Gates argued that it is important to bring down carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, from our current energy usage, to zero, so as to prevent further climate change and global warming. He used deductive reasoning to prove his point: by illustrating CO2 emissions in the form of an equation: where it equals to the product of population, services, energy of these services and the CO2 released per unit energy used. If any of these factors is equivalent to zero, it will thus lead to zero CO2 emissions. Hence, it will help solve the main problem of climate change. However, the underlying assumption of the premise is that CO2 is the sole contributing factor of climate change, which is largely true. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Synthesis report (2007 p.36), it is stated that CO2 from fossil fuel usage is the largest contributing factor (56.6%) for greenhouse gases (GHG), which causes the increase in global temperature. The official website of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also stated that CO2 takes up the majority of global GHG emissions (approximately 35000 out of 46000 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent). Since CO2 contributes a very big part in GHG, it is safe to assume that by reducing CO2 emissions, global GHG emissions will be greatly reduced and this will prevent further climate degradation from global warming to a large extent. As both premises are true, it therefore leads to the construction of a valid argument by Gates.

References

Bernstein, L., Bosch, P., Canziani, O., Chen, Z., Christ, R., Davidson, O. & Yohe, G. (2008). Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report: An Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

United States Environmental Protection Agency. (2014). Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Retrieved September 9, 2014, from United States Environmental Protection Agency: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/ghg/global-ghg-emissions.html