COVID-19 is awful. Climate change could be worse. - Gates Notes

Note: this is my personal highlights from reading COVID-19 is awful. Climate change could be worse., which was published on Gates Notes. This article offers a lot of interesting corollaries between COVID-19 and climate change, and offers some sobering statistics.

My notes are literally copy-and-pasted from sections that I consider "highlights"; if you find the highlights interesting, you should definitely read the articles yourself.

1. What's remarkable is not how much emissions will go down because of the pandemic, but how little. In addition, these reductions are being achieved at, literally, the greatest possible cost. [...] In United States, [...] it (the carbon reduction) comes to between $3,200 and $5,400 per ton. In the European Union, it's roughly the same amount.
2. How many people will be killed by COVID-19 versus by climate change? [...] As of last week, more than 600,000 people are known to have died from COVID-19 worldwide. That is an annualized death rate of 14 per 100,000 people. How does that compare to climate change? [...] by 2060, climate change could be just as deadly as COVID-19, and by 2100 it could be five times as deadly.
3. The economic picture is also stark. [... ] In the next decade or two, the economic damage caused by climate change will likely be as bad as having a COVID-sized pandemic every ten years. And by the end of the century, it will be much worse if the world remains on its current emissions path.

Bill Gate's suggestions on how we can learn from our COVID-19 experience to tackle climate change:

1. Let science and innovation lead the way. The relatively small decline in emissions this year makes one thing clear: We cannot get to zero emissions simply—or even mostly—by flying and driving less. We need new tools for fighting climate change: zero-carbon ways to produce electricity, make things, grow food, keep our buildings cool and warm, and move people and goods around the world. And we need new seeds and other innovations to help the world’s poorest people—many of whom are smallholder farmers—adapt to a less predictable climate.
2. Make sure solutions work for poor countries too. The effects of climate change will almost certainly be harsher than COVID-19's, and they will be the worst for the people who did the least to cause them. [...] So governments, inventors, and entrepreneurs around the world need to focus on making green technologies cheap enough that developing countries will not only want them, but be able to afford them.
3. Start now. [...] there is no two-year fix for climate change. It will take decades to develop and deploy all the clean-energy inventions we need. [...] Some governments and private investors are committing the funding and the policies that will help us get to zero emissions, but we need even more to join in. And we need to act with the same sense of urgency that we have for COVID-19.