🔗 Share this article

Let's address the central dilemma: Bill Gates is a politics denier. While he was slow to accept it, he now accepts the realities of climate science. But he operates in blatant, cringeworthy denial about political realities. His new piece on climate, shared days ago, discusses the topic as though politics didn't matter. He composes text ignoring political influence, and no such thing as billionaires.

The Main Contention

His primary argument suggests that money is insufficient, so the participants in the upcoming climate meeting in Brazil should redirect resources from "near-term emissions goals" towards climate resilience and spending on poverty and disease.

Yes, the funds available for any good cause are scarce, but that's not because of some natural law, an unavoidable reality of communities. This results from wealthy interests attacking on government social programs, causing the dismantling of aid agencies and drastic cuts to the aid budgets of additional nations. Budget cuts represent political decisions. The decision to impose it is driven by authorities yielding to the demands of extremely wealthy individuals.

Current Funds

Massive amounts of wealth exist. Just after Gates published his new missive, Oxfam revealed that the net worth of the top ten US fortune holders expanded by hundreds of billions in the past year. This amount by itself, the increment in the wealth of 10 people, is nearly tenfold the annual amount required to end extreme poverty worldwide. What methods enabled such concentration of the world's money into their pockets? What prevents redistribution through effective taxation? The solution lies in their conversion of wealth into policy-making authority. As their wealth increases, the greater their ability to influence political and economic frameworks to their preferences, ensuring that they become richer still. But the philanthropist discusses nothing in his essay about ways and locations for more resources for both climate solutions and hardship alleviation could be located.

'The article seems designed as appeasement toward Donald Trump.' Bill Gates, right, with the Trumps at a private dinner for business leaders in Washington DC.

The Poverty-Wealth Connection

An obvious relationship appears between the poverty Gates claims to care so much about and the fortunes he ignores. 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 keeping pay low, driving up rental prices, busting trade unions and winning tax and spending cuts, extremely wealthy individuals benefit from others' economic struggles.

Research Findings

A remarkable study in academic political journals, among limited studies accessing this exclusive domain, found that billionaires maintain completely separate political opinions from most people. The wealthy respondents in the study, in stark contrast to mere earthlings, viewed government debt as paramount of the issues it listed, and ecological crisis as insignificant. They were significantly more prone to argue that social welfare programs and national health services should be decreased, and far less likely to believe that the unemployed should have a "decent standard of living", or that there should be more regulation of oil companies, banks and health insurers. They were vehemently anti-taxation and redistribution.

Governmental Access

What opinions win out? The small elite or the vast population? Though the study was conducted in the Obama years, it found that the very rich had far more access to politicians and officials than average citizens. What about currently? I scarcely think I need to spell it out.

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. 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. Certainly, it's positive that clean technology prices are falling dramatically than traditional energy sources. But Trump and like-minded politicians are taking all possible actions to block the shift.

In part due to these factors, oil and gas continue generating substantial profits. This might explain, 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, truly expanded.

Mental Aspects

Regarding Gates, confronting extreme wealth power could appear inconceivable. It's not merely incompatible with his outlook. I mean that, judging by his remarkable silences on the issue, he may actually be unable to conceptualize it. Possibly this represents "extreme wealth mentality": 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 gaining massive wealth resembles experiencing brain trauma. Wealth seems to scramble certain cognitive functions, notably those concerning understanding and outlook.

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: "I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. The billionaire has acknowledged his complete error. It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful. MAGA!!!"

Background Information

Gates has historically been mistaken on this topic, though not for the reasons Trump imagines. He has repeatedly been behind current understanding, repeating traditional energy arguments (green technologies could reduce global CO2 emissions only at a "beyond astronomical" cost) significantly following their debunking. He has spread confusion and misinformation, such as the groundless assertion in his new essay that the objective of Sri Lanka's catastrophic restriction on synthetic fertilisers was "to cut emissions".

More Challenging Facts

Gates names his article Three Challenging Environmental Facts. So here's another tough truth he studiously ignores. If, as currently expected, essential environmental mechanisms pass turning points and suddenly collapse, the effects on human life, ignoring the persistence of additional organisms (a subject he consistently omits), would ruin the consistent development he anticipates. Given that climate alteration may not happen incrementally and steadily, 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, although it may appear reasonable, introduces in the face of systemic change a profound irrationality, {prompting us to ignore the greatest