The problem is that none of these technologies is useful for helping to solve the climate crisis, let alone the wider air pollution or energy security problems the world faces. We only have until 2030 to eliminate 80 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and until 2035 to 2050 to banish the rest to avoid 1.5℃ of warming. Moreover, 7 million people die prematurely each year due to air pollution and hundreds of millions more become ill. About 90 per cent of this pollution is from energy. (1)Lastly, the world faces several energy-security risks, including the instability that will result from fossil fuels and uranium running out.
P1: (1)BILLGATES has put billions of dollars into new technologies he believes will help halt climate change: small modular nuclear reactors, biofuels, capturing carbon dioxide from fossil fuel facilities (carbon capture) or the air (direct air capture) and geoengineering (reducing solar radiation by adding particles to the atmosphere). Exxon Mobil is building a “blue hydrogen” plant that produces the fuel from natural gas and tries to capture the CO2 emissions. The US Inflation Reduction Act provides funding that Gates, Exxon Mobil and other companies can use to capture CO2. It also helps to fund Gates’s dreams of small modular reactors and bioenergy.参考译文:比尔·盖茨已投入数十亿美元用于研发他认为有助于阻止气候变化的新技术:小型模块化核反应堆、生物燃料、碳捕获(从化石燃料设施捕获二氧化碳或直接从空气中捕获),及地球工程(通过增加大气中的颗粒物来减少太阳辐射)。埃克森美孚公司正在建“蓝氢”工厂,试图从天然气中获取燃料并捕获二氧化碳排放。美国《通胀削减法案》为比尔·盖茨以及埃克森美孚等公司研发碳捕获技术提供资助,同时也为比尔·盖茨的梦想——小型模块化核反应堆提供资金支持。