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LWe must start with the core issue: The Microsoft founder ignores the role of politics. Though he came to it late, he now accepts the realities of climate science. But he lives in flat, embarrassing denial about the realities of power. His latest essay on climate, published last week, treats the issue as if it existed in a political vacuum. He pens words that disregard governmental authority, and pretending massive fortunes aren't relevant.

The Main Contention

His main contention is that funds are very limited, so the participants in the upcoming climate meeting in Brazil should direct money away from "near-term emissions goals" towards climate "adaptation" and allocating funds for economic hardship and illness.

Admittedly, resources for positive initiatives are insufficient, but this isn't due to universal principles, some implacable truth about human society. It's because oligarchic power has waged war on public welfare investments, resulting in the elimination of development assistance and drastic cuts to the aid budgets of additional nations. Budget cuts represent political decisions. The selection to enforce it originates with governments bowing to the wishes of extremely wealthy individuals.

Current Funds

There are truckloads of money available. Just after Gates published his new missive, Oxfam revealed that the net worth of the top ten US fortune holders expanded by hundreds of billions over the last year. These funds independently, the growth in ten individuals' fortunes, is nearly tenfold the yearly funding needed to eliminate severe poverty worldwide. What methods enabled such concentration of global wealth into personal accounts? What prevents redistribution through effective taxation? The explanation involves their transformation of economic power into political power. With growing fortunes, the stronger their capacity to shape government and financial structures to their desires, securing ongoing financial growth. But the billionaire mentions nothing in his essay about methods and sources for additional funds for both climate solutions and hardship alleviation could be identified.

'His essay reads like nothing so much as a peace offering to Donald Trump.' Bill Gates, right, with the Trumps at a private dinner for corporate executives in the capital.

The Poverty-Wealth Connection

There's a direct link between the poverty Gates claims to care so much about and the fortunes he ignores. In the US, homelessness is breaking records, and so is the share of assets owned by the top 0.1%. While this might not be Gates's own business model, by keeping pay low, racking up rents, undermining worker collectives and winning tax and spending cuts, the ultra-rich thrive on impoverishing other people.

Research Findings

A remarkable study in Perspectives on Politics, among limited studies accessing this exclusive domain, found that billionaires maintain completely separate political opinions from the great majority. The wealthy respondents in the study, completely unlike ordinary citizens, considered fiscal shortfalls as critical of the issues it listed, and climate breakdown as the least. They were much more inclined to demand that social security and federal healthcare should be cut, and far less likely to believe 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.

Policy Impact

So whose views prevail? The few wealthy or the many citizens? Even though the investigation happened under Obama, it found that the very rich had far more access to politicians and officials than regular individuals. What about currently? The current reality seems obvious.

Missing Elements and Presumptions

Here's another crucial exclusion from the billionaire's article: throughout thousands of words, Trump goes unmentioned. Were Gates to do so, he'd have to recognize that an important foundation of his argument is unstable: reductions in the cost of new green technologies lead inexorably to environmental progress. Of course it helps that wind, solar and other green technologies are becoming radically cheaper than conventional power. But The former president and comparable figures are doing everything they can to impede the transition.

To some degree because of this, oil and gas continue generating substantial profits. This might explain, notwithstanding Gates' assertion about eliminating petroleum company stocks in 2019, its fossil fuel stock and bond holdings have, truly expanded.

Psychological Factors

For Gates, challenging billionaire influence might seem impossible. It's not merely incompatible with his outlook. Based on his notable omissions regarding this topic, he might be literally incapable of thinking about it. This might indicate "wealth-induced cognitive distortion": a deep inability to understand others' perspectives. While the ultra-rich are notoriously hard to study, inferring from investigations about money's effect on mental processes could suggest that acquiring huge amounts of money is like taking a blow to the head. Riches appear to disrupt specific mental processes, particularly those related to empathy and perspective.

Political Calculations

Yet, political maneuvering could be present: his article seems designed as appeasement toward Trump. The former president clearly interpreted it this way: "I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue. It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful. MAGA!!!"

Background Information

Gates has historically been mistaken on climate matters, although not for Trump's stated reasons. He has repeatedly been behind current understanding, echoing petroleum industry talking points (clean technology could decrease pollution only through enormous spending) significantly following their debunking. He has propagated misunderstanding and inaccuracies, including the unsupported claim in his recent writing that the intention behind Sri Lanka's failed prohibition on synthetic fertilisers was "to cut emissions".

Additional Tough Truths

Gates calls his essay Three Tough Truths About Climate. Thus, here's another difficult reality he carefully avoids. If, as currently expected, essential environmental mechanisms pass turning points and rapidly fail, the effects on human life, let alone the survival of other life forms (a topic he fails, as usual, to mention), would eliminate the gradual advancement he predicts. Because environmental change is likely to proceed not in gradual and linear ways, but via abrupt transitions, the possible impacts on human wellbeing are extremely hard to predict. His argument that we should align all funding to current "data-based analysis" of improvements in human welfare, while it might sound rational, generates substantial unreasonableness when addressing fundamental change, {prompting us to ignore the greatest