In the Guardian on November 8, George Monbiot tells us about Bill Gates' essay on climate, which doesn't mention Donald Trump or Trump's efforts to stop the green energy transition:
Perhaps this is a symptom of “billionaire brain”: a profound incapacity to see the world from other people’s point of view. While the ultra-rich are notoriously hard to study, extrapolating from research into how gaining wealth and status affects cognition could suggest that acquiring huge amounts of money is like taking a blow to the head. Wealth seems to scramble certain cognitive functions, particularly those related to empathy and perspective.
But perhaps there’s also calculation here: his essay reads like nothing so much as a peace offering to Donald Trump. Trump certainly took it that way: “I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue. It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful. MAGA!!!”
Gates, says Monbiot,
has consistently lagged behind the curve, reciting fossil fuel claims (green technologies could reduce global CO2 emissions only at a “beyond astronomical” cost) long after they’ve been discredited. He has spread confusion and misinformation, such as the groundless assertion in his new essay that the purpose of Sri Lanka’s disastrous ban on synthetic fertilisers was “to cut emissions”.
Gates calls his essay Three Tough Truths About Climate. So here’s another tough truth he studiously ignores. If, as now seems likely, crucial Earth systems cross tipping points and suddenly collapse, the effects on human life, let alone the survival of other life forms (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 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 threats.
Related
My article for FT @sustainableviews.bsky.social on the risk of a complete unravelling of EU climate policy if the Commission doesn't protect the upcoming carbon border levy from US pressure: www.sustainableviews.com/the-us-wants...
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— Dave Keating (@davekeating.substack.com) December 1, 2025 at 5:34 AM
U.S.-Owned Oil Sands Giants Send Profits Out of Canada Despite Public Support for Resource Sovereignty, The Energy Mix, November 26, 2025
"For too many years, we bent the knee to the climate. We let it be hot in some places and cold in other places. We went around meekly putting up umbrellas and donning thick parkas and sleeping next to blocks of ice, because we (fools that we were) thought that we could do nothing to change it. We were forced to get out of the ocean and walk on the dry land and build cities on the dry land. Now see what we have done! Soon there will be water where there was land, and we will have gotten vengeance on the ice for the horrors it inflicted on our most titanic boat (the Titanic). The climate bows before us. We are not under the weather any longer. Now we soar above it in our magnificent jet airplanes, trailing carbon behind! The atmosphere will have carbon in it until we say otherwise, and the atmosphere will thank us."
Alexandra Petri. Nothing is Wrong and Here is Why. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2020. Introduction, p. xvi.
See: Can a billionaire fix California?
Tom Steyer argues he's not a regular billionaire. He's a cool billionaire.
Emily Atkin, HEATED,
Mar 12, 2026
And this follow-up
Tracy:
“I’ve made no secret over the years of my deep skepticism of the billionaire class. So it would be weird if I didn’t ask you something that a lot of my listeners are probably thinking, but nobody has said to your face yet. Do you think it’s ethical that you exist?”
Emily:
So you call me immediately — you look at it and you call me — and you’re like, “You can’t start with that question.”
Tracy:
First of all, you know that meme of the cat where it’s frantically typing? I read that and I was like: Emily.
And this is where we tell everyone: I am yin and you are yang. I am A and you are B.
But I was so impressed. I was really impressed, because you were right. You said if he can’t answer this, he shouldn’t be governor. And he did not flinch when you asked it. In fact, he sat there cool as a cucumber. And to your point, he’s clearly been very well prepped. I take it all back — you were right.
Emily:
That was my thought. I was like: if he’s not prepared to answer the question, should you exist as a billionaire, when agreeing to be interviewed by me, then he’s not prepared to lead a garbage can. If you search my name and the word billionaire, you don’t get anything positive.
And I still do — even after that interview — have some skepticism. ...
— Our reaction to the Steyer interview
Just some immediate, off-the-cuff thoughts.
Emily Atkin
Mar 12, 2026
