From the New York Times, October 28:
In a memo, the Microsoft co-founder warned against climate alarmism and appears to have shifted some of his views about climate change.
Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder who has spent billions of his own money to raise the alarm about the dangers of climate change, is now pushing back against what he calls a “doomsday outlook” and appears to have shifted his stance on the risks posed by a warming planet.
In a lengthy memo released Tuesday, Mr. Gates sought to tamp down the alarmism he said many people use to describe the effects of rising temperatures. Instead, he called for redirecting efforts toward improving lives in the developing world.
“Although climate change will have serious consequences — particularly for people in the poorest countries — it will not lead to humanity’s demise,” he wrote. “People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.”
Coming just four years after he published a book titled “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,” Tuesday’s memo appears to amount to a major reframing of how Mr. Gates, who is worth an estimated $122 billion, is thinking about the challenges posed by a rapidly warming world.
Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University, said Mr. Gates was setting up a false dichotomy “usually propagated by climate skeptics” that pits efforts to tackle climate change against foreign aid for the poor.
“Despite his efforts to make clear that he takes climate change seriously, his words are bound to be misused by those who would like nothing more than to destroy efforts to deal with climate change,” Dr. Oppenheimer said in an email.
The Gates memo arrives a week before world leaders gather in Belém, Brazil, for the United Nations annual climate summit, known this year as COP30. Mr. Gates, who turned 70 on Tuesday and has attended the event in previous years, will not be participating. He declined to comment about his memo.
Over the past decade, Mr. Gates has spent large sums of his personal fortune pushing for policies that would reduce the greenhouse gases that are dangerously heating the planet. He has invested in companies working on clean energy and efforts to help poor communities adapt to rising seas, more extreme heat, fires and drought and intensifying storms and floods.
In 2015, Mr. Gates founded Breakthrough Energy, a venture fund to back promising new clean energy start-ups. It grew to include a climate policy group in Washington to promote ways to cut emissions.
“Climate change is already affecting most people’s lives, and when we think about the impact on our families and future generations, it can feel overwhelming,” he wrote in an essay in 2023 that was published on the website of Breakthrough Energy and has since been taken down. “The scale and speed of the transformation required to build a clean energy future is unprecedented.”
In March, Breakthrough Energy announced deep cuts that included dismantling its climate policy group.
And in May, Mr. Gates announced plans to wind down the Gates Foundation, which has spent billions on climate-related issues, including a $1.4 billion commitment to help farmers in poor countries adapt to a hotter planet.
As the Trump administration has slashed foreign aid budgets and shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development, Mr. Gates has redirected much of his charitable giving to fill the void left by the U.S. government and focus on health and poverty in the developing world.
“He saw the U.S.A.I.D. situation as more pressing, and something where he could be more effective,” said Johannes Ackva, who leads climate work at Founders Pledge, an organization that advises philanthropists.
Mr. Gates continues to invest in clean energy start-ups through groups including the Breakthrough Energy Catalyst program, Breakthrough Energy Ventures and the Breakthrough Energy Fellows. In the memo, Mr. Gates did not announce a change in strategy for funding climate ventures.
He also continues to fund in nuclear energy. Last week, TerraPower, a nuclear company he backs, secured crucial federal approval as it works to bring a new type of reactor to market....
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So you're saying that this may have been the wrong approach:
- "Should the Climate Movement Embrace Sabotage?"
- Flashback: “To Halt Climate Change, We Need an Ecological Leninism”
- Deutsche Bank: Green Deal Requires ‘Certain Degree Of Eco-Dictatorship’
And at NBC News, October 28:
Bill Gates calls for 'strategic pivot' in climate change fight away from curbing emissions
In a memo released Tuesday, Gates said the world's primary goal should be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions in the world's poorest countries.
Bill Gates thinks climate change is a serious problem but it won't be the end of civilization. He thinks scientific innovation will curb it, and it's instead time for a "strategic pivot" in the global climate fight: from focusing on limiting rising temperatures to fighting poverty and preventing disease.
A doomsday outlook has led the climate community to focus too much on near-term goals to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that cause warming, diverting resources from the most effective things that can be done to improve life in a warming world, Gates said. In a memo released Tuesday, Gates said the world's primary goal should instead be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions in the world's poorest countries.
If given a choice between eradicating malaria and a tenth of a degree increase in warming, Gates told reporters, "I'll let the temperature go up 0.1 degree to get rid of malaria. People don't understand the suffering that exists today."....
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