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Contrary to what you may have read, America’s original tech bro is not abandoning the climate fight, and neither should anyone else.
In late October, just before COP30, the annual U.N. conference on climate change, Bill Gates released a “memo” (actually a post on his blog, Gates Notes) that summarized his current thinking on climate change. The memo itself is thoughtful, data-driven, and filled with insights.
The media response was none of these things.
“Bill Gates shifts tone on climate, criticizes ‘doomsday view,’” said CBS. “Why Bill Gates’ climate memo is being celebrated by skeptics while frustrating scientists,” claimed the science news site Phys.org. President Trump crowed on social media that “Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue.” (Gates himself noted that this is “gigantic misreading” of his words.)
Of course there have been some smart and clear-eyed articles about Gates’s post, but the overall take has been that Gates was capitulating to political pressure and downplaying the risks of climate change. Neither is true.
What Gates Actually Wrote
Gates’s post contained “Three Truths” about climate change and the fight going forward: 1) “Climate change is a serious problem, but it will not be the end of civilization.” 2) “Temperature is not the best way to measure our progress on climate.” 3) “Health and prosperity are our best defense against climate change.”
The first “truth” is what seemed to arouse people the most, because so much of what we hear in the media is driven by alarmism and “doomism.” Gates doesn’t deal in hyperbole. He states that global temperatures will likely rise between 2 and 3 degrees centigrade (well above the 1.5C target of the Paris accords). He allows that the expected temperature rise will have harmful effects on the environment and people. But he’s more focused on two things: the progress we’re making in human living conditions, and advances in cleaner tech. The poor need energy to improve their lives and, he writes, “in this case, what’s good for prosperity is bad for the environment.” He then goes into detail about cleaner tech and the exciting innovations in electricity, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, and building that can lead to both improved lives and lower emissions, and ultimately a cooler planet.
The next two truths deal with the unintended consequences of focusing strictly on climate policies at the expense of a more holistic approach that looks at threats to the world’s most vulnerable, and the potentially most productive approach to climate change. Gates argues that helping the poor is good climate policy, even if it isn’t the most direct path. Helping the poor economically leads to better environmental outcomes, as richer societies can afford cleaner technologies. It also is the humane approach to take.
The Backlash
The complaints about the memo largely suggest that Gates is arguing against alarmist “straw men” and offers a false choice between aid to the poor and environmental progress. But reading the post, neither is true. Gates understands that doomerism, the view that climate change will end human civilization, isn’t scientifically accurate, but that doomerism is real, and it makes people feel powerless and apathetic. His argument for economic progress reinforcing environmental progress is more nuanced, but focuses on the technological advances that will enable us to raise the living standards of the world’s poor without sacrificing the environment.
There have been some smart and clear-eyed articles about Gates’s post, but the overall vibe in the media is that Gates was capitulating to political pressure and downplaying the risks of climate change. Neither is true.
For Gates, human suffering is the ultimate foe, whether from environmental damage or disease, malnutrition, or any other cause. It’s a deeply humanist argument, and a position it seems some environmentalists don’t share. There is a misanthropic strain in much environmentalism, whether in calls to reduce population, to sacrifice comforts in the name of green living, or simply to view humans and human nature as a problem.
This framing of the environment generally, or climate change specifically, as “man vs. nature” is counterproductive in that it’s off-putting to a huge swath of the public, the majority of whom both state a preference for a cleaner environment and also elect politicians who promise the exact opposite. One of the green movement’s failings is that it’s seen as a bunch of people insisting that you should have less, and people want more.
The Possibility of More
Gates writes that the negativity of the environmental movement is also misguided because it misses probably our best shot at a more-livable planet for everyone. Gates is, at heart, a techno optimist. He’s seen enough in his seven decades to know we have real problems. But he’s also been witness to seven decades of immense progress for humanity.
Gates emphasizes two priorities: 1) “Drive the green premium to zero,” and 2) “Be rigorous about measuring impact.” The “green premium” is the extra cost we pay for environmentally preferable goods, such as organic produce. Rather than focus on arbitrary emissions targets, Gates argues that we ought to be investing (as he does) in technologies that lower the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero. This is hardly far-fetched, as in energy, new capacity in solar, wind, and battery storage are already cheaper than new fossil fuel plants. Gates notes that we need to do the same for things like steel, cement, fertilizers, batteries, EVs, and buildings.
We’re close on a lot of these, at least on a small scale, and Gates tells us about new technologies (particularly the ones he’s invested in) in every sector trying to scale green products so they become cheaper than the dirtier technologies now in use. When a zero green premium is reached, the market takes over. But it can take good policies and several years to get there. Gates simply argues that we should use data to find the best life-saving technologies, and fund those first.
A Concrete Example
Demand for concrete is rising globally, which is a good thing, as it’s used to build long-lasting buildings and infrastructure upon which modern life depends. But production of cement (the main component of concrete, along with aggregate materials like sand or gravel) uses huge amounts of fossil fuels and releases even bigger amounts of carbon dioxide, as the chemical process itself releases CO2, even if the energy used to create the cement is renewable (which it typically isn’t). In total, 7–8% of global CO2 emissions come from producing cement, of which the world makes roughly 4-plus billion tons annually.
But there are companies working on greening up every step of the process. Some are looking at using more wood in construction, some are looking at using green energy to make cement, some are looking at different mineral inputs to cement that emit no CO2 in the process, many are already using waste products, and others are looking at capturing and storing carbon in the concrete itself.
Some or all of these approaches may emerge as the best and cheapest way to lower the carbon intensity of concrete, but it takes time, investment, and good policy to scale them up. A single-minded focus on reducing emissions instead of looking holistically at creating a greener economy could miss these innovations and leave the world poorer. And probably dirtier.
Gates is, at heart, a techno optimist. He’s been around enough in his seven decades to know we have real problems. But he’s also been witness to seven decades of immense progress for humanity.
Changing the Focus, Changing the World
At the end of his post, Gates writes that recommending a new focus on human welfare broadly instead of climate change specifically reminds him of a moment 30 years ago when he challenged his Microsoft employees to embrace the internet in their products. Microsoft was already a massively successful company, so they could have just kept doing more of the same. But in hindsight, the shift in focus ensured their success.
One needn’t trust Bill Gates implicitly to recognize that although the environmental movement has been successful, it’s not as successful as it needs to be. Our collective thriving may hinge on a shift to thinking more broadly. But one could be inclined to trust him, because when he talks about changing the world, he’s someone who’s actually done it.
