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Let's start with the core issue: Bill Gates is a politics denier. Though he came to it late, he now accepts the realities of climate science. But he exists in stark, awkward denial about political realities. His latest essay on climate, shared days ago, treats the issue as if it existed in a political vacuum. He composes text ignoring political influence, and as if extreme wealth didn't exist.

Central Claim

His primary argument suggests that funds are very limited, so the participants in the upcoming climate meeting in Brazil should direct money away from "short-term pollution targets" towards environmental adjustment and spending on poverty and disease.

Certainly, money for worthy projects is limited, but that's not because of some natural law, an unchangeable fact of civilization. It's because oligarchic power has waged war on benign state spending, causing the dismantling of aid agencies and drastic cuts to the aid budgets of various states. Austerity is a political choice. The choice to implement it comes from leaders submitting to the preferences of billionaire class.

Available Resources

Massive amounts of wealth exist. Soon after the billionaire released his essay, Oxfam revealed that the net worth of the 10 richest US billionaires grew by $698bn during the previous twelve months. That money alone, the increase in a handful of billionaires' net worth, is approximately ten times the yearly funding needed to eliminate severe poverty worldwide. How have they managed to channel so much of global wealth into personal accounts? What prevents redistribution through effective taxation? The explanation involves their transformation of financial influence into governmental control. With growing fortunes, the stronger their capacity to shape political and economic frameworks to their will, guaranteeing continued wealth accumulation. But Bill Gates says nothing in his essay about ways and locations for more resources for both climate action and poverty relief 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 economic hardship Gates professes to address and the wealth he fails to mention. In the US, housing insecurity is achieving unprecedented levels, and so is the portion of wealth controlled by the wealthiest fraction. Although this may not describe Gates' personal approach, by keeping pay low, racking up rents, weakening labor organizations and securing tax reductions and budget decreases, extremely wealthy individuals benefit from others' economic struggles.

Investigation Conclusions

A notable research in Perspectives on Politics, one of the rare examinations of this private sphere, found that the ultra-rich have radically different political views from the general population. The multimillionaires it interviewed, in stark contrast to mere earthlings, 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 increased oversight of energy firms, financial institutions and insurance providers. They were strongly against wealth redistribution.

Governmental Access

So whose views prevail? The few wealthy or the many citizens? Though the study was conducted in the Obama years, it found that extremely wealthy individuals enjoyed greater political access than regular individuals. How about today? The situation hardly requires explanation.

Omissions and Assumptions

Here's another crucial exclusion from the billionaire's article: throughout thousands of words, Trump goes unmentioned. If Gates included this, 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 Trump and similar demagogues are doing everything they can to impede the transition.

In part due to these factors, oil and gas continue generating substantial profits. This might explain, notwithstanding Gates' assertion about eliminating petroleum company stocks in 2019, its oil and gas financial assets have, actually grown.

Cognitive Considerations

To Gates, overthrowing the power of the ultra-wealthy may be unthinkable. It's not merely incompatible with his outlook. Considering his significant avoidance of this subject, he could genuinely find it impossible to consider. This might indicate "wealth-induced cognitive distortion": a profound incapacity to see the world from other people's point of view. Even though billionaires present research challenges, drawing conclusions from studies about wealth's impact on thinking could suggest that acquiring huge amounts of money is like taking a blow to the head. Riches appear to disrupt specific mental processes, especially those involving compassion and viewpoint.

Political Calculations

Yet, political maneuvering could be present: his writing appears primarily as reconciliation with the former president. Trump definitely understood it as such: "I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue. This demonstrated nerve, and we're thankful. MAGA!!!"

Previous Positions

The billionaire has consistently been incorrect on the issue, though not for the reasons Trump imagines. He has consistently lagged behind the curve, reciting fossil fuel claims (clean technology could decrease pollution only through enormous spending) well after their refutation. He has propagated misunderstanding and inaccuracies, including the unsupported claim in his recent writing that the objective of Sri Lanka's catastrophic restriction on chemical fertilizers involved emission reduction.

Further Difficult Realities

Gates names his article Three Challenging Environmental Facts. Thus, here's another difficult reality he carefully avoids. Should, as appears probable, vital planetary systems reach critical thresholds and rapidly fail, the impact on humanity, ignoring the persistence of additional organisms (a subject he consistently omits), would destroy the smooth and steady progress he foresees. Given that climate alteration may not happen incrementally and steadily, but through sudden changes of state, 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, introduces in the face of systemic change a profound irrationality, {prompting us to ignore the greatest