It Would Be Nice to Ignore Bill Gates on the Environmental Emergency. But His Wealth Matters, So We Must Listen.

Let's begin with the fundamental problem: Bill Gates is a politics denier. While he was slow to accept it, he now accepts the realities of climate science. But he lives in flat, embarrassing denial about political realities. His recent article on climate, published last week, treats the issue as if it existed in a political vacuum. He writes as if there were no such thing as political power, and pretending massive fortunes aren't relevant.

Central Claim

His key position states that financial resources are scarce, so the participants in the upcoming climate meeting in Brazil should redirect resources from "short-term pollution targets" towards environmental adjustment and allocating funds for economic hardship and illness.

Certainly, money for worthy projects is limited, but that's not because of some natural law, an unavoidable reality of communities. This results from wealthy interests attacking on benign state spending, leading to the destruction of USAID and drastic cuts to the aid budgets of various states. Austerity is a political choice. The selection to enforce it originates with governments bowing to the wishes of the ultra-rich.

Existing Wealth

Substantial financial resources are present. Just after Gates published his new missive, research showed that the total wealth of the top ten US fortune holders expanded by hundreds of billions during the previous twelve months. These funds independently, the growth in ten individuals' fortunes, is almost 10 times the annual amount required to end extreme poverty worldwide. How have they managed to channel so much of the world's money into their pockets? What prevents redistribution through appropriate revenue collection? The answer is their translation of financial influence into governmental control. The richer they become, the more they can bend political and economic frameworks 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 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 corporate executives in the capital.

Wealth Inequality Relationship

There's a direct link 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 percentage of resources held by the ultra-rich. While this might not be Gates's own business model, by suppressing salaries, racking up rents, busting trade unions and winning tax and spending cuts, extremely wealthy individuals benefit from others' economic struggles.

Research Findings

A significant investigation in political science publications, one of the rare examinations of this private sphere, found that extremely wealthy individuals hold vastly distinct political perspectives from the general population. The rich participants surveyed, 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 the unemployed should have a "decent standard of living", or that there should be more regulation of oil companies, banks and health insurers. They were strongly against wealth redistribution.

Political Influence

Which perspectives dominate? 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 regular individuals. How about today? The current reality seems obvious.

Missing Elements and Presumptions

That's another telling absence in Bill Gates's essay: at no point in its 5,000 words does it mention Donald Trump. Should the billionaire address this, he'd have to acknowledge that the second of his major assumptions is shaky: reductions in the cost of new green technologies lead inexorably to environmental progress. Certainly, it's positive that clean technology prices are falling dramatically than conventional power. But The former president and comparable figures are taking all possible actions to block the shift.

In part due to these factors, oil and gas continue generating substantial profits. This could be why, notwithstanding Gates' assertion about eliminating petroleum company stocks in 2019, its fossil fuel stock and bond holdings have, actually grown.

Mental Aspects

For Gates, challenging billionaire influence might seem impossible. I don't mean only that it clashes with his worldview. I mean that, judging by his remarkable silences on the issue, 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. While the ultra-rich are notoriously hard to study, inferring from investigations about money's effect on mental processes could suggest that acquiring huge amounts of money is like taking a blow to the head. Fortunes seem to disturb particular brain operations, particularly those related to empathy and perspective.

Political Calculations

Yet, political maneuvering could be present: his essay reads like nothing so much as a peace offering to Donald Trump. Trump certainly took it that way: "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 this topic, even if not for the explanations Trump provides. He has repeatedly been behind current understanding, reciting fossil fuel claims (green technologies could reduce global CO2 emissions only at a "beyond astronomical" cost) long after they've been discredited. He has spread confusion and misinformation, including the unsupported claim in his recent writing that the intention behind Sri Lanka's failed prohibition on chemical fertilizers involved emission reduction.

Additional Tough Truths

Gates calls his essay Three Tough Truths About Climate. Thus, here's another difficult reality he carefully avoids. If, as now seems likely, crucial Earth systems cross tipping points and quickly deteriorate, the consequences for people, not to mention the existence of other species (a topic he fails, as usual, to mention), would ruin the consistent development he anticipates. Given that climate alteration may not happen incrementally and steadily, but via abrupt transitions, the potential effects on human welfare are very difficult to forecast. His argument that we should align all funding to current "data-based analysis" of improvements in human welfare, even if it seems logical, introduces in the face of systemic change a profound irrationality, {prompting us to ignore the greatest