Mr. Gates, Here’s A Better Way to Think About Climate Action & Human Wellbeing

First Take on What Bill Gates Gets Right and Wrong in His Latest Missive

For the Climate Movement I believe what we are about is this:

overcoming climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything.

Mr. Gates wants to do some of this as well, but in his latest “Note” to his readers ahead of the next international climate negotiations he creates some strawmen and either/ors that produce more heat than light. Not a good thing when talking about global warming.

Here is his view in a nutshell:

Unfortunately, the doomsday outlook is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.

Mr. Gates seems to think that some in the Climate Movement — whom he dismissively refers to as having a “doomsday outlook“ — are taking climate action too seriously and creating near-term human wellbeing not seriously enough. As the Wall Street Journal suggests, in this he sounds like Bjorn Lomborg. Obviously this is also not a good thing if he wants us to take him seriously. Honestly, he may not care whether we do or not. His audience appears to be the elites and powerbrokers, not the climate rabble rousers/unwashed masses.

Every report I’ve seen during the run up to the forthcoming international climate negotiations, or COP 30 in Brazil, whether explicitly or implicitly, reaffirms the need for speed and scale in terms of the transformation required.

Mr. Gates has a different view, but not a new one; we’ve heard it for decades from opponents of strong action.

Here, in a nutshell, is his version: Innovation will save us from the doomsday scenario, so we don’t have to do speed and scale. Innovation plus adaptation and resilience via economic growth will see us through.

And all those pesky voices telling us each tenth of a degree matters, that there is and will be tremendous suffering associated with these changes before we get anywhere near doomsday, well maybe Mr. Gates didn’t hear them correctly.

It’s simply false to conclude that we can’t do both speed and scale and enhance human wellbeing for everyone. The world is rich enough and innovative enough to do both. It’s already doing so. Clean energy is pulling people out of poverty, giving them the chance to own the power that will help create their more prosperous and sustainable future rather than be tethered to outdated centralized fossil systems powered primarily by foreign fossil inputs. The benefits of clean energy are just not happening at speed and scale.

What we lack right now is the political and moral will to do what the Climate Movement is about: overcoming climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything.

And here we come to Mr. Gates’ dismissal and underestimation of the Climate Movement, which is his greatest weakness.

For if we become what we are meant to be — 400 million strong worldwide by 2030 — we will have the people power and the moral power to achieve what we want and what Mr. Gates wants as well.

We can do both at speed and scale through the four Catalytic Sources of Transformation, the Catalytic-4, working together. Mr. Gates touts innovation, one of the drivers of ARTC or the accelerating rate of technological change, and the workings of governments and markets. These are the third and fourth Catalytic Sources. But he ignores or misses the first two: the Climate Movement and Climate Action Supporters. And, frankly, he underestimates ARTC as it can be strategically applied to climate action; he always has, being too influenced by folks like Vaclav Smil who look to the past too much to understand what’s possible in the future when it comes to the rate of change in the energy space.

Within the Catalytic-4, it is who Mr. Gates ignores, the Climate Movement, that is indispensable to climate action at speed and scale, that must push the other three to achieve this and ensure that we are also achieving the three actions of justice while doing so: stopping bad stuff (climate pollution), setting wrong right, and making things better. The latter two are why we are working to ensure that as we overcome climate change we do so by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything.

Mr. Gates has done a tremendous amount of good with his vast wealth, and I believe part of his concern, as he states, arises out of helping those in need today. It’s sad that he is now reinforcing an old, tired narrative from opponents of climate action.

For those of us in the Climate Movement, if we become what we can be by 2030 — 400 million strong worldwide — then whether Mr. Gates is a help or a hinderance will not matter. We will have the moral power and the people power to do both: overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything — which is our vision, purpose, and Major Goal.

Our hope comes not from Mr. Gates, but from each other. Together, we are the hope we’ve been waiting for, we are the ones to make hope happen. We are making the impossible possible, and the possible actual, and the actual beautiful, and our future come faster. Join us!

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