It Would Be Nice to Dismiss the Tech Mogul on the Climate Crisis. But His Wealth Matters, So We Must Listen.

LWe must begin with the fundamental problem: The Microsoft founder denies political realities. While he was slow to accept it, he now accepts the realities of climate science. But he exists in stark, awkward denial about political realities. His recent article on climate, published last week, approaches climate change without political context. He composes text ignoring political influence, and no such thing as billionaires.

The Main Contention

His key position states that money is insufficient, so the delegates at this month's climate summit in Brazil should shift funding from "immediate carbon reduction objectives" towards climate resilience and spending on poverty and disease.

Certainly, money for worthy projects is limited, but that's not because of some natural law, an unavoidable reality of communities. It's because oligarchic power has waged war on public welfare investments, leading to the destruction of USAID and severe reductions in assistance funding of additional nations. Austerity is a political choice. The selection to enforce it originates with leaders submitting to the preferences of the ultra-rich.

Current Funds

Massive amounts of wealth exist. Soon after the billionaire released his essay, Oxfam revealed that the net worth of the top ten US fortune holders expanded by hundreds of billions over the last year. These funds independently, the growth in ten individuals' fortunes, is almost 10 times the money needed each year to stop deep deprivation worldwide. How have they managed to channel so much of the world's money into their pockets? Why can't society reclaim it through appropriate revenue collection? The answer is their translation of wealth into policy-making authority. The richer they become, the stronger their capacity to shape the state and economic system to their will, securing ongoing financial growth. But Bill Gates says nothing in his essay about how and where extra money for both climate solutions and hardship alleviation could be found.

'The article seems designed as appeasement toward Donald Trump.' The billionaire alongside Trump at an exclusive meal for industry figures in Washington.

The Poverty-Wealth Connection

There's a direct link between the economic hardship Gates professes to address and the wealth he fails to mention. In the US, homelessness is breaking records, 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, driving up rental prices, undermining worker collectives and achieving lower taxes and diminished public funding, extremely wealthy individuals benefit from others' economic struggles.

Research Findings

A significant investigation in academic political journals, one of the rare examinations of this private sphere, found that extremely wealthy individuals hold vastly distinct political perspectives from the general population. The wealthy respondents in the study, completely unlike ordinary citizens, viewed government debt as paramount 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 jobless individuals deserve adequate living conditions, or that there should be more regulation of oil companies, banks and health insurers. They were fiercely opposed to redistribution.

Policy Impact

What opinions win out? The tiny minority or the great majority? Even though the investigation happened under Obama, it found that billionaires maintained closer relationships with government figures than average citizens. How about today? The situation hardly requires explanation.

Omissions and Assumptions

Here's another crucial exclusion from the billionaire's article: throughout thousands of words, Trump goes unmentioned. If Gates included this, he'd have to recognize that an important foundation of his argument is unstable: decreasing expenses for eco-friendly innovations automatically creates ecological advancement. Of course it helps that wind, solar and other green technologies are becoming radically cheaper than fossil fuels. But Trump and similar demagogues are taking all possible actions to block the shift.

To some degree because of this, oil and gas continue generating substantial profits. 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.

Cognitive Considerations

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 might be literally incapable of thinking about it. Possibly this represents "extreme wealth mentality": a deep inability to understand others' perspectives. Even though billionaires present research challenges, drawing conclusions from studies about wealth's impact on thinking could suggest that acquiring huge amounts of money is like taking a blow to the head. Wealth seems to scramble certain cognitive functions, notably those concerning understanding and outlook.

Political Calculations

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." Gates has confessed his total mistake. This required bravery, and we appreciate it. MAGA!!!"

Background Information

Gates has historically been mistaken on this topic, even if not for the explanations Trump provides. He has continually trailed scientific consensus, reciting fossil fuel claims (renewable energy could lower carbon output only with massive expenses) long after they've been discredited. He has disseminated uncertainty and false information, including the unsupported claim in his recent writing that the objective of Sri Lanka's catastrophic restriction on artificial fertilizers aimed at pollution decrease.

Additional Tough Truths

Gates calls his essay Three Tough Truths About Climate. Thus, here's another difficult reality he carefully avoids. If, as currently expected, essential environmental mechanisms pass turning points and quickly deteriorate, the consequences for people, let alone the survival of other life forms (a subject he consistently omits), would eliminate the gradual advancement he predicts. Because environmental change is likely to proceed not in gradual and linear ways, but through sudden changes of state, the potential effects on human welfare are very difficult to forecast. His position that all resources should follow existing data-driven assessments of human betterment, although it may appear reasonable, creates significant illogic when confronting systemic transformation, {prompting us to ignore the greatest