Bill Gates about turn on Climate Change

Bill Gates says climate crisis won’t cause ‘humanity’s demise’ in call to shift focus to ‘improving lives’

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/28/bill-gates-climate-crisis-pivot

Much as I have said all along we have a climate problem not a climate emergency. We need to reduce our consumption of our finite resources and reduce our impact on our planet.

This needs to be done on a sensible time scale and on a science and engineering basis not on emotion and dogma.

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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”.

“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.”

“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.”

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”.

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Maybe at last the world will see sense and stop wasting resources on wind turbines, solar panel and batteries in the somewhat mistaken belief that this will ‘Save the Planet”

Parents
  • It's a pivot, based on Trump's driving of US policy in a contrarian direction.

    If he (Gates) is getting no support (even active suppression of his prior lead idea), then a pivot to the 2nd most important activities is a reasonable alternative.

    It's a 'pick your battles' strategy, not an admission of any sort of error.

  • 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”

    To improve lives is simple; just reduce the fertility rate to under 2 children per family and there will no housing shortage.   COP30 needs to scrap carbon credits and get into family planning fast.

    Carbon dioxide is not a poisonous gas in fact it helps food plants grow??

  • Carbon dioxide is not a poisonous gas in fact it helps food plants grow??

    Those two statements are true, but irrelevant to the problem.

  • Carbon dioxide is not a poisonous gas

    However it does drive the green house effect, essentially acting as a thermal blanket at altitude.

    More CO2 at altitude means more solar energy absorbed at altitude on it's cascade down to the earth surface. This puts the plants in the wrong climactic growing conditions, so the excess CO2 is no help at all. Solar radiation in-bound has different waveband shape than surface radiation out-bound.

    (and beware the CO2 doubling 'zero effect' fallacy used by others (the 400ppm vs 800ppm) - it's like the difference between drowning in 10ft of water vs 20ft of water - zero effect, still dead! 

Reply
  • Carbon dioxide is not a poisonous gas

    However it does drive the green house effect, essentially acting as a thermal blanket at altitude.

    More CO2 at altitude means more solar energy absorbed at altitude on it's cascade down to the earth surface. This puts the plants in the wrong climactic growing conditions, so the excess CO2 is no help at all. Solar radiation in-bound has different waveband shape than surface radiation out-bound.

    (and beware the CO2 doubling 'zero effect' fallacy used by others (the 400ppm vs 800ppm) - it's like the difference between drowning in 10ft of water vs 20ft of water - zero effect, still dead! 

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