WITAWOPSing Bill Gates on Climate Change

I take on Bill Gates after a two month WITAWOPS hiatus, I checked the blog statistics and found that, surprisingly, it is active. I don’t know why the uptick in traffic this month (see the graph below), but you all have inspired me to start writing again.

Lets talk about climate change. Which means I have to start with this:

The views expressed are solely mine, published under my 1st amendment rights. They may not reflect the views of the U.S. Government or any of its past, present, or future agencies.

Someone sent me Bill Gates’ recent (October) blog post, Three Tough Truths About Climate, in which he appears to argue that we should spend money on malaria and malnutrition and not on climate change. My gut reaction, before reading the post, was shock. Save people from malaria (which Gates and others have been fighting for decades now, in fact, the U.S. military has been conducting research on it in Kenya for over decades. See their latest post “20 years of Army research yields hope for malaria vaccine” ). And lets reduce malnutrition in kids. But then those kids will grow up in a superheated planet with no quality of life. 

What Do I Think

Then I read the full article and was even more confused. He ends with a plea to 

“prioritize the things that have the greatest impact on human welfare. It’s the best way to ensure that everyone gets a chance to live a healthy and productive life no matter where they’re born, and no matter what kind of climate they’re born into.”

The foundation for this plea seems to be an emphasis on quality of life and resilience to whatever the climate is, instead of focusing on climate policies and temperature indicators. On the surface, I can buy that. After all, no one can argue with this kind of statement: 

“I wish there were enough money to fund every good climate change idea. Unfortunately, there isn’t, and we have to make tradeoffs so we can deliver the most benefit with limited resources. In these circumstances, our choices should be guided by data-based analysis that identifies ways to deliver the highest return for human welfare.” 

His examples make sense too. OK, some of them. Take this one 

“For example, a few years ago, the government of one low-income country set out to cut emissions by banning synthetic fertilizers. Farmers’ yields plummeted, there was much less food available, and prices skyrocketed. The country was hit by a crisis because the government valued reducing emissions above other important things.” 

I can easily see a misguided policy resulting in that kind of outcome. The U.S. is riddled with policies that had good intentions but terrible outcomes. Filling wetlands and swamps to build our airports and infrastructure; slavery; and forcing Native Indian kids into boarding schools to de-Indianize them are three that quickly come to mind.

But 

So where is my problem? Gates identifies the five sources of emissions:

He offers a laundry list of successful innovations that have helped reduce emissions in each category.

But each of these are driven by some regulation or policy, and each of those came from the lofty goals of emission reductions. And what happens if those policies or regulations are changed? We get this:

Source: December 2025 proposal from the Department of Transportation. Alternative 2 is the preferred alternative, which essentially cuts fuel standards by a third. That means everyone will spend a third more money on fuel over the life of their car.

Gates, on the other hand, believes this problem is already solved, saying “Almost all new cars will be electric.” Not true.

Why should you care?

Read Gates’ article and let me know what you think. ChatGPT gave me this TLDR version: “Gates emphasizes that innovation, clean-energy cost reductions, and investments in health, agriculture, and reliable energy will save more lives and build stronger societies than narrowly focused climate policies alone.” I believe that none of these will happen without those policies and the world will just get hotter.. But to recognize one of Gates's points, the hotter world is not the end result, rather the end result is a significant drop in quality of life. which is what he claims he is trying to help solve.