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LWe must address the central dilemma: Bill Gates is a politics denier. While he was slow to accept it, he now recognizes environmental science. But he lives in flat, embarrassing denial about the realities of power. His new piece on climate, shared days ago, treats the issue as if it existed in a political vacuum. He pens words that disregard governmental authority, and pretending massive fortunes aren't relevant.

Central Claim

His main contention is that financial resources are scarce, so the delegates at this month's climate summit in Brazil should direct money away from "immediate carbon reduction objectives" towards environmental adjustment and investing in poverty reduction and healthcare.

Admittedly, resources for positive initiatives are insufficient, but this isn't due to universal principles, some implacable truth about human society. It's because oligarchic power has waged war on government social programs, resulting in the elimination of development assistance and substantial decreases in support money of various states. Austerity is a political choice. The choice to implement it comes from leaders submitting to the preferences of the ultra-rich.

Current Funds

There are truckloads of money available. Shortly following Gates' latest publication, Oxfam revealed that the net worth of the 10 richest US billionaires increased by nearly $700 billion in the past year. That money alone, the increment in the wealth of 10 people, is approximately ten times the money needed each year to stop deep deprivation worldwide. Through what means did they accumulate of the world's money into their pockets? What prevents redistribution through effective taxation? The explanation involves their transformation of economic power into political power. The richer they become, the more they can bend political and economic frameworks to their desires, securing ongoing financial growth. But Bill Gates says nothing in his essay about how and where extra money for both climate action and poverty relief could be identified.

'His essay reads like nothing so much as a peace offering to Donald Trump.' Bill Gates, right, with the Trumps at a private dinner for corporate executives in the capital.

Wealth Inequality Relationship

An obvious relationship appears between the poverty Gates claims to care so much about and the riches he overlooks. In the US, unhoused populations are reaching new highs, and so is the share of assets owned by the top 0.1%. Even if this doesn't characterize Gates' specific methods, by holding down wages, racking up rents, undermining worker collectives and achieving lower taxes and diminished public funding, extremely wealthy individuals benefit from others' economic struggles.

Investigation Conclusions

A remarkable study in academic political journals, among the very few to have penetrated this secretive world, found that billionaires maintain completely separate political opinions from the great majority. The wealthy respondents in the study, completely unlike ordinary citizens, saw budget deficits as the most important of the issues it listed, and environmental collapse as unimportant. They were much more inclined to demand that social security and federal healthcare should be cut, and much less inclined to think that jobless individuals deserve adequate living conditions, or that there should be more regulation of oil companies, banks and health insurers. They were fiercely opposed to redistribution.

Political Influence

What opinions win out? The small elite or the vast population? Even though the investigation happened under Obama, it found that extremely wealthy individuals enjoyed greater political access than average citizens. How about today? The current reality seems obvious.

Missing Elements and Presumptions

Here's another crucial exclusion from the billionaire's article: throughout thousands of words, Trump goes unmentioned. Should the billionaire address this, he'd have to recognize that an important foundation of his argument is unstable: decreasing expenses for eco-friendly innovations automatically creates ecological advancement. Certainly, it's positive that clean technology prices are falling dramatically than fossil fuels. But Trump and like-minded politicians are doing everything they can to impede the transition.

Partly as a result, traditional energy sources stay very profitable. This potentially clarifies why, even though Gates states his organization sold all direct fossil fuel investments in 2019, its fossil fuel stock and bond holdings have, actually grown.

Psychological Factors

For Gates, challenging billionaire influence might seem impossible. I don't mean only that it clashes with his worldview. Considering his significant avoidance of this subject, he could genuinely find it impossible to consider. This might indicate "wealth-induced cognitive distortion": a profound incapacity to see the world from other people's point of view. While the ultra-rich are notoriously hard to study, drawing conclusions from studies about wealth's impact on thinking could suggest that gaining massive wealth resembles experiencing brain trauma. Fortunes seem to disturb particular brain operations, particularly those related to empathy and perspective.

Strategic Considerations

However, strategic thinking might also be involved: his article seems designed as appeasement toward Trump. Trump certainly took it that way: "Our victory over climate misinformation is complete." Gates has confessed his total mistake. This demonstrated nerve, and we're thankful. MAGA!!!"

Previous Positions

Gates has always been completely WRONG on this topic, though not for the reasons Trump imagines. He has repeatedly been behind current understanding, repeating traditional energy arguments (green technologies could reduce global CO2 emissions only at a "beyond astronomical" cost) well after their refutation. He has spread confusion and misinformation, like the baseless statement in his latest article that the intention behind Sri Lanka's failed prohibition on synthetic fertilisers was "to cut emissions".

Further Difficult Realities

Gates names his article Three Challenging Environmental Facts. So here's another tough truth he studiously ignores. If, as now seems likely, crucial Earth systems cross tipping points and suddenly collapse, the consequences for people, ignoring the persistence of additional organisms (a topic he fails, as usual, to mention), would destroy the smooth and steady progress he foresees. Because environmental change is likely to proceed not in gradual and linear ways, but via abrupt transitions, the potential effects on human welfare are very difficult to forecast. His position that all resources should follow existing data-driven assessments of human betterment, even if it seems logical, creates significant illogic when confronting systemic transformation, {prompting us to ignore the greatest