Bill Gates is doing a major about face on one of the left’s favorite pet issues.
In a stunning memo published Tuesday, the billionaire founder of Microsoft dropped what he called “tough truths” about climate change in an obvious reversal of his prior stance.
The About Face
Gates began the piece by admitting there has been a “doomsday view of climate change.” He said it goes like this:
“In a few decades, cataclysmic climate change will decimate civilization. The evidence is all around us—just look at all the heat waves and storms caused by rising global temperatures. Nothing matters more than limiting the rise in temperature.”
Sound familiar? “Yes, Bill, wherever did people get those doomsday views from,” Megyn wondered on Wednesday’s AM Update. “Oh, wait, it was from you. You and people like former Vice President Al Gore, Greta Thunberg, and President Obama, to name just a few.”
That quartet was among the loudest voices claiming people were already suffering and even dying from climate change. We were told “entire ecosystems are collapsing,” the earth was at the “beginning of a mass extinction,” and we were in a “world war… against greenhouse gases.”
But Gates, apparently, no longer has that point of view. “Fortunately for all of us, this view is wrong. Although climate change will have serious consequences—particularly for people in the poorest countries—it will not lead to humanity’s demise,” he wrote. “People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.”
Changing the Narrative
With the shock letter, Gates is seemingly trying to shift the global conversation ahead of the upcoming COP30 climate summit in Brazil next month. He offered a reframing of sorts as part of that effort.
“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,” he wrote. “The biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been. Understanding this will let us focus our limited resources on interventions that will have the greatest impact for the most vulnerable people.”
He also admitted wind and solar energy options are not ready for primetime. “We don’t yet have all the tools we need to meet the growing demand for energy without increasing carbon emissions,” he wrote. Instead, he called for the world to focus on innovation and adaptation to improve people’s ability to live on a warming planet.
As a reminder, this is the man who once backed a venture to spray dust into the atmosphere in order to block the sun and cool the planet.
Doubling Down
Gates doubled down on this new direction during an appearance on CNBC with Andrew Ross Sorkin Tuesday morning, where he acknowledged the key goal of the Paris Climate Accord – limiting global rise in temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius – is not based in reality, nor should it be a priority.
“Climate is a super important problem. There’s enough innovation here to avoid super bad outcomes. We won’t achieve our best goal, the 1.5 or even the two degrees,” he said. “And as we go about trying to minimize that, we have to frame it in terms of overall human welfare, not just everything should be solely for climate.”
He said the goal “turned out not to be realistic” and cannot be reached. “Even if you took all the money away from health, you wouldn’t be able to do that,” Gates added. “So, now, you know, the question is, okay, what temperature level are we going to end up at? Very important to minimize that, but not at the expense of everything else.
With that in mind, Sorkin asked Gates what he would say to someone like Thunberg if she heard his new position and accused him of reversing himself.
“I’d say, wasn’t the goal here to improve human lives? And shouldn’t we, in our awareness of how little generosity there is to help measure, you know, should we get them a measles vaccine, or should we do some climate related activity? And if we could take, if we stop funding all vaccines and that, you know, saved you 0.1 degree, would that be a smart trade off,” he responded. “That’s the kind of question we have to ask. So, I’m a climate activist, but I’m also a child survival activist.”
Critics Pounce
Count climate change scientist Michael Mann as someone who does not agree with Gates’ awakening. In an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday, he called his take “disappointing” and said the Microsoft founder “doesn’t have any expertise in climate science.”
Mann accused Gates of “failing to listen to what the experts actually have to say” because “disastrous climate change” is not some future concern but rather “is already here.” Therefore, he said the question is actually: “How bad are we willing to let it get?”
“So, when Bill Gates says, we’ll just sort of try to engineer our way out of it or innovate our way out of it, it’s really tone deaf to the fact that there are a very large number of people who will suffer catastrophic consequences if we continue to allow the planet to warm up,” Mann added.
Some on the left have pointed to the change in administration as a reason for the change in messaging, as Gates was among the tech CEOs who met with President Donald Trump at the White House last month.
You can get all the day’s headlines by tuning into the AM Update with Megyn Kelly on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch AM Update live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays at 8:45am ET.