Bill Gates pivots climate strategy to focus on poverty over carbon emissions reduction

Bill Gates is calling for a change in the fight against climate change by shifting the focus away from reducing carbon emissions to fighting poverty and preventing disease and hunger. 

In an essay published Monday, Gates, who has long pushed for policies to limit the rise in temperatures, said resources should be diverted to improve life in warming parts of the world and improving the lives of people there. 

“Climate change, disease, and poverty are all major problems,” Gates wrote. “We should deal with them in proportion to the suffering they cause.”

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He noted that the global temperature doesn’t give insight about the quality of people’s lives.

“Although climate change will have serious consequences — particularly for people in the poorest countries — it will not lead to humanity’s demise,” the Microsoft co-founder wrote. “This is a chance to refocus on the metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change: improving lives. Our chief goal should be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions who live in the world’s poorest countries.”

Gates hasn’t abandoned the fight against climate change. He noted that every tenth of a degree of warming matters.

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“Every tenth of a degree of heating that we prevent is hugely beneficial because a stable climate makes it easier to improve people’s lives,” he wrote. 

The memo came ahead of next month’s COP30, a global summit focused on battling climate change to be held in Brazil. 

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“Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare,” he added.

In recent years, Gates has focused on the goals of his Gates Foundation, which has donated billions of dollars to fund health care, education and development initiatives worldwide.