"Bill Gates has invested billions over the last two decades to help fight climate change. But in a new blog post, he argues that world is too focused on cutting short-term emissions. "The doomsday outlook is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals," he writes, calling for a "strategic pivot" to focus on "improving lives" by focusing development dollars more on agriculture and disease and poverty eradication."
"The logic is flawed, and built on a series of false trade-offs that ignore how interconnected climate and development goals are. Gates criticizes the "doomsday" view that climate change will "decimate civilization" in a few decades and writes that "it will not lead to humanity's demise." Because of the progress already made on climate-and since humanity will survive-he argues we should now be more focused on alleviating human suffering rather than continuing to so intently focus on rising temperatures."
"But climate scientists do not argue that civilization itself will end. Instead, they say, hurricanes, heat waves, and other climate disasters are already killing people, destroying homes and infrastructure, making it harder to grow food, and making life more difficult and expensive in other ways. The longer we wait to cut emissions, the worse those problems will continue to get, and the harder it will be to adapt. Human suffering is directly linked to whether or not emissions are curbed now."
A proposed shift would prioritize development spending on agriculture, disease control, and poverty eradication over near-term emissions targets. That framing rests on the claim that humanity will survive climate change and therefore urgent temperature goals can be deprioritized. The framing creates a false trade-off because climate impacts already undermine development, health, and poverty-eradication efforts. Hurricanes, heat waves, and other disasters are causing deaths, damaging homes and infrastructure, reducing agricultural productivity, and raising costs. Delaying emissions reductions will worsen these impacts, increase adaptation difficulty, and directly exacerbate human suffering and development setbacks.
Read at Fast Company
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