I Wish We Could Ignore Bill Gates on the Climate Crisis. But He's a Billionaire, So We Can't.
Let's address the central dilemma: Bill Gates is a politics denier. Though he came to it late, he now accepts the realities of climate science. But he exists in stark, awkward denial about how politics works. His new piece on climate, published last week, discusses the topic as though politics didn't matter. He writes as if there were no such thing as political power, and pretending massive fortunes aren't relevant.
The Main Contention
His key position states that financial resources are scarce, so the participants in the upcoming climate meeting in Brazil should redirect resources from "immediate carbon reduction objectives" towards environmental adjustment 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 unavoidable reality of communities. The reason is elite influence has declared war on public welfare investments, leading to the destruction of USAID and severe reductions in assistance funding of other countries. Budget cuts represent political decisions. The selection to enforce it originates with leaders submitting to the preferences of billionaire class.
Available Resources
Substantial financial resources are present. Just after Gates published his new missive, research showed that the total wealth of the top ten US fortune holders increased by nearly $700 billion over the last year. These funds independently, 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 economic resources into private hands? Why can't society reclaim it through effective taxation? The explanation involves their transformation of economic power into political power. The richer they become, the stronger their capacity to shape political and economic frameworks to their will, securing ongoing financial growth. But Bill Gates says nothing in his essay about methods and sources for additional funds for both environmental measures and economic assistance could be identified.
'His writing appears primarily as reconciliation with Donald Trump.' The billionaire alongside Trump at an exclusive meal for corporate executives in the capital.
Rich-Poor Dynamic
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 share of assets owned by the top 0.1%. Even if this doesn't characterize Gates' specific methods, by keeping pay low, racking up rents, weakening labor organizations and achieving lower taxes and diminished public funding, billionaires prosper while others experience hardship.
Investigation Conclusions
A remarkable study in academic political journals, among limited studies accessing this exclusive domain, found that extremely wealthy individuals hold vastly distinct political perspectives from most people. The wealthy respondents in the study, sharply different from average people, saw budget deficits as the most important of the issues it listed, and climate breakdown as the least. They were far more likely to insist that social welfare programs and national health services should be decreased, and significantly less prone to accept 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 fiercely opposed to redistribution.
Policy Impact
Which perspectives dominate? The small elite or the vast population? 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. What about currently? The situation hardly requires explanation.
Missing Elements and Presumptions
This represents another significant omission in Gates' writing: 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: reductions in the cost of new green technologies lead inexorably to environmental progress. Certainly, it's positive that clean technology prices are falling dramatically than traditional energy sources. But The former president and comparable figures are doing everything they can to impede the transition.
To some degree because of this, traditional energy sources stay very profitable. This might explain, even though Gates states his organization sold all direct fossil fuel investments in 2019, its oil and gas financial assets have, in fact, increased.
Psychological Factors
Regarding Gates, confronting extreme wealth power could appear inconceivable. This isn't just about conflicting with his perspective. I mean that, judging by his remarkable silences on the issue, he could genuinely find it impossible to consider. Possibly this represents "extreme wealth mentality": a profound incapacity to see the world from other people's point of view. While the ultra-rich are notoriously hard to study, inferring from investigations about money's effect on mental processes could suggest that obtaining enormous fortunes compares to cognitive damage. Fortunes seem to disturb particular brain operations, 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 certainly took it that way: "Our victory over climate misinformation is complete." 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 climate matters, although not for Trump's stated reasons. He has repeatedly been behind current understanding, repeating traditional energy arguments (clean technology could decrease pollution only through enormous spending) long after they've been discredited. He has propagated misunderstanding and inaccuracies, including the unsupported claim in his recent writing 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. Should, as appears probable, vital planetary systems reach critical thresholds and suddenly collapse, the consequences for people, let alone the survival of other life forms (a subject he consistently omits), would destroy the smooth and steady progress he foresees. Given that climate alteration may not happen incrementally and steadily, but through sudden changes of state, the conceivable consequences for people's quality of life are nearly impossible to anticipate. His argument that we should align all funding to current "data-based analysis" of improvements in human welfare, while it might sound rational, generates substantial unreasonableness when addressing fundamental change, {prompting us to ignore the greatest