease and engaged in another risk faced by the world’s poor, which is climate change.

Gates said “Energy and climate are extremely important to these people. The climate getting worse means many years that crops won’t grow from too much rain or not enough, leading to starvation and certainly unrest.”

Gates said “The formula is a very straight forward one. More carbon dioxide equals temperature increase equals negative effects like collapsed ecosystems. We have to get to zero.”

He also said that his single wish in the next 50 years would be a global “zero carbon” culture.

Gates said that he is supporting development of “terrapower” reactors, which can be supplied with nuclear waste extracted from disposal facilities, generated by current power plants.

Researching and testing terrapower may involve hundreds of millions of dollars and just the construction of a test reactor may cost in the billions. Gates predicted that if this technology is proven, market forces would reduce costs. Gates declined climate change skeptics, saying terrapower would contribute controversial arguments because the energy generated would be less expensive than pollution-expelling methods used today.

By MND A01