Bill Gates says climate change ‘won’t lead to humanity’s demise’

Bill Gates, the billionaire philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft, says it’s time to adopt a more measured tone when addressing climate change and the threat it poses to the world.

In a memo published on Tuesday, he called out what he characterised as a “doomsday view of climate change.”

According to Gates, who has long stood out as a vocal defender of the need to fight global warming, prioritising the fight against rising temperatures above all else means that issues such as human health and equality risk being overshadowed.

“Climate change is serious, but we’ve made great progress,” he said in the memo. “We need to keep backing the breakthroughs that will help the world reach zero emissions. 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.”

“Although climate change will have serious consequences — particularly for people in the poorest countries — it will not lead to humanity’s demise,” he wrote. “People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.”

“I know that some climate advocates will disagree with me, call me a hypocrite because of my own carbon footprint (which I fully offset with legitimate carbon credits), or see this as a sneaky way of arguing that we shouldn’t take climate change seriously.”

Many climate experts have called for greater focus on helping people adapt to climate-amplified extreme weather as emissions cuts fail to materialise quickly enough, leading to worse and more frequent natural disasters. Gates’ intervention, ahead of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, echoes demands made by poorer countries for more funding to support early warning systems, more resilient food and water supplies, and health care infrastructure. It’s also an area of growing interest for investors.

Wealthier regions including Europe also face growing threats from extreme weather, Irene Heemskerk, head of the climate change centre at the European Central Bank, said at an event on Tuesday. Water scarcity and floods “are putting the economic output of Europe at risk,” she said.

Speaking on CNBC on Tuesday morning, Gates said his latest assessment of the climate problem was partly motivated by cuts to aid budgets made by the Trump administration and other rich countries. “The plea here is to say, OK, let’s take that very limited money and not have some partitioned off for particular causes.” He described the US government’s decision to cut climate and clean energy programs a “huge disappointment.”

Gates said his views on the necessity of the Paris climate agreement and the need for companies to lower their emissions have not changed. “I’m a climate activist, but I’m also a child survival activist,” he said.

The upshot, Gates says in his essay, is that it’s now “time to put human welfare at the centre of our climate strategies, which includes reducing the green premium to zero and improving agriculture and health in poor countries.”

Gates, who this year laid off some staff at his climate group, Breakthrough Energy, warned that the doomsday outlook has led climate advocates to focus too narrowly on near-term emissions goals, diverting resources away from more effective solutions to improve life on a hotter planet. He said COP30 should focus on how best to adapt to reality and ensure human welfare is a priority.

“This is a chance to refocus on the metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change: improving lives,” Gates wrote. “COP30 is taking place at a time when it’s especially important to get the most value out of every dollar spent on helping the poorest.”

The billionaire said he’s aware his comments will draw criticism from some climate advocates, and underlined that he still acknowledges that climate change “needs to be solved.” He also said his view on the matter has been informed by his work with the Gates Foundation, whose top priority is health and development in poor countries.

“Sometimes the world acts as if any effort to fight climate change is as worthwhile as any other,” Gates wrote.

“As a result, less-effective projects are diverting money and attention from efforts that will have more impact on the human condition: namely, making it affordable to eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions and reducing extreme poverty with improvements in agriculture and health.”

Bloomberg, wires

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