It Would Be Nice to Dismiss Bill Gates on the Climate Crisis. But He's a Billionaire, So We Must Listen.

LWe must start with the core issue: The Microsoft founder is a politics denier. While he was slow to accept it, he now acknowledges climate change facts. But he exists in stark, awkward denial about political realities. His latest essay on climate, published last week, treats the issue as if it existed in a political vacuum. He composes text ignoring political influence, and as if extreme wealth didn't exist.

The Main Contention

His main contention is that funds are very limited, so the delegates at this month's climate summit in Brazil should direct money away from "near-term emissions goals" towards climate resilience and allocating funds for economic hardship and illness.

Admittedly, resources for positive initiatives are insufficient, but that's not because of some natural law, an unchangeable fact of civilization. The reason is elite influence has declared war on government social programs, resulting in the elimination of development assistance and substantial decreases in support money of other countries. Austerity is a political choice. The decision to impose it is driven by authorities yielding to the demands of billionaire class.

Existing Wealth

Massive amounts of wealth exist. Soon after the billionaire released his essay, data indicated that the combined assets of the top ten US fortune holders expanded by hundreds of billions during the previous twelve months. This amount by itself, the growth in ten individuals' fortunes, is almost 10 times the annual amount required to end extreme poverty worldwide. What methods enabled such concentration of the world's money into their pockets? Why can't society reclaim it through proper tax policies? The explanation involves their transformation of financial influence into governmental control. The richer they become, the more they can bend government and financial structures to their preferences, ensuring that they become richer still. But the billionaire mentions nothing in his essay about ways and locations for more resources for both climate solutions and hardship alleviation could be identified.

'His writing appears primarily as reconciliation with Donald Trump.' Bill Gates, right, with the Trumps at a private dinner for business leaders in Washington DC.

Wealth Inequality Relationship

There's a direct link between the economic hardship Gates professes to address and the wealth he fails to mention. In the US, housing insecurity is achieving unprecedented levels, and so is the percentage of resources held by the ultra-rich. Even if this doesn't characterize Gates' specific methods, by holding down wages, driving up rental prices, undermining worker collectives and achieving lower taxes and diminished public funding, the ultra-rich thrive on impoverishing other people.

Investigation Conclusions

A remarkable study in Perspectives on Politics, one of the rare examinations of this private sphere, found that billionaires maintain completely separate political opinions from the great majority. The wealthy respondents in the study, sharply different from average people, considered fiscal shortfalls as critical of the issues it listed, and ecological crisis as insignificant. They were much more inclined to demand that public retirement benefits and government medical care should be reduced, and far less likely to believe that the unemployed should have a "decent standard of living", or that there should be increased oversight of energy firms, financial institutions and insurance providers. They were strongly against wealth redistribution.

Governmental Access

Which perspectives dominate? The tiny minority or the great majority? Although the research occurred during the Obama administration, it found that the very rich had far more access to politicians and officials than regular individuals. And now? The situation hardly requires explanation.

Missing Elements and Presumptions

This represents another significant omission in Gates' writing: across extensive text, the former president receives no reference. Were Gates to do so, he'd have to recognize that an important foundation of his argument is unstable: lower prices for sustainable technology inevitably produces environmental improvement. Naturally, it's beneficial that renewable energy costs are dropping significantly than traditional energy sources. But The former president and comparable figures are doing everything they can to impede the transition.

In part due to these factors, oil and gas continue generating substantial profits. This potentially clarifies why, notwithstanding Gates' assertion about eliminating petroleum company stocks in 2019, its oil and gas financial assets have, in fact, increased.

Cognitive Considerations

To Gates, overthrowing the power of the ultra-wealthy may be unthinkable. I don't mean only that it clashes with his worldview. Considering his significant avoidance of this subject, he might be literally incapable of thinking about it. Perhaps this is a symptom of "billionaire brain": a deep inability to understand others' perspectives. While the ultra-rich are notoriously hard to study, extrapolating from research into how gaining wealth and status affects cognition could suggest that obtaining enormous fortunes compares to cognitive damage. Fortunes seem to disturb particular brain operations, particularly those related to empathy and perspective.

Political Calculations

But perhaps there's also calculation here: his writing appears primarily as reconciliation with the former president. Trump definitely understood it as such: "I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue. This required bravery, and we appreciate it. MAGA!!!"

Background Information

The billionaire has consistently been incorrect on climate matters, though not for the reasons Trump imagines. He has continually trailed scientific consensus, reciting fossil fuel claims (renewable energy could lower carbon output only with massive expenses) significantly following their debunking. He has spread confusion and misinformation, such as the groundless assertion in his new essay that the purpose of Sri Lanka's disastrous ban on synthetic fertilisers was "to cut emissions".

Additional Tough Truths

Gates names his article Three Challenging Environmental Facts. Therefore, here's another challenging fact he deliberately overlooks. Should, as appears probable, vital planetary systems reach critical thresholds and suddenly collapse, the impact on humanity, ignoring the persistence of additional organisms (an issue he regularly neglects), would eliminate the gradual advancement he predicts. Given that climate alteration may not happen incrementally and steadily, but through sudden changes of state, the potential effects on human welfare are very difficult to forecast. His position that all resources should follow existing data-driven assessments of human betterment, although it may appear reasonable, creates significant illogic when confronting systemic transformation, {prompting us to ignore the greatest

Dean Williams
Dean Williams

Aerospace engineer and space technology writer with over a decade of experience in satellite communications and orbital mechanics.