BILL GATES AND CLIMATE CHANGE.

Mr. Gates told Mr. Hollande that energy innovation needed to be a top agenda item at the climate change conference now taking place in this airport suburb outside Paris. For years, Mr. Gates had prodded governments to increase spending on research and development of clean technologies. He had sunk $1 billion of his own fortune into start-ups working on new kinds of batteries and nuclear reactors. The June tête-à-tête helped accelerate a sequence of events that led to one of the biggest public-private partnerships to tackle climate change, unveiled at the conference. Mr. Gates, who made billions from Microsoft before remaking himself as a philanthropist, was a linchpin of the effort, acting as an envoy between the worlds of business and policy. His role in sealing the deal offers a peek into how the inner circles of governments and industry intersect. It also underscores how a handful of the world’s wealthiest people can stand with heads of state to spotlight a social, economic and policy issue on the global stage. For Mr. Gates, the world’s richest person and co-chairman of the biggest private foundation, it is another sign of how his vast foreign aid operation and status as a technology icon have turned him into a uniquely influential global diplomat. The seeds for a partnership were planted in January when President Obama visited Mr. Modi in New Delhi. Mr. Obama’s goal was to forge a close relationship with Mr. Modi, in hopes of finding common ground on climate change. During those conversations, Mr. Modi pointed out his challenge: He needed new electricity to help raise India out of poverty, but coal was the cheapest power source. He said India would use clean energy if there were tech breakthroughs that provided that energy inexpensively. Mr. Modi’s message prompted Mr. Obama to consider how to achieve more clean-energy innovation. One idea was a multigovernment coalition to increase spending on clean technology. Read more here;http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/business/energy-environment/bill-gates-takes-on-climate-change-with-nudges-and-a-powerful-rolodex.html?_r=0