🔗 Share this article

Let's begin with the fundamental problem: Bill Gates denies political realities. While he was slow to accept it, he now acknowledges climate change facts. But he lives in flat, embarrassing denial about the realities of power. His latest essay on climate, shared days ago, discusses the topic as though politics didn't matter. He pens words that disregard governmental authority, and as if extreme wealth didn't exist.

Central Claim

His main contention is that funds are very limited, so the delegates at this month's climate summit in Brazil should redirect resources from "short-term pollution targets" towards climate resilience and allocating funds for economic hardship and illness.

Yes, the funds available for any good cause are scarce, but it's not caused by inevitable rules, some implacable truth about human society. It's because oligarchic power has waged war on government social programs, resulting in the elimination of development assistance and severe reductions in assistance funding of various states. Austerity is a political choice. The choice to implement it comes from leaders submitting to the preferences of billionaire class.

Existing Wealth

There are truckloads of money available. Shortly following Gates' latest publication, data indicated that the combined assets of the 10 richest US billionaires grew by $698bn in the past year. These funds independently, the increment in the wealth of 10 people, is almost 10 times the yearly funding needed to eliminate severe poverty worldwide. What methods enabled such concentration of economic resources into private hands? And why can't we get it back through effective taxation? The solution lies in their conversion of wealth into policy-making authority. The richer they become, the more they can bend government and financial structures to their desires, ensuring that they become richer still. But the billionaire mentions nothing in his essay about ways and locations for more resources for both climate action and poverty relief could be found.

'His writing appears primarily as reconciliation with Donald Trump.' Gates photographed with the former president for corporate executives in the capital.

Wealth Inequality Relationship

An obvious relationship appears between the deprivation Gates says concerns him and the riches he overlooks. 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 suppressing salaries, racking up rents, undermining worker collectives and achieving lower taxes and diminished public funding, the ultra-rich thrive on impoverishing other people.

Study Results

A remarkable study in Perspectives on Politics, one of the rare examinations of this private sphere, found that extremely wealthy individuals hold vastly distinct political perspectives from the general population. The rich participants surveyed, completely unlike ordinary citizens, viewed government debt as paramount of the issues it listed, and climate breakdown as the least. They were much more inclined to demand that social security and federal healthcare should be cut, and far less likely to believe that the unemployed should have a "decent standard of living", or that there should be stricter rules for petroleum corporations, banking entities and medical coverage companies. They were fiercely opposed to redistribution.

Governmental Access

So whose views prevail? The few wealthy or the many citizens? Even though the investigation happened under Obama, it found that billionaires maintained closer relationships with government figures than average citizens. How about today? The situation hardly requires explanation.

Missing Elements and Presumptions

Here's another crucial exclusion from the billionaire's article: at no point in its 5,000 words does it mention Donald Trump. Should the billionaire address this, he'd have to acknowledge that the second of his major assumptions is shaky: lower prices for sustainable technology inevitably produces environmental improvement. Certainly, it's positive that clean technology prices are falling dramatically than traditional energy sources. But The former president and comparable figures are taking all possible actions to block the shift.

Partly as a result, oil and gas continue generating substantial profits. This potentially clarifies why, despite Gates's claim that his foundation had divested all its "direct holdings in oil and gas companies" in 2019, its fossil fuel stock and bond holdings 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 may actually be unable to conceptualize it. Perhaps this is a symptom of "billionaire brain": a fundamental failure to comprehend alternative viewpoints. Even though billionaires present research challenges, inferring from investigations about money's effect on mental processes could suggest that obtaining enormous fortunes compares to cognitive damage. Riches appear to disrupt specific mental processes, especially those involving compassion and viewpoint.

Strategic Considerations

But perhaps there's also calculation here: his essay reads like nothing so much as a peace offering to Donald Trump. Trump definitely understood it as such: "We've defeated the climate change falsehood." 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!!!"

Previous Positions

Gates has historically been mistaken on this topic, although not for Trump's stated reasons. He has consistently lagged behind the curve, echoing petroleum industry talking points (green technologies could reduce global CO2 emissions only at a "beyond astronomical" cost) significantly following their debunking. He has spread confusion and misinformation, like the baseless statement in his latest article that the intention behind Sri Lanka's failed prohibition on chemical fertilizers involved emission reduction.

Further Difficult Realities

Gates calls his essay Three Tough Truths About Climate. So here's another tough truth he studiously ignores. If, as now seems likely, crucial Earth systems cross tipping points and rapidly fail, the consequences for people, let alone the survival of other life forms (an issue he regularly neglects), would eliminate the gradual advancement he predicts. Because environmental change is likely to proceed not in gradual and linear ways, but through sudden changes of state, the possible impacts on human wellbeing are extremely hard to predict. His argument that we should align all funding to current "data-based analysis" of improvements in human welfare, while it might sound rational, creates significant illogic when confronting systemic transformation, {prompting us to ignore the greatest