It Would Be Nice to Dismiss the Tech Mogul on the Environmental Emergency. But He's a Billionaire, So We Can't.

LWe must start with the core issue: Bill Gates is a politics denier. While he was slow to accept it, he now acknowledges climate change facts. But he lives in flat, embarrassing denial about how politics works. His recent article on climate, published last week, treats the issue as if it existed in a political vacuum. He composes text ignoring political influence, and pretending massive fortunes aren't relevant.

Central Claim

His main contention is that money is insufficient, so the representatives at the environmental conference in Brazil should redirect resources from "short-term pollution targets" towards climate "adaptation" and spending on poverty and disease.

Certainly, money for worthy projects is limited, but that's not because of some natural law, an unchangeable fact of civilization. It's because oligarchic power has waged war on public welfare investments, leading to the destruction of USAID and substantial decreases in support money of various states. Financial restraint stems from policy choices. The decision to impose it is driven by leaders submitting to the preferences of extremely wealthy individuals.

Available Resources

There are truckloads of money available. Just after Gates published his new missive, research showed that the total wealth of the 10 richest US billionaires expanded by hundreds of billions over the last year. This amount by itself, the increment in the wealth of 10 people, is approximately ten times the annual amount required to end extreme poverty worldwide. What methods enabled such concentration of global wealth into personal accounts? What prevents redistribution through proper tax policies? The solution lies in their conversion of economic power into political power. The richer they become, the more they can bend the state and economic system to their preferences, ensuring that they become richer still. But the billionaire mentions nothing in his essay about how and where extra money for both climate solutions and hardship alleviation could be located.

'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.

Rich-Poor Dynamic

A clear connection exists between the poverty Gates claims to care so much about and the wealth he fails to mention. In the US, homelessness is breaking records, and so is the percentage of resources held by the ultra-rich. Even if this doesn't characterize Gates' specific methods, by suppressing salaries, increasing housing costs, undermining worker collectives and achieving lower taxes and diminished public funding, billionaires prosper while others experience hardship.

Study Results

A notable research in political science publications, among limited studies accessing this exclusive domain, found that billionaires maintain completely separate political opinions from most people. The rich participants surveyed, completely unlike ordinary citizens, saw budget deficits as the most important of the issues it listed, and climate breakdown as the least. They were much more inclined to demand 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 increased oversight of energy firms, financial institutions and insurance providers. They were vehemently anti-taxation and redistribution.

Political Influence

What opinions win out? The few wealthy or the many citizens? Even though the investigation happened under Obama, it found that billionaires maintained closer relationships with government figures than average citizens. What about currently? The current reality seems obvious.

Omissions and Assumptions

Here's another crucial exclusion from the billionaire's article: across extensive text, the former president receives no reference. Should the billionaire address 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 conventional power. But The former president and comparable figures are employing every method to hinder the change.

In part due to these factors, oil and gas continue generating substantial profits. 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 fossil fuel stock and bond holdings have, in fact, increased.

Cognitive Considerations

Regarding Gates, confronting extreme wealth power could appear inconceivable. It's not merely incompatible with his outlook. Considering his significant avoidance of this subject, he could genuinely find it impossible to consider. This might indicate "wealth-induced cognitive distortion": a fundamental failure to comprehend alternative viewpoints. While the ultra-rich are notoriously hard to study, inferring from investigations about money's effect on mental processes could suggest that gaining massive wealth resembles experiencing brain trauma. Fortunes seem to disturb particular brain operations, notably those concerning understanding and outlook.

Political Calculations

But perhaps there's also calculation here: his writing appears primarily as reconciliation with the former president. Trump definitely understood it as such: "We've defeated the climate change falsehood." The billionaire has acknowledged his complete error. It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful. MAGA!!!"

Previous Positions

The billionaire has consistently been incorrect on the issue, although not for Trump's stated reasons. He has repeatedly been behind current understanding, reciting fossil fuel claims (clean technology could decrease pollution only through enormous spending) significantly following their debunking. He has propagated misunderstanding and inaccuracies, like the baseless statement in his latest article that the purpose of Sri Lanka's disastrous ban on artificial fertilizers aimed at pollution decrease.

Additional Tough Truths

Gates names his article Three Challenging Environmental Facts. So here's another tough truth he studiously ignores. If, as now seems likely, crucial Earth systems cross tipping points and suddenly collapse, the effects on human life, let alone the survival of other life forms (a topic he fails, as usual, to mention), would destroy the smooth and steady progress he foresees. Because environmental change is likely to proceed not in gradual and linear ways, but through sudden changes of state, the conceivable consequences for people's quality of life are nearly impossible to anticipate. His position that all resources should follow existing data-driven assessments of human betterment, although it may appear reasonable, generates substantial unreasonableness when addressing fundamental change, {prompting us to ignore the greatest