Copyright The Daily Beast
Another brutal war has come to a dramatic end, thanks to President Donald Trump—at least according to the president. The 79-year-old Nobel Peace Prize hopeful took credit for ending a made-up war against the climate change “hoax” after Microsoft founder Bill Gates softened his stance on “doomsday” views of climate change in a stunning new memo. “I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “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!!!” The bizarre declaration came after Gates published a lengthy memo on Tuesday pushing back against alarmist views that climate change will lead to the decimation of civilization, even as he acknowledged that climate change will have “serious consequences.” “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,” he wrote. Gates argued that the push to reach zero emissions shouldn’t come at the expense of health and development programs, adding that the COP30 climate summit in Brazil next month would be the perfect time to recalibrate strategies against climate change. “Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them, it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare,” Gates said. “The biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been. Understanding this will let us focus our limited resources on interventions that will have the greatest impact for the most vulnerable people.” The memo was a remarkable change of tone from Gates, who over the years has become one of the leading voices sounding the alarm on climate change. In 2021, he said “avoiding a climate disaster will be one of the greatest challenges humans have ever taken on.” Gates swiftly drew backlash from climate scientists, who accused him of painting a false dichotomy between climate change and poverty. “There is no greater threat to developing nations than the climate crisis,” climatologist Michael Mann told CNN. “He’s got this all backwards.” Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, blasted the memo as “pointless, vague, unhelpful, and confusing.” “There is no reason to pit poverty reduction versus climate transformation. Both are utterly feasible, and readily so, if the Big Oil lobby is brought under control,” Sachs told NBC News. Gates apparently saw the criticism coming. “I know that some climate advocates will disagree with me, call me a hypocrite because of my own carbon footprint (which I fully offset with legitimate carbon credits), or see this as a sneaky way of arguing that we shouldn’t take climate change seriously,” he wrote. “To be clear: Climate change is a very important problem. It needs to be solved.”
