The world owes Bill Gates its heartfelt thanks a billion times over for his decades of humanitarian work through the Gates Foundation. But in his latest memo (Three tough truths about climate), Gates is blinded by short-term compassion as he encourages the world to stop worrying so much about global warming and focus instead on improving lives in the here and now.
Gates’s reasoning is fatally flawed on two counts. First, he has created a false choice. We can help people now and save the future of our planet. This isn’t an either/or decision.
We owe it to Gates to assume that his motives are true: The benefit of improving economies in the here and now is that societies will be better able to adapt to our rapidly changing planet, building more seawalls, planting more resilient crops and installing more air conditioning. And the easiest pathway to this faster economic development—at least for some—runs through energy abundance, which in turn may involve fewer restrictions on fossil fuel use.
Some of what Gates is suggesting needs to be heard by the environmental community—to wit, that our climate change policies can become blinded by their adherence to a one-size-fits-all approach that ignores current economic realities. From his perspective, and the perspective of many others, it’s unethical for the developed world to demand the same austerity measures from everyone instead of focusing on development needs first, and austerity when able. Surely we can make the math work so major emitters like the US and China emit a bit less while allowing developing economies to emit a bit more, at least for now.
But advocating for this more compassionate approach to global climate policy doesn’t require abandoning our climate needs and goals altogether. Global warming won’t go away if we stop thinking about it, or if we start rationalizing that excessive heat isn’t really all that bad. In truth, our planet will keep warming for centuries to come, just given the amount of CO2 currently in our atmosphere, and even if we end all carbon pollution tomorrow—and we aren’t even close to doing this, of course, no matter what the trendlines show on our “progress.” We still dump 37 megatons of carbon in the air every year and all our natural and engineered systems combined take back only 2.1 megatons.
The second fatal flaw in Gates’s reasoning is grossly underestimating the coming impact of higher temperatures. Our planet may already be 1.5C warmer than pre-industrial levels, and the latest estimates show global temperatures will likely increase somewhere between 2.2C and 3.4C by 2100 (and these numbers may be way off given the current rate of increase). We can’t stop at 2.2C and declare victory, though—this isn’t a stable level. At 2.2C—even at 1C—Greenland will melt, the Atlantic current will stop (turning Europe into Siberia and permanently changing the ecosystem of our oceans), oceans will acidify, rising sea levels will drown island nations and the world’s most populated areas (including much of the US eastern seaboard), extreme temperatures and weather patterns will make many part of the planet unlivable (even with better buildings and air conditioning), climate-related mass-migration will intensify, forests will burn off and permafrost will melt, adding even more greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere, which will cause global temperatures to spike even higher.
No one wants to hear more climate alarmism, but we also need to understand what’s at stake if we kick the can on this problem for another generation. “Don’t look up” isn’t climate policy.
Fortunately, there is a realistic solution, and a major—and increasingly important—part of this solution involves all of us working together in common cause to remove legacy carbon dioxide from our atmosphere. We can do this. And we can do this while we also focus on our planet’s here and now needs as well. These aren’t separate, mutually exclusive challenges.
To the extent we’ve lost sight of this reality and have been blindly pursuing our climate goals above all else, Gates is right that we can do better. But we need Gates to be on the right side of history on this issue. His legacy has been one of tireless advocacy for improving lives around the world; there will be no bigger swing and miss than getting it wrong on climate change.
