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Let's begin with the fundamental problem: The Microsoft founder is a politics denier. While he was slow to accept it, he now recognizes environmental science. But he lives in flat, embarrassing denial about how politics works. His latest essay on climate, published last week, treats the issue as if it existed in a political vacuum. He composes text ignoring political influence, and as if extreme wealth didn't exist.

The Main Contention

His key position states that financial resources are scarce, so the delegates at this month's climate summit in Brazil should redirect resources from "short-term pollution targets" towards environmental adjustment and allocating funds for economic hardship and illness.

Admittedly, resources for positive initiatives are insufficient, but that's not because of some natural law, an unchangeable fact of civilization. It's because oligarchic power has waged war on public welfare investments, causing the dismantling of aid agencies and drastic cuts to the aid budgets of other countries. Austerity is a political choice. The selection to enforce it originates with governments bowing to the wishes of the ultra-rich.

Available Resources

There are truckloads of money available. Soon after the billionaire released his essay, data indicated that the combined assets of the 10 richest US billionaires increased by nearly $700 billion over the last year. This amount by itself, the increment in the wealth of 10 people, is almost 10 times the annual amount required to end extreme poverty worldwide. Through what means did they accumulate of the world's money into their pockets? Why can't society reclaim it through effective taxation? The explanation involves their transformation of wealth into policy-making authority. The richer they become, the more they can bend political and economic frameworks to their desires, ensuring that they become richer still. But the billionaire mentions nothing in his essay about how and where extra money for both climate solutions and hardship alleviation could be identified.

'His writing appears primarily as reconciliation with Donald Trump.' Gates photographed with the former president for industry figures in Washington.

The Poverty-Wealth Connection

There's a direct link between the economic hardship Gates professes to address and the riches he overlooks. In the US, housing insecurity is achieving unprecedented levels, and so is the share of assets owned by the top 0.1%. Even if this doesn't characterize Gates' specific methods, by suppressing salaries, driving up rental prices, undermining worker collectives and winning tax and spending cuts, extremely wealthy individuals benefit from others' economic struggles.

Research Findings

A remarkable study in Perspectives on Politics, one of the rare examinations of this private sphere, found that the ultra-rich have radically different political views from the general population. The wealthy respondents in the study, completely unlike ordinary citizens, saw budget deficits as the most important of the issues it listed, and climate breakdown as the least. They were much more inclined to demand that social welfare programs and national health services should be decreased, and significantly less prone to accept that the unemployed should have a "decent standard of living", or that there should be stricter rules for petroleum corporations, banking entities and medical coverage companies. They were fiercely opposed to redistribution.

Political Influence

Which perspectives dominate? The few wealthy or the many citizens? Though the study was conducted in the Obama years, it found that extremely wealthy individuals enjoyed greater political access than average citizens. How about today? The situation hardly requires explanation.

Omissions and Assumptions

Here's another crucial exclusion from the billionaire's article: at no point in its 5,000 words does it mention Donald Trump. If Gates included 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. Of course it helps that wind, solar and other green technologies are becoming radically cheaper than traditional energy sources. But Trump and like-minded politicians are employing every method to hinder the change.

To some degree because of this, traditional energy sources stay very profitable. This could be why, notwithstanding Gates' assertion about eliminating petroleum company stocks in 2019, its investments in traditional energy securities have, truly expanded.

Mental Aspects

Regarding Gates, confronting extreme wealth power could appear inconceivable. It's not merely incompatible with his outlook. Based on his notable omissions regarding this topic, he may actually be unable to conceptualize it. This might indicate "wealth-induced cognitive distortion": a deep inability to understand others' perspectives. Although extremely wealthy individuals are difficult to research, inferring from investigations about money's effect on mental processes could suggest that obtaining enormous fortunes compares to cognitive damage. Fortunes seem to disturb particular brain operations, especially those involving compassion and viewpoint.

Political Calculations

However, strategic thinking might also be involved: his article seems designed as appeasement toward Trump. 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!!!"

Previous Positions

The billionaire has consistently been incorrect on this topic, although not for Trump's stated reasons. He has repeatedly been behind current understanding, reciting fossil fuel claims (renewable energy could lower carbon output only with massive expenses) significantly following their debunking. He has disseminated uncertainty and false information, including the unsupported claim in his recent writing that the objective of Sri Lanka's catastrophic restriction on synthetic fertilisers was "to cut emissions".

Additional Tough Truths

Gates calls his essay Three Tough Truths About Climate. So here's another tough truth he studiously ignores. Should, as appears probable, vital planetary systems reach critical thresholds and rapidly fail, the effects on human life, ignoring the persistence of additional organisms (an issue he regularly neglects), would destroy the smooth and steady progress he foresees. Since ecological transformation probably won't occur slowly and predictably, 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, while it might sound rational, generates substantial unreasonableness when addressing fundamental change, {prompting us to ignore the greatest