Bill Gates has stirred up a frenzy after posting a lengthy essay on “tough truths about climate” last Tuesday, Oct. 28. Long a warrior for climate issues, Gates is calling his new stance “the middle position” between extreme views on climate change, with the main argument being that climate spending and actions must be considered in terms of “overall human welfare,” noting the current “trade-offs between climate action and saving children’s lives.”
Gates points out in his essay: “our climate strategies need to prioritize human welfare. This may seem obvious … but sometimes human welfare takes a backseat to lowering emissions, with bad consequences.” He makes the point that “From the standpoint of improving lives, using more energy is a good thing,” even though “what’s good for prosperity is bad for the environment.” Gates also poses questions like: “If droughts kill your crops, can you still afford food? When there’s an extreme heat wave, can you go somewhere with air conditioning? When a flood causes a disease outbreak, can the local health clinic treat everyone who’s sick?” Therefore, he says, to solve these issues, the most important thing is to focus on innovation.
In an interview on CNBC last week, Gates was asked to clarify some of his new positions. When the interviewer asked about the merit of the Paris Climate Accord, Gates defended it as an important agreement, but said: “The one thing about that accord that turned out not to be realistic, was the ambitious goal of staying to 1.5°. We won’t be able to do that. Even if you took all the money away from health, you wouldn’t be able to do that. So now the question is, ‘okay, what temperature level are we going to end up at?’ [It’s] very important to minimize that, but not at the expense of everything else.”
