Bill Gates softens ‘Climate Disaster’ approach
Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates, who wrote a book titled “How to Prevent Climate Disaster” in 2021, says leaders now need to change their approach to climate change.
One The letter published on Tuesday Ahead of next week’s COP30 UN climate summit, Gates argued that too many resources were focused on emissions and the environment and that more money should be spent on “improving lives” and reducing disease and poverty.
“Climate is extremely important, but it must be taken into consideration for overall human well-being,” Gates told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in an exclusive interview. “I didn’t choose this position because everyone agrees; I think it’s the right answer, intellectually.”
In the letter, Gates noted the “doomsday view” of climate change and said leaders needed to make a “strategic pivot” to focus on issues that “have the greatest impact on human well-being.”
“This is the best way to ensure that everyone, no matter where they are born or in what climate they are born in, has the opportunity to live a healthy and productive life,” he wrote.
Gates’ climate-focused investment fund Breakthrough Energy reportedly laid off dozens of employees earlier this year. New York Times reported “This change shows how Mr. Gates is reorganizing his empire for the Trump era,” he wrote in March.
This year’s climate summit in Brazil takes place almost a decade after world leaders Paris accepts climate agreement It aims to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
Gates said this original goal was unrealistic.
Over the past decade, the U.S. government has moved in and out of this commitment depending on who is in the White House.
USA initially entered into agreement Under President Barack Obama, before President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement when he first took office in 2017. After President Joe Biden rejoined Trump, issued an administrative order He will have to withdraw again in his second term.
doors in question He said in 2017 that he was “deeply concerned” but “hopeful” that the US would continue to support innovation after Trump left the agreement.
Gates told Sorkin that pulling back on climate initiatives was a “huge disappointment” but credited companies like Microsoft for investing in alternative energy technologies. He said continuing support for these innovations would reduce costs.
In the last decade, many large technology companies Meta, Alphabet and Microsoft have set 2030 targets to achieve net-zero emissions or go carbon negative.
In February, Microsoft sustainability chief Melanie Nakagawa admitted that “the month moved further away from previous goals” as the company doubled down on artificial intelligence.
“But the force that moves us so far from our goals in the short term is the same force that will help us build a bigger, faster, and more powerful rocket to achieve them in the long term: artificial intelligence (AI),” he wrote.
The massive energy demand required to meet growing data center power requirements has raised concerns among many climate activists.
In terms of artificial intelligence and concerns of a bubble forming, Gates said many investments would be a “dead end.”
Still, he added: “If you want to be a tech company, you can’t say no, let’s get out of this race.”
