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LWe must begin with the fundamental problem: The Microsoft founder is a politics denier. Though he came to it late, he now acknowledges climate change facts. But he exists in stark, awkward denial about the realities of power. His new piece on climate, shared days ago, discusses the topic as though politics didn't matter. He writes as if there were no such thing as political power, and no such thing as billionaires.

The Main Contention

His main contention is that money is insufficient, so the participants in the upcoming climate meeting in Brazil should redirect resources from "immediate carbon reduction objectives" towards climate "adaptation" and investing in poverty reduction and healthcare.

Yes, the funds available for any good cause are scarce, but this isn't due to universal principles, some implacable truth about human society. This results from wealthy interests attacking on benign state spending, resulting in the elimination of development assistance and severe reductions in assistance funding of various states. Budget cuts represent political decisions. The decision to impose it is driven by authorities yielding to the demands of billionaire class.

Available Resources

Massive amounts of wealth exist. Soon after the billionaire released his essay, data indicated that the combined assets of the top ten US fortune holders grew by $698bn over the last year. These funds independently, the growth in ten individuals' fortunes, is nearly tenfold the yearly funding needed to eliminate severe poverty worldwide. How have they managed to channel so much of economic resources into private hands? And why can't we get it back through appropriate revenue collection? The answer is their translation of economic power into political power. With growing fortunes, the greater their ability to influence political and economic frameworks to their preferences, securing ongoing financial growth. But the billionaire mentions nothing in his essay about methods and sources for additional funds for both environmental measures and economic assistance could be identified.

'The article seems designed as appeasement toward Donald Trump.' Bill Gates, right, with the Trumps at a private dinner for industry figures in Washington.

The Poverty-Wealth Connection

A clear connection exists between the deprivation Gates says concerns him and the riches he overlooks. In the US, homelessness is breaking records, and so is the percentage of resources held by the ultra-rich. Even if this doesn't characterize Gates' specific methods, by suppressing salaries, driving up rental prices, weakening labor organizations and achieving lower taxes and diminished public funding, billionaires prosper while others experience hardship.

Investigation Conclusions

A remarkable study in political science publications, one of the rare examinations of this private sphere, found that extremely wealthy individuals hold vastly distinct political perspectives from the general population. The wealthy respondents in the study, sharply different from average people, considered fiscal shortfalls as critical of the issues it listed, and ecological crisis as insignificant. They were significantly more prone to argue that social welfare programs and national health services should be decreased, and far less likely to believe that jobless individuals deserve adequate living conditions, or that there should be stricter rules for petroleum corporations, banking entities and medical coverage companies. They were fiercely opposed to redistribution.

Policy Impact

What opinions win out? The tiny minority or the great majority? Although the research occurred during the Obama administration, it found that billionaires maintained closer relationships with government figures than average citizens. How about today? I scarcely think I need to spell it out.

Omissions and Assumptions

That's another telling absence in Bill Gates's essay: 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: reductions in the cost of new green technologies lead inexorably to environmental progress. Certainly, it's positive that clean technology prices are falling dramatically than traditional energy sources. But Trump and similar demagogues are doing everything they can to impede the transition.

To some degree because of this, fossil fuels remain highly lucrative. This might explain, despite Gates's claim that his foundation had divested all its "direct holdings in oil and gas companies" in 2019, its investments in traditional energy securities have, truly expanded.

Cognitive Considerations

To Gates, overthrowing the power of the ultra-wealthy may be unthinkable. I don't mean only that it clashes with his worldview. Based on his notable omissions regarding this topic, he may actually be unable to conceptualize it. Possibly this represents "extreme wealth mentality": a profound incapacity to see the world from other people's point of view. While the ultra-rich are notoriously hard to study, inferring from investigations about money's effect on mental processes could suggest that obtaining enormous fortunes compares to cognitive damage. Riches appear to disrupt specific mental processes, especially those involving compassion and viewpoint.

Political Calculations

Yet, political maneuvering could be present: his writing appears primarily as reconciliation with the former president. The former president clearly interpreted it this way: "Our victory over climate misinformation is complete." The billionaire has acknowledged his complete error. It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful. MAGA!!!"

Historical Context

Gates has always been completely WRONG on this topic, though not for the reasons Trump imagines. He has consistently lagged behind the curve, reciting fossil fuel claims (renewable energy could lower carbon output only with massive expenses) significantly following their debunking. He has propagated misunderstanding and inaccuracies, including the unsupported claim in his recent writing that the objective of Sri Lanka's catastrophic restriction on synthetic fertilisers was "to cut emissions".

Further Difficult Realities

Gates calls his essay Three Tough Truths About Climate. Thus, here's another difficult reality he carefully avoids. If, as currently expected, essential environmental mechanisms pass turning points and suddenly collapse, the impact on humanity, ignoring the persistence of additional organisms (a topic he fails, as usual, to mention), would ruin the consistent development he anticipates. Because environmental change is likely to proceed not in gradual and linear ways, but through sudden changes of state, the conceivable consequences for people's quality of life are nearly impossible to anticipate. His argument that we should align all funding to current "data-based analysis" of improvements in human welfare, while it might sound rational, creates significant illogic when confronting systemic transformation, {prompting us to ignore the greatest