File under Windows glitching again.
Or possibly “more evidence that those Epstein files have a lot of powerful people mentioned in them.“
Of course, the poor will suffer, but alas, was it not always so…
Bill Gates has called for a “strategic pivot” in the effort against the climate crisis, writing that the world should shift away from trying to limit rising temperatures to instead focusing on efforts to prevent disease and poverty.
Writing on his Gates Notes website, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder criticized what he described as a “doomsday view of climate change” which is focusing “too much on near-term emissions goals”.
Gates’s memo comes a day after the UN said humanity had missed its target of limiting global heating to 1.5C, with the UN secretary general warning of “devastating consequences” for the world.
In the note on Monday, Gates said: “Although climate change will have serious consequences – particularly for people in the poorest countries – it will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.”
He said the Cop30 climate summit, which will bring together world leaders in the Brazilian rainforest city of Belém in November, was “a chance to refocus on the metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change: improving lives”.
“Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare,” Gates wrote.
“The biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been. Understanding this will let us focus our limited resources on interventions that will have the greatest impact for the most vulnerable people.”
In response to the post shared by Gates, US President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to claim victory over what he has long called the “climate change hoax.”
“I (WE) just won the war on the climate change hoax.Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue. It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful. MAGA!!!” wrote Trump.
I wanted to offer some thoughts on the Gates climate memo that has been circulating this week. While I can’t directly speak for others, I can say that my own response is one of dismay & deep frustration (and that this view is shared by many climate/Earth scientists)
I first want to emphasize that there are a few “kernels of truth” in this memo. More than kernels, even–there are whole sections/paragraphs with which I strongly agree! But there are multiple fatal flaws in its underlying premise, and thus in its conclusions.
I strongly agree–both because I personally believe that it’s the right thing to do and also because the evidence supports it–that rapidly addressing poverty, health inequity, and food/water insecurity should be a first-order priority. Full stop. No argument there.And I do (weakly) agree that, sometimes & in some contexts, climate advocates (though generally not scientists) have miscontextualized climate change as a *singular* driver of global harm–even though, in reality, it’s more accurate to characterize it as a “harm amplifier.”
It is also true that, as the late climate scientist Stephen Schneider reflected on more than one occasion, when it comes to global warming the “end of the world and good for you are the two lowest-probability outcomes.” That’s still as true today as it was 2 decades ago.
But herein lies the problem: there’s a whole hell of a lot of distance along the spectrum between “good for us” & literally “the end of civilization.” Even if we can rule out both of those extreme outcomes, there are plenty of terrible things that can happen in between.
In fact, the preponderance of scientific evidence in recent years points increasingly toward each increment of warming being MORE consequential, and harmful to both human systems and societies and ecosystems, than previously believed–not less.
For this reason, the Gates memo presupposes a false dichotomy regarding climate outcomes: The choice we are faced with is not between “good for us” & “the end of the world,” but instead how much harm we are willing to tolerate, and endure, in the years to come.
It is also true, as is stated in the memo, that our current warming trajectory is less extreme than the one were potentially going to take. We’re now most likely on track for somewhere between 2.5-3C of warming by 2100 vs. 3-5C of warming extrapolating from ~20 years ago.
Here’s the thing: 2.5-3C of global warming is actually still really bad news. Is it better than 3-5C of warming? Undoubtedly. But I don’t think many folks, apparently including Gates & advisors, appreciate just how radically transformed a 2.5-3C warmer world would be.
3C of global warming means many feet of sea level rise, fundamentally altering coastlines and swamping megacities home to 100s of millions. It means heatwaves that in humid regions could become, literally, unsurvivable for those outdoors without access to active cooling.
3C of global warming means droughts, & floods, of historically unprecedented magnitudes across broad swaths of the planet. It means the collapse of ecosystems, and possibly even cascading effects that could trigger any number of critical Earth system “tipping points.”
The great irony of all of this? Most of these climate change impacts will be borne, most immediately and acutely, by poorer nations in the Global South–precisely those on whose behalf the memo authors are ostensibly advocating. That’s why this memo makes me viscerally uncomfortable.
To me, the statement regarding “pausing” outdoor work during daytime, once it becomes too hot, seems bewilderingly out of touch. I’m 100% behind efforts to provide air conditioning to those who need it, but this ignores basic realities (including human physiology).
Wealthy nations, for their part, are not nearly as immune from the amplifying and cascading impacts of a warming climate (particularly with respect to intensifying extremes) as the memo authors seem to believe, either. But that is almost beside the point…
Is all of this just a matter of semantics? Definitely not, because this memo is already being championed by those seeking to misinform and sow doubt about climate change and delay climate progress–up to and including the executive branch of the United States government.
Ultimately, I am very disappointed to see this memo published in 2025 by folks who, I truly believe, are genuinely interested in helping others. Whatever “meeting the moment” looks like, this feels like the opposite of that.
And while I do agree with some specific points therein, the memo overall conveys a poor understanding of climate science, a poor understanding of the societal & economic impacts of extreme events, and leans on multiple false dichotomies to come to its flawed conclusions.
I didn’t have a problem with him switching directions in his charity donations. It’s his money, and it is noble to help the poorest in the world.
But he’s a supposedly smart guy, and his self-important memo’s messaging only gives credence to the people fighting against doing anything to address climate change. Trump has claimed victory with it, and the deniers are having a field day. It can only confuse the general public, who are just seeing the headline that Gates is saying he isn’t worrying about climate change.
The latest problem is the obvious straw man in the memo – implying that climate change alarmists believe it will eradicate humanity. The science doesn’t say that – that’s what the deniers say about climate change scientists and activists, though. Also, just because he’s shifting away from a focus on ending carbon emissions in his own funding doesn’t mean the world as a while should do the same. The memo acts like it should – like Gates knows better than everyone else – a typical billionaire mindset.
The poorest will suffer the most from climate change. Isn’t pouring money into a bucket with a hole in it something to be concerned about?
The memo is a sort of ‘technology will solve it’ screed – apologies to him that some of us aren’t putting all our eggs in that basket.
One other thing: Gates acknowledges sea rise and extreme weather with climate change, but he is completely ignoring future food production and clean water availability. He says the poor face poverty and disease, true, but imagine a world where they also can’t get food and water because of widespread droughts causing crop failures and water shortages. I suppose he considers that sort of possible scenario “alarmist” now.
““The biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been. Understanding this will let us focus our limited resources on interventions that will have the greatest impact for the most vulnerable people.””
I thought Bjorn Lomborg had a patent on the fake “focus our limited resources on interventions that will….” approach to pretending decarbonizing would be nice but, gee, it’s unaffordable given (unspecified X) amount of money”.
After all, Lomborg honed that schtick over years of those fake studies where he’d put up a list of smallish things, add in CLIMATE CHANGE in the list, then present a smallish dollar amount to “let’s fix the world” panels. Then he’d express rueful regrets as CLIMATE CHANGE is again kicked out of the contest.
Along with @jimbills points, Gates chooses to totally disregard the fact that health and wealth for the poor will accrue to them faster if pollution (burning stuff?) is eliminated and energy security (sun delivered daily rather than imported fuels) is given to people, along with power for the smartphones and energy that’s already enabling villagers in developing countries to improve their lives.
But of course, it’s not because Bill’s invested in companies looking to build vast data centers. And he can’t be justifying to himself that since it’s not really going to kill ALL humans, he might as well see how his slower-to-develop nuclear investments do, especially of society slacks off on deploying renewables.