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Let's address the central dilemma: Bill Gates is a politics denier. While he was slow to accept it, he now acknowledges climate change facts. But he operates in blatant, cringeworthy denial about the realities of power. His latest essay on climate, published last week, approaches climate change without political context. He composes text ignoring political influence, and no such thing as billionaires.

Central Claim

His main contention is that funds are very limited, so the delegates at this month's climate summit in Brazil should shift funding from "immediate carbon reduction objectives" towards climate "adaptation" and spending on poverty and disease.

Certainly, money for worthy projects is limited, but this isn't due to universal principles, some implacable truth about human society. It's because oligarchic power has waged war on public welfare investments, resulting in the elimination of development assistance and severe reductions in assistance funding of additional nations. Financial restraint stems from policy choices. The choice to implement it comes from authorities yielding to the demands of billionaire class.

Existing Wealth

There are truckloads of money available. Soon after the billionaire released his essay, data indicated that the combined assets of the top ten US fortune holders grew by $698bn during the previous twelve months. That money alone, the growth in ten individuals' fortunes, is nearly tenfold the money needed each year to stop deep deprivation worldwide. How have they managed to channel so much of global wealth into personal accounts? And why can't we get it back through effective taxation? The answer is their translation of wealth into policy-making authority. With growing fortunes, the more they can bend government and financial structures to their will, guaranteeing continued wealth accumulation. But the philanthropist discusses nothing in his essay about methods and sources for additional funds for both climate solutions and hardship alleviation 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 business leaders in Washington DC.

The Poverty-Wealth Connection

A clear connection exists 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 suppressing salaries, driving up rental prices, weakening labor organizations and winning tax and spending cuts, the ultra-rich thrive on impoverishing other people.

Research Findings

A remarkable study in political science publications, among the very few to have penetrated this secretive world, found that billionaires maintain completely separate political opinions from the general population. The wealthy respondents in the study, in stark contrast to mere earthlings, viewed government debt as paramount of the issues it listed, and climate breakdown as the least. They were much more inclined to demand that public retirement benefits and government medical care should be reduced, and far less likely to believe that unemployed people merit reasonable生活质量, or that there should be more regulation of oil companies, banks and health insurers. They were strongly against wealth redistribution.

Political Influence

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 ordinary people. And now? The current reality seems obvious.

Omissions and Assumptions

This represents another significant omission in Gates' writing: at no point in its 5,000 words does it mention Donald Trump. Were Gates to do so, he'd have to admit that another key premise is questionable: reductions in the cost of new green technologies lead inexorably to environmental progress. Certainly, it's positive that clean technology prices are falling dramatically than traditional energy sources. But Trump and like-minded politicians are doing everything they can to impede the transition.

In part due to these factors, oil and gas continue generating substantial profits. This potentially clarifies why, even though Gates states his organization sold all direct fossil fuel investments in 2019, its investments in traditional energy securities have, truly expanded.

Mental Aspects

For Gates, challenging billionaire influence might seem impossible. It's not merely incompatible with his outlook. Based on his notable omissions regarding this topic, 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. Although extremely wealthy individuals are difficult to research, drawing conclusions from studies about wealth's impact on thinking could suggest that obtaining enormous fortunes compares to cognitive damage. Fortunes seem to disturb particular brain operations, especially those involving compassion and viewpoint.

Strategic Considerations

But perhaps there's also calculation here: his essay reads like nothing so much as a peace offering to Donald Trump. Trump definitely understood it as such: "I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. The billionaire has acknowledged his complete error. It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful. MAGA!!!"

Previous Positions

Gates has historically been mistaken on this topic, though not for the reasons Trump imagines. He has repeatedly been behind current understanding, echoing petroleum industry talking points (green technologies could reduce global CO2 emissions only at a "beyond astronomical" cost) well after their refutation. He has disseminated uncertainty and false information, such as the groundless assertion in his new essay that the objective of Sri Lanka's catastrophic restriction on artificial fertilizers aimed at pollution decrease.

Further Difficult Realities

The billionaire titles his piece Three Difficult Climate Realities. Thus, here's another difficult reality he carefully avoids. If, as currently expected, essential environmental mechanisms pass turning points and suddenly collapse, the consequences for people, not to mention the existence of other species (a topic he fails, as usual, to mention), would destroy the smooth and steady progress he foresees. Because environmental change is likely to proceed not in gradual and linear ways, but through rapid shifts, 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, although it may appear reasonable, generates substantial unreasonableness when addressing fundamental change, {prompting us to ignore the greatest