Why the Bill Gates Climate Memo is Full of Shit

The fact that billionaire Bill Gates wrote a memo recommending that the world shift its focus on climate (particularly on emissions reductions) to “human welfare”, poverty, and health is getting a lot of media play.

The NY Times gave it prominent attention, a provocative headline, and even a photo (the shovel is apt, because Gates is shoveling a lot of bullshit):

Bill Gates Says Climate Change ‘Will Not Lead to Humanity’s Demise’

The best PR money can buy!

Gates is obviously trying to change the subject and he perfectly timed his PR campaign to distract from another disastrous UN Report, released yesterday, which documents the total failure of the entire voluntary commitment based Paris framework: (BBC):

+ Most countries fail to submit new climate pledges ahead of summit

Only 64 countries have submitted new plans to cut carbon, the UN says, despite all being required to do so ahead of next month’s COP30 summit.

Added together these national pledges would fail to keep the world from warming by more than 1.5C, a key threshold to very dangerous levels of climate change.

While the UN review does show progress in curbing carbon emissions over the next decade, the projected fall is not enough to stop temperatures surging past this global target.

Greenpeace put a rather sharper (and technocratic) point on this failure than the BBC (Greenpeace statement):

Greenpeace is calling for this year’s UN climate summit COP30 to deliver an emphatic response to the glaring ambition gap exposed in the UNFCCC’s synthesis report aggregating 2035 climate action plans.

The UNFCCC’s Synthesis report found that the submitted NDCs (which only represent 33% of global emissions), while progressing from previous NDCs, would lead to emission reductions of 11%-24% by 2035 compared to 2019.[1]

This is far short from the 60% reduction (for the same period) that countries committed to in the outcomes of the first Global Stocktake, agreed at COP28 in Dubai in 2023.

In addition to being an obvious distraction, the Gates memo gets almost everything wrong and his core argument is easily dismantled. Follow.

Gates begins on the wrong rhetorical foot by smearing the people he disagrees with:

There’s a doomsday view of climate change that 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.

His substantive argument is easily demolished.

Gates begins with this dubious and factually unsupported claim:

“Emissions projections have gone down, and with the right policies and investments, innovation will allow us to drive emissions down much further.”

Yes, some optimistic projections may have gone down. But what are the assumptions of those projections? Are they realistic? Gates doesn’t reveal or back up the assumptions that underlie these optimistic projections (which include infeasible technology like carbon capture).

Just a few paragraphs later, Gates contradicts himself on those rosy projected reductions – it now looks like they will increase dramatically as a result of a doubling in energy demand:

“That’s [2-3 degree warming] well above the 1.5°C goal that countries committed to at the Paris COP in 2015. In fact, between now and 2040, we are going to fall far short of the world’s climate goals. One reason is that the world’s demand for energy is going up—more than doubling by 2050. […]

Unfortunately, in this case, what’s good for prosperity is bad for the environment. Although wind and solar have gotten cheaper and better, we don’t yet have all the tools we need to meet the growing demand for energy without increasing carbon emissions.”

If we don’t yet have all the tools (or viable technologies, legally enforceable requirements, or remotely the political will), then the so called “emissions projections” Gates relies on are based on techno-utopian assumptions.

And Gates gets the big picture on climate policy priorities exactly backwards – and he again begins with a smear on a so-called “doomsday outlook”:

“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’s got that exactly backwards: in reality, climate adaptation has almost displaced emissions mitigation.

And if Gates is so committed to “human welfare”, poverty reduction, and health, why does he justify US humanitarian aid program – virtually eliminated by Trump – as a program to preserve US power?

“If the United States retreats, others will fill the gap, and not all of them will bring our values, our priorities, or our interests to the table. Preserving American global influence will require restoring the staff, systems, and resources that underpin it—before the damage becomes irreversible.”

“If the US retreats”? If?

Trump has retreated, dismantled and defunded US AID and other humanitarian programs – and he’s burned the boats.

So, it’s all really about US “interests” and power.

And we know that “US interests” are code for the profits of the billionaires like Gates and the Neoliberal finance capitalism backed extractive imperialist status quo.

The post Why the Bill Gates Climate Memo is Full of Shit appeared first on CounterPunch.org.