\n<\/p>\n
A new memo on the climate crisis from Bill Gates relies on \u201cstraw man\u201d arguments about the threat to humanity and \u201cfalse dichotomies\u201d between spending on climate or aid for the poor, some climate scientists say.<\/p>\n
Published last week, the tech billionaire\u2019s 17-page missive called for a \u201cstrategic pivot\u201d away from focusing on slashing emissions and towards preventing poverty and suffering. It was quickly picked up by some on the right, including Donald Trump, who hailed it as a much-needed backpedaling on climate efforts.<\/p>\n
\u201cI (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue,\u201d the president posted on Truth Social.<\/p>\n
Gates said in an interview with Axios on Monday evening that Trump\u2019s post was a \u201cgigantic misreading of the memo\u201d and that he was increasing his funding to climate and health. But he added that foreign aid budgets going to poorer countries often choose between the two issue areas.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a numeric game in a world with very finite resources,\u201d Gates said.<\/p>\n
But funding for emissions reduction need not come at the expense of aid to eradicate hunger or poverty, said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere I think I disagree with Gates fundamentally is this idea that by taking money away from climate we\u2019d suddenly have a lot more money for these other programs,\u201d he told reporters at a Tuesday press briefing. \u201cWe don\u2019t necessarily live in a zero-sum world.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/span>How Bill Gates is playing both sides of the climate crisis \u2013 video<\/span><\/p>\n In his memo, Gates wrote that global warming \u201cwill not lead to humanity\u2019s demise\u201d. This misunderstands climate scientists\u2019 warnings, said Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy.<\/p>\n \u201cI have not seen a single scientific paper that ever posited that the human race would become extinct \u2026 it\u2019s a straw man, the way he\u2019s proposing it,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s speaking about it as if scientists are saying that, and we\u2019re not: what we are saying is that suffering increases with each 10th of a degree of warming.\u201d<\/p>\n The memo from a \u201cvery influential person who controls a lot of money\u201d hinges on \u201cinarguably a false binary\u201d between a world where everything is fine and \u201cliterally the end of the world\u201d, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.<\/p>\n \u201cIn reality, there\u2019s a whole hell of a lot of bad things that can happen in between,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Climate policies have helped the world avert worst-case climate scenarios, but the track the world is on now would still yield huge amounts of human suffering due to increased sea level rise, droughts, floods and other dangers, said Swain.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a catastrophe, not just for people who live in the global south or for poor nations, but also for wealthy nations,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a catastrophe for all global ecosystems.\u201d<\/p>\n Gates\u2019s memo is \u201cdisconnected from the way the world works\u201d, said Swain. For instance, it posits that when the world warms, \u201csome outdoor work will need to pause during the hottest hours of the day, and governments will have to invest in cooling centers and better early warning systems for extreme heat and weather events\u201d.<\/p>\n Though \u201ceveryone deserves air conditioning\u201d, the reality is that many parts of the world do not have it, Swain said.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you think climate is not important, you won\u2019t agree with the memo. If you think climate is the only cause and apocalyptic, you won\u2019t agree with the memo,\u201d Gates told reporters last week. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of this pragmatic view of somebody who\u2019s, you know, trying to maximize the money and the innovation that goes to help in these poor countries.\u201d<\/p>\n Tuesday\u2019s conversation about the memo came just days before the start of the Cop30 global climate summit in Brazil. The talks will present an opportunity to truly take on the climate crisis, said Hayhoe.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to be talking about phasing out fossil fuels,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A new memo on the climate crisis from Bill Gates relies on \u201cstraw man\u201d arguments about the threat to humanity and \u201cfalse dichotomies\u201d between spending on climate or aid for the poor, some climate scientists say. Published last week, the tech billionaire\u2019s 17-page missive called for a \u201cstrategic pivot\u201d away from focusing on slashing emissions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[6987,142,186,187,18172,13598,1541,5031,384,9738],"class_list":{"0":"post-32482","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-arguments","9":"tag-bill","10":"tag-climate","11":"tag-crisis","12":"tag-criticize","13":"tag-gates","14":"tag-man","15":"tag-memo","16":"tag-scientists","17":"tag-straw"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}