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.”
Bill Gates warns that prioritising the fight against rising temperatures above all else means that issues such as human health and equality risk being overshadowed.Credit: Bloomberg
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.”
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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.”