Scientists criticize ‘straw man’ arguments in Bill Gates climate memo | Climate crisis

A new memo from Bill Gates on the climate crisis relies on “straw man” arguments about the threat to humanity and “false dichotomies” between climate spending and helping the poor, some climate scientists say.

Published last week, the tech billionaire’s 17-page missive called for a “strategic pivot” away from reducing emissions and focusing on preventing poverty and suffering. This measure was quickly taken up by some on the right, notably Donald Trump, who hailed it as a necessary step backwards in climate efforts.

“I (WE!) just won the war against the climate change hoax. Bill Gates finally admitted he was completely wrong on the issue,” the president posted on Truth Social.

Gates said in an interview with Axios on Monday evening that Trump’s message was a “gigantic misreading of the memo” and that he was increasing funding for climate and health care. But he added that foreign aid budgets for poorer countries often choose between these two areas.

“This is a digital game in a very resource-constrained world,” Gates said.

But funding for emissions reductions doesn’t have to come at the expense of helping to end hunger or poverty, said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth.

“Where I think I fundamentally disagree with Gates is the idea that by taking money away from climate, we would suddenly have a lot more money for these other programs,” he told reporters at a press briefing Tuesday. “We don’t necessarily live in a zero-sum world. »

In his memo, Gates writes that global warming “will not lead to the extinction of humanity.” This ignores the warnings of climate scientists, said Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy.

“I haven’t seen any scientific papers positing that the human race was going to become extinct…it’s a straw man, the way he’s proposing it,” she said. “He talks about it as if scientists are saying that, and we’re not saying that: what we’re saying is that suffering increases with every tenth of a degree of warming.”

The memo from a “very influential person who controls a lot of money” relies on “definitely a false binary” between a world where everything is fine and “literally the end of the world,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.

“In reality, a lot of bad things can happen in between,” he said.

Climate policies have helped the world avoid worst-case climate scenarios, but the path the world is on now would still result in enormous human suffering from rising sea levels, droughts, floods and other dangers, Swain said.

“This is a catastrophe, not only for people who live in the Global South or poor countries, but also for rich countries,” he said. “This is a catastrophe for all global ecosystems.”

Gates’ memo is “out of touch with the way the world works,” Swain said. For example, he posits that as the world warms, “some outdoor work will need to be halted during the hottest hours of the day, and governments will need to invest in cooling centers and better early warning systems for heat and extreme weather events.”

Although “everyone deserves air conditioning,” the reality is that many parts of the world don’t have it, Swain said.

“If you think climate is not important, you won’t agree with the memo. If you think climate is the only cause and it’s apocalyptic, you won’t agree with the memo,” Gates told reporters last week. “It’s kind of a pragmatic vision of someone who, you know, is trying to maximize the money and the innovation that’s going to help these poor countries.”

Tuesday’s conversation about the memo took place just days before the start of the Cop30 global climate summit in Brazil. The talks will provide an opportunity to truly tackle the climate crisis, Hayhoe said.

“We need to talk about phasing out fossil fuels,” she said.