Andrew Revkin

And in a village that has...

where they're milling wheat, he'll put in a solar-powered wheat mill.

And, you know, that's not going to solve the world's problems, but it gives them a way to control their energy.

They don't have to buy something to grind their wheat.

And that needs just as much attention as the things I really like, too, the cool technologies.

And I thought I cornered Bill Gates.

I was like,

Because he really does focus on these big wins, the big, you know, like nuclear, that will make net zero completely doable.

And I said, well, you know, what about nuclear, like New York City, where I was still living at the time, near, and I said, it's got a million buildings.

New York City has one million buildings.

And in 2013, the Bloomberg government analyzed, they said, looking ahead to 2050, it's going

75% of the buildings in New York City that will exist in 2050 already exist.

Think about these brave new futures, right?

Like, we're just going to come in, have these shiny, cool, passive house cities.

And so I put this to Bill and I said, so...

How do you do that?

How do you retrofit all those boilers, many of which were coal-fired like 20 years ago, to get a zero energy New York City?

I kind of thought I had him.

He kind of sat back and went, well, but if you have unlimited clean power coming into that city, it doesn't really matter.

He said, oh yeah, it's a leaky bucket, but pour in zero carbon energy, then it doesn't matter.