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Bill Gates He believes that climate change is a serious problem but it will not be the end of civilization. He believes scientific innovation will curb this, and instead the time has come for a “strategic pivot” in the global climate fight: from limiting rising temperatures to focusing on fighting poverty and preventing disease.
Gates said the doomsday outlook has led the climate community to focus too much on near-term goals to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that cause warming, diverting resources from the most effective things that can be done to improve life in a warming world. In a memo released Tuesday, Gates said the world’s primary goal should be to stop suffering, especially for those in the toughest conditions in the world’s poorest countries.
“If given a choice between eliminating malaria and increasing the temperature by one-tenth of a degree, I would let the temperature increase by 0.1 degree to get rid of malaria,” Gates told reporters. People Don’t understand the pain that is there today.”
Microsoft co-founder now spends most of his time on goals Gates FoundationWhich has spent billions of dollars in health care, education and development initiatives around the world, including combating HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. He launched Breakthrough Energy in 2015 to accelerate innovation in clean energy.
He wrote his 17-page memo in hopes of influencing next month’s UN climate change conference in Brazil. He is urging world leaders to ask whether the little money designated for climate is being spent on the right things.
Gates, whose foundation provides financial support for Associated Press coverage of health and development in Africa, is influential in the conversation on climate change. He expects his “Hard Truth About Climate” memo to be controversial.
“If you think climate is not important, you will not agree with the memo. If you think climate is the sole cause and apocalypse, you will not agree with the memo,” Gates said during a roundtable discussion with reporters before the release. “It’s a practical approach from someone who is, you know, trying to maximize funding and innovation to help these poor countries.”
Climate scientists say every bit of temperature rise matters
Scientists say every additional warming is associated with more extreme weather, raising the risk of species extinction and bringing the world closer to crossing tipping points where changes become irreversible.
Christie Eby, a public health and climate scientist at the University of Washington, said she strongly agreed with Gates that UN talks should focus on improving human health and well-being. But, he said, Gates believes the world remains stagnant and the only change needed to curb climate change — faster deployment of green technologies. He called it impossible.
jeffrey saxThe director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University called the memo “redundant, vague, unhelpful, and confusing.”
“There is no reason to challenge poverty reduction versus climate change. If the Big Oil lobby is brought under control, both are entirely possible and easily possible,” he wrote in an email.
Chris Field, a climate scientist at Stanford University, said there is room for a healthy discussion about whether the current framing of the climate crisis is generally too pessimistic.
“But we must also invest for both the long term and the short term,” he wrote in an email. “A vibrant long-term future depends on both tackling climate change and supporting human development.”
Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said he does not dispute the principle of making human welfare the primary objective of policy, but what about the natural world?
“Climate change is already wreaking havoc there,” he wrote in an email. “Can we really live in a tech bubble? Do we want to?”
Gates made clear in his memo that every tenth of a second of temperature rise matters: “A stable climate makes it easier to improve people’s lives.”
carbon dioxide pollution is increasing
A decade ago, the world agreed to a landmark agreement known as the Paris Agreement, which sought to limit human-caused temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. The goal: to avoid extreme heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes and droughts.
In a 2021 book, Gates laid out a plan to reduce emissions to avoid climate disaster. But humans are on track to release so much greenhouse gas by as early as 2028 that scientists say exceeding the 1.5-degree limit is now almost inevitable.
Breakthrough Energy focuses on areas where the cost of doing something clean is much higher than doing it in a polluting way, such as making clean steel and cement. Gates concluded his memo by saying that governments must work toward zeroing this gap, and be rigorous about measuring the impact of every effort on the world’s climate agenda.
Gates is optimistic that innovation will curb climate change
Gates said the pace of innovation in clean energy has been faster than he expected, allowing inexpensive solar and wind power to replace coal, oil and natural gas plants for power and prevent worst-case warming scenarios. He said artificial intelligence is helping accelerate progress in clean energy technologies.
At the same time, funding to help developing countries adapt to climate change is falling. Led by the United States, rich countries are cutting their foreign aid budgets. chairman donald trump Climate change has been called a hoax.
Gates criticized the aid cuts. He said Gavi, the public-private partnership launched by his philanthropic foundation that will buy vaccines, will have 25% less money for the next five years than in the past five years. Gavi can save a life for a little more than $1,000, he said.
Vaccines become even more important in a warming world because children who aren’t dying from measles or whooping cough are more likely to survive when a heat wave hits or drought threatens local food supplies, they wrote.
Gates said health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change, citing research from the University of Chicago Climate Impact Lab, which found that projected deaths from climate change are reduced by more than 50% when taking into account expected economic growth for the rest of this century.
Under these circumstances, he believes the standard should be “very high” to be funded by aid money.
“If you have something that gets rid of 10,000 tons of emissions that you’re spending several million dollars on,” he said, “that doesn’t cut it.”
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AP writer Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from several private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropy, a list of supporters, and funded coverage areas on AP.org.