Bill Gates wrote Tuesday that while he views climate change as “serious,” it is not an existential crisis that will “lead to humanity’s demise” — a stance that several energy sector experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation marks a sharp departure from Gates’ previously alarmist rhetoric on the issue.
Gates published a book titled “How To Avoid a Climate Disaster” in 2021, and while reflecting on the work in a blog post on Feb. 14, 2021, he wrote that he’d become convinced that “to avoid a climate disaster, we have to get to zero greenhouse gas emissions.” Gates asserted in his Tuesday letter that while climate change poses a threat, it will “not be the end of civilization,” emphasizing the importance of affordable, reliable energy and continued innovation — glossing over his previous climate alarmism, a point several energy experts who spoke to the DCNF highlighted.
“Bill Gates finally said the quiet part out loud: affordability and innovation matter more than climate alarmism. It is a sharp departure from his earlier support for mandates and massive government spending,” Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, told the DCNF. “If even Gates is moving away from the fear-driven narrative, it shows the public is no longer buying it. Real progress comes from unleashing American energy and ingenuity, not punishing prosperity.”
The Gates Foundation did not respond to the DCNF’s multiple requests for comment.
The multi-billionaire supported several stringent climate goals, including eliminating greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Gates also funded geoengineering initiatives, which some critics including Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin consider to be “playing God with the weather.”
Gates argued Tuesday that it’s a worthy goal to remove greenhouse gas emissions, though he also stated that “although wind and solar have gotten cheaper and better, we don’t yet have all the tools we need to meet the growing demand for energy without increasing carbon emissions.”
In 2022, Gates told CNBC that “I can sum up the solution to climate change in two sentences: We need to eliminate global emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050,” Gates writes. “Extreme weather is already causing more suffering, and if we don’t get to net-zero emissions, our grandchildren will grow up in a world that is dramatically worse off.”
Gates critiqued this climate alarmist view on Tuesday, writing that “there’s a doomsday view of climate change that goes like this: In a few decades, cataclysmic climate change will decimate civilization. … Fortunately for all of us, this view is wrong.”
H. Sterling Burnett, Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute, told the DCNF that “Bill Gates has long pushed climate alarmism and is in no small part responsible for the energy poverty that more than 1 billion people still suffer from, since he used his wealth and stature to influence climate policies restricting fossil fuel use. His efforts contributed to rising energy costs.”
Former President Joe Biden and many Democrats pushed for aggressive green energy goals and a rapid energy transition, funding intermittent resources like wind and solar through billions in subsidies, loans and grants.
In contrast, President Donald Trump declared a national energy emergency on his first day back in the Oval Office and has favored conventional energy resources like coal all while supporting innovation for other reliable energy sources like nuclear.
Several energy policy experts and Department of Energy (DOE) Chris Wright have argued that energy poverty is a greater concern than climate change, though corporate media panned the July DOE climate report for suggesting climate change was not as existential of a threat as some have warned.
Notably, some Democrats have recently admitted that their climate targets are too strict, including some in New York. Several corporate media outlets and some Democrats are starting to highlight affordability over climate issues when it comes to energy headed into the midterms as well.
“So I urge that community, at COP30 and beyond, to make a strategic pivot: prioritize the things that have the greatest impact on human welfare,” Gates wrote on Tuesday. “It’s the best way to ensure that everyone gets a chance to live a healthy and productive life no matter where they’re born, and no matter what kind of climate they’re born into.”
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