Microsoft founder Bill Gates appears to have pivoted on climate change, according to a memo he released on Tuesday.
As one of the most influential people in the world, Gates is known as one of the leading figures on the Left who has warned for years about climate change, arguing it is necessary for the planet to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and create a zero-emissions economy to avert global disaster.
However, Gates took a step back this week in a lengthy note posted to his website.
“Climate change is a serious problem, but it will not be the end of civilization,” he wrote, after years of warning of the need for “miracles” to avoid planetary catastrophe.
In his latest take on the climate debate, Gates suggested that “doomsday” activists have failed to take a holistic assessment of global warming. In their mission to avert human catastrophe, they have missed the root of the problem by advocating policies that have only further burdened impoverished countries and communities, instead of giving people the tools they need to escape poverty and thus evade the worst consequences of climate change, he argued.
For example, Gates wrote, “If a pregnant woman is already malnourished and then has her food supply cut off because of a flood, she’s even more likely to give birth prematurely, and her baby is more likely to start life underweight. But if she’s well-nourished to begin with, she and her baby have a much better chance of staying healthy.”
“I’m not saying we should ignore temperature-related deaths because diseases are a bigger problem, “ he continued.
“What I am saying is that we should deal with disease and extreme weather in proportion to the suffering they cause, and that we should go after the underlying conditions that leave people vulnerable to them. While we need to limit the number of extremely hot and cold days, we also need to make sure that fewer people live in poverty and poor health so that extreme weather isn’t such a threat to them,” he said.
His evaluation is in line with Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s, who has said that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. However, he says climate change as an issue should not be prioritized over poverty and human health.
“Climate change is a real and global challenge that we should and can address,” Wright wrote in 2024. “However, representing it as the most urgent threat to humanity today displaces concerns about more pressing threats of malnutrition, access to clean water, air pollution, endemic diseases, and human rights, among others.”
Gates also warned against fixating on zero-emissions goals after previously arguing that it is imperative the world go from 51 billion tons of emissions to zero within the next 30 years to avoid catastrophe in his 2021 book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need. In the book, he warned that if the goal is not reached, “We won’t be able to farm or go outside during the summer.”
“Wildfires, even the farming productivity in the south of the U.S. — the droughts — will reduce productivity in the area dramatically,” Gates said during a Fox News interview about the book, going on to say that “the instability overall will be five times as many deaths at the peak of the pandemic and going up every year.”
However, this week, Gates reframed the debate, warning against “focusing too much on near-term emissions goals.”
“Although climate change will have serious consequences—particularly for people in the poorest countries—it will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future. Emissions projections have gone down, and with the right policies and investments, innovation will allow us to drive emissions down much further,” he wrote.
“Unfortunately, the doomsday outlook is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world,” he added.
Gates further urged world leaders set to next month’s global climate summit in Brazil, known as COP30, to focus not so much on lowering emissions to address temperature changes and climate change, as working on “improving lives.”
“Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them, it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. The biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been,” he said.
“Climate change is not the biggest threat to the lives and livelihoods of people in poor countries, and it won’t be in the future.… Lower emissions will eventually lead to fewer devastating losses, but today’s farmers don’t have time to wait for the climate to stabilize. They need to raise their incomes and feed their families now,” he added.
Gates’ evolution of thought on the climate debate comes after his long history of seeking to lower temperatures, including by founding Breakthrough Energy with the goal to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. He has conducted similar efforts to combat climate change through his charitable organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In a 2021 blog post, the Microsoft founder said climate change could be worse than the COVID-19 pandemic that was ripping across the world at the time.
“As awful as this pandemic is, climate change could be worse,” he wrote. “A global crisis has shocked the world. It is causing a tragic number of deaths, making people afraid to leave home, and leading to economic hardship not seen in many generations. Its effects are rippling across the world.… Obviously, I am talking about COVID-19. But in just a few decades, the same description will fit another global crisis: climate change.”
That post appears to have been deleted from Gates’s website, alongside other posts such as a 2021 note on building a zero-emissions economy to avert a climate disaster.
The month after he made the blog note, Gates rebutted criticism that he had “blown up” the climate crisis during an interview with the Washington Post.
“I knew, as I traveled to Africa and saw that there were no lights at night and no power lines, that electrification is a necessary step in terms of economic growth, and so we had to somehow figure out a cheap way to get electricity into at least African cities. And I was hearing that there’s this constraint when you build electric factories: You’re not supposed to just use coal. Because, particularly in equatorial regions, towards late this century, the effect on subsistence farmers was going to be horrific. That is, there will be millions of deaths caused by climate [change] — and for exactly the people who caused it the least,” Gates said.
“And when I would meet with smart people who aren’t full-time on climate, they would ask, ‘Come on, what about this climate thing? Isn’t there some [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] guy who says the clouds will stop it? Aren’t there still possibilities that it’s all overblown?’ And I’m saying no, and trying to succinctly explain why and what we have to change,” he added.
This week, Gates pivoted, arguing that existential questions shouldn’t center around the climate, but about creating opportunity for human flourishing that allows people to escape the immediate and looming consequences of climate change.
TRUMP PREVAILS AGAINST GLOBAL SHIPPING CARBON TAX PLAN, DELAYING VOTE BY A YEAR
“Make a strategic pivot,” he urged ahead of the COP30 summit. “Prioritize the things that have the greatest impact on human welfare. It’s the best way to ensure that everyone gets a chance to live a healthy and productive life, no matter where they’re born, and no matter what kind of climate they’re born into.”
The change comes over a month after Gates’s most recent visit to the White House, where he joined other major tech leaders for a dinner at the newly renovated Rose Garden. He discussed his vaccine-related work and sat next to first lady Melania Trump.
