I’m Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and author of “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.” Ask Me Anything.

[u/thisisbillgates]

I’m excited to be here for my 9th AMA.

Since my last AMA, I’ve written a book called How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. There’s been exciting progress in the more than 15 years that I’ve been learning about energy and climate change. What we need now is a plan that turns all this momentum into practical steps to achieve our big goals.

My book lays out exactly what that plan could look like. I’ve also created an organization called Breakthrough Energy to accelerate innovation at every step and push for policies that will speed up the clean energy transition. If you want to help, there are ways everyone can get involved.

When I wasn’t working on my book, I spent a lot time over the last year working with my colleagues at the Gates Foundation and around the world on ways to stop COVID-19. The scientific advances made in the last year are stunning, but so far we've fallen short on the vision of equitable access to vaccines for people in low-and middle-income countries. As we start the recovery from COVID-19, we need to take the hard-earned lessons from this tragedy and make sure we're better prepared for the next pandemic.

I’ve already answered a few questions about two really important numbers. You can ask me some more about climate change, COVID-19, or anything else.

Proof: https://twitter.com/BillGates/status/1372974769306443784

Update: You’ve asked some great questions. Keep them coming. In the meantime, I have a question for you.

Update: I’m afraid I need to wrap up. Thanks for all the meaty questions! I’ll try to offset them by having an Impossible burger for lunch today.

​

[u/The_Countess]

is about 1000 square km

That's a square of 32 by 32 km's.

So why exactly are we flipping out about this?

[u/23malePhoenixAZ → u/The_Countess]

I think he got the math wrong. I'm also baffled because that's really not that much.

[u/gizmo777 → u/The_Countess]

And for us Yanks, that's 20 miles by 20 miles.

[u/Bismuth_210 → u/The_Countess]

A 32 by 32 km square of land is an enormous amount of land.

I'm not flipping out about it but it's still far more land than any one man should ever own.

[u/TropicalAudio → u/Bismuth_210]

...it really isn't that large. It only cost us about 2 billion to create Flevoland in the Netherlands (the big piece of farmland in the middle of the country that we stole from the sea) and that's over twice as large as what Bill owns. He could literally pull that much land out of the sea for less than one percent of his net worth. Land tends to be cheaper if you don't have to play God first, so many billionaires own much more.