In what CNN calls a "stunning claim about climate change," Bill Gates has significantly altered his position on the seriousness and immediacy of the threat to human civilization from the phenomenon. He now advocates for more attention to be paid to human development and the problems that most affect the bulk of humanity.
“Climate change, disease, and poverty are all major problems,” Gates wrote on his website, Gates Notes. “We should deal with them in proportion to the suffering they cause.”
Gates has been one of the world's biggest boosters of plans to drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions as quickly as possible. Now he says that was a mistake.
“Although climate change will have serious consequences – particularly for people in the poorest countries – it will not lead to humanity’s demise,” Gates wrote. “This is a chance to refocus on the metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change: improving lives. Our chief goal should be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions who live in the world’s poorest countries.”
Gates says that efforts to cut emissions should continue. "We need to keep backing the breakthroughs that will help the world reach zero emissions," he wrote.
"But we can’t cut funding for health and development—programs that help people stay resilient in the face of climate change—to do it."
Notably, he specifically rejected the "doomsday view of climate change."
"Unfortunately, the doomsday outlook is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world," Gates wrote.
Bill Gates is not saying climate change is a crock. What he's saying is nuanced and thoughtful, taking into account arguments from both sides of the debate while trying to alter the funding trajectory of his rich friends to take up the slack for the $8 billion lost when the U.S. ditched USAID.
This is about helping human beings by feeding them and treating their treatable diseases. It's what Gates and the world's billionaires should have been doing all along, rather than forcing the burden on U.S. taxpayers alone.
Gates denied his new position represents a reversal from his past stances. He said in Tuesday’s essay that the world must continue to support its past efforts to achieve zero carbon emissions.
However, Gates told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in an interview Tuesday that pulling back from climate investment was a “huge disappointment,” albeit a necessary one. It also represents a stark contrast from where Gates had been focusing his efforts and philanthropy, including clean-energy businesses and lobby shops – and a turn from Gates’ tone from just a couple years ago.
In a 2023 since-removed Breakthrough Energy essay, for example, Gates noted that most people around the world are struggling with the effects of climate change – a feeling that can be “overwhelming” and necessitates a response with “unprecedented” scale and speed.
Michael Mann, of the now-thoroughly debunked temperature "hockey stick" fame, weighed in on Gates' new position.
“There is no greater threat to developing nations than the climate crisis,” said Mann, Director, Penn Center for Science, Sustainability & the Media. “He’s got this all backwards.”
Says the original "Wrong Way Corrigan" of climate change.
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Gates' change of mind is not really that big. Why he is angering people like Michael Mann and the doomsday climate cultists is that he's showing them to be the hysterical fools we've always thought them to be.
Climate change may or may not be serious. Most skeptical scientists, constantly correcting the hysterics, rightly claim not to possess a crystal ball that can foresee the future. But most don't dismiss out of hand the possibility that climate change can cause serious problems, including rising sea levels, loss of arable land, and an increase in tropical infectious diseases.
Meanwhile, Gates believes that innovation is the key (as it always has been) to humanity's future. One thing the climate change hysterics never consider is the sheer brilliance and creativity of the human mind. We may yet innovate our way out of any problems with climate as long as people are free to pursue their dreams and aspirations.
Bill Gates may just be realizing that "Man-Made Climate Change" isn't the imminent world-ending threat the climate hysterics have been saying it is, but PJ Media has been telling the truth about it for years. And because we called out the alarmists, Big Tech punished us: We've been throttled, suppressed, and demonetized — for doing our job.
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