It Would Be Nice to Dismiss Bill Gates on the Climate Crisis. But He's a Billionaire, So We Can't.
LWe must address the central dilemma: The Microsoft founder ignores the role of politics. Though he came to it late, he now recognizes environmental science. But he operates in blatant, cringeworthy denial about the realities of power. His latest essay on climate, released recently, approaches climate change without political context. He writes as if there were no such thing as political power, and as if extreme wealth didn't exist.
Primary Argument
His main contention is that financial resources are scarce, so the delegates at this month's climate summit in Brazil should shift funding from "near-term emissions goals" towards climate resilience and allocating funds for economic hardship and illness.
Certainly, money for worthy projects is limited, but it's not caused by inevitable rules, an unchangeable fact of civilization. This results from wealthy interests attacking on public welfare investments, leading to the destruction of USAID and severe reductions in assistance funding of other countries. Austerity is a political choice. The decision to impose it is driven by authorities yielding to the demands of extremely wealthy individuals.
Current Funds
There are truckloads of money available. Just after Gates published his new missive, data indicated that the combined assets of America's wealthiest ten individuals grew by $698bn over the last year. That money alone, the increase in a handful of billionaires' net worth, is almost 10 times the yearly funding needed to eliminate severe poverty worldwide. Through what means did they accumulate of economic resources into private hands? What prevents redistribution through effective taxation? The solution lies in their conversion of financial influence into governmental control. With growing fortunes, the more they can bend government and financial structures to their will, securing ongoing financial growth. But the philanthropist discusses nothing in his essay about how and where extra money for both climate action and poverty relief could be identified.
'His essay reads like nothing so much as a peace offering to Donald Trump.' Bill Gates, right, with the Trumps at a private dinner for business leaders in Washington DC.
Wealth Inequality Relationship
An obvious relationship appears between the economic hardship Gates professes to address and the riches he overlooks. In the US, housing insecurity is achieving unprecedented levels, and so is the portion of wealth controlled by the wealthiest fraction. Even if this doesn't characterize Gates' specific methods, by keeping pay low, racking up rents, undermining worker collectives and winning tax and spending cuts, extremely wealthy individuals benefit from others' economic struggles.
Investigation Conclusions
A significant investigation in political science publications, among limited studies accessing this exclusive domain, found that the ultra-rich have radically different political views from the general population. The wealthy respondents in the study, in stark contrast to mere earthlings, saw budget deficits as the most important of the issues it listed, and environmental collapse as unimportant. They were significantly more prone to argue that public retirement benefits and government medical care should be reduced, and much less inclined to think that unemployed people merit reasonable生活质量, or that there should be increased oversight of energy firms, financial institutions and insurance providers. They were strongly against wealth redistribution.
Political Influence
What opinions win out? The few wealthy or the many citizens? Even though the investigation happened under Obama, it found that extremely wealthy individuals enjoyed greater political access than regular individuals. What about currently? The situation hardly requires explanation.
Omissions and Assumptions
That's another telling absence in Bill Gates's essay: at no point in its 5,000 words does it mention Donald Trump. If Gates included this, he'd have to recognize that an important foundation of his argument is unstable: lower prices for sustainable technology inevitably produces environmental improvement. Naturally, it's beneficial that renewable energy costs are dropping significantly than traditional energy sources. But The former president and comparable figures are taking all possible actions to block the shift.
To some degree because of this, fossil fuels remain highly lucrative. 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 oil and gas financial assets have, actually grown.
Psychological Factors
To Gates, overthrowing the power of the ultra-wealthy may be unthinkable. I don't mean only that it clashes with his worldview. Based on his notable omissions regarding this topic, he might be literally incapable of thinking about it. Perhaps this is a symptom of "billionaire brain": a profound incapacity to see the world from other people's point of view. Even though billionaires present research challenges, extrapolating from research into how gaining wealth and status affects cognition could suggest that acquiring huge amounts of money is like taking a blow to the head. Riches appear to disrupt specific mental processes, especially those involving compassion and viewpoint.
Political Calculations
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. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue. This demonstrated nerve, and we're thankful. MAGA!!!"
Background Information
Gates has always been completely WRONG on this topic, even if not for the explanations Trump provides. He has continually trailed scientific consensus, echoing petroleum industry talking points (renewable energy could lower carbon output only with massive expenses) long after they've been discredited. He has spread confusion and misinformation, such as the groundless assertion in his new essay that the intention behind Sri Lanka's failed prohibition on chemical fertilizers involved emission reduction.
Further Difficult Realities
Gates names his article Three Challenging Environmental Facts. So here's another tough truth he studiously ignores. Should, as appears probable, vital planetary systems reach critical thresholds and suddenly collapse, the impact on humanity, ignoring the persistence of additional organisms (a topic he fails, as usual, to mention), would ruin the consistent development he anticipates. Since ecological transformation probably won't occur slowly and predictably, but through rapid shifts, the possible impacts on human wellbeing are extremely hard to predict. His position that all resources should follow existing data-driven assessments of human betterment, even if it seems logical, introduces in the face of systemic change a profound irrationality, {prompting us to ignore the greatest
