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LWe must start with the core issue: The Microsoft founder is a politics denier. While he was slow to accept it, he now acknowledges climate change facts. But he lives in flat, embarrassing denial about how politics works. His latest essay on climate, published last week, 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.

The Main Contention

His key position states that funds are very limited, so the participants in the upcoming climate meeting in Brazil should shift funding from "near-term emissions goals" towards environmental adjustment and investing in poverty reduction and healthcare.

Certainly, money for worthy projects is limited, but this isn't due to universal principles, some implacable truth about human society. The reason is elite influence has declared war on benign state spending, resulting in the elimination of development assistance and substantial decreases in support money 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. Just after Gates published his new missive, research showed that the total wealth of the 10 richest US billionaires increased by nearly $700 billion over the last year. That money alone, the growth in ten individuals' fortunes, is almost 10 times the money needed each year to stop deep deprivation 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 wealth into policy-making authority. As their wealth increases, the more they can bend government and financial structures to their will, ensuring that they become richer still. But the billionaire mentions nothing in his essay about how and where extra money for both climate action and poverty relief could be identified.

'His writing appears primarily as reconciliation with Donald Trump.' Bill Gates, right, with the Trumps at a private dinner for business leaders in Washington DC.

Wealth Inequality Relationship

An obvious relationship appears between the deprivation Gates says concerns him and the fortunes he ignores. In the US, housing insecurity is achieving unprecedented levels, and so is the percentage of resources held by the ultra-rich. Although this may not describe Gates' personal approach, by suppressing salaries, racking up rents, busting trade unions and achieving lower taxes and diminished public funding, extremely wealthy individuals benefit from others' economic struggles.

Study Results

A notable research in political science publications, among limited studies accessing this exclusive domain, found that extremely wealthy individuals hold vastly distinct political perspectives from the general population. The multimillionaires it interviewed, in stark contrast to mere earthlings, viewed government debt as paramount of the issues it listed, and environmental collapse as unimportant. They were much more inclined to demand that social security and federal healthcare should be cut, and much less inclined to think that the unemployed should have a "decent standard of living", or that there should be stricter rules for petroleum corporations, banking entities and medical coverage companies. They were strongly against wealth redistribution.

Governmental Access

So whose views prevail? The tiny minority or the great majority? Although the research occurred during the Obama administration, it found that extremely wealthy individuals enjoyed greater political access than ordinary people. What about currently? The situation hardly requires explanation.

Omissions and Assumptions

That's another telling absence in Bill Gates's essay: at no point in its 5,000 words does it mention Donald Trump. Should the billionaire address this, he'd have to acknowledge that the second of his major assumptions is shaky: lower prices for sustainable technology inevitably produces environmental improvement. Naturally, it's beneficial that renewable energy costs are dropping significantly than fossil fuels. But The former president and comparable figures are taking all possible actions to block the shift.

To some degree because of this, oil and gas continue generating substantial profits. This could be why, notwithstanding Gates' assertion about eliminating petroleum company stocks in 2019, its oil and gas financial assets have, in fact, increased.

Mental Aspects

Regarding Gates, confronting extreme wealth power could appear inconceivable. I don't mean only that it clashes with his worldview. I mean that, judging by his remarkable silences on the issue, he may actually be unable to conceptualize it. Perhaps this is a symptom of "billionaire brain": a profound incapacity to see the world from other people's point of view. Even though billionaires present research challenges, inferring from investigations about money's effect on mental processes could suggest that acquiring huge amounts of money is like taking a blow to the head. Wealth seems to scramble certain cognitive functions, especially those involving compassion and viewpoint.

Political Calculations

But perhaps there's also calculation here: his writing appears primarily as reconciliation with the former president. Trump definitely understood it as such: "Our victory over climate misinformation is complete." Gates has confessed his total mistake. It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful. MAGA!!!"

Historical Context

Gates has always been completely WRONG on this topic, though not for the reasons Trump imagines. He has repeatedly been behind current understanding, reciting fossil fuel claims (renewable energy could lower carbon output only with massive expenses) long after they've been discredited. He has disseminated uncertainty and false information, such as the groundless assertion in his new essay that the intention behind Sri Lanka's failed prohibition on chemical fertilizers involved emission reduction.

Additional Tough Truths

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 suddenly collapse, the consequences for people, ignoring the persistence of additional organisms (an issue he regularly neglects), would ruin the consistent development he anticipates. Since ecological transformation probably won't occur slowly and predictably, but through sudden changes of state, the conceivable consequences for people's quality of life are nearly impossible to anticipate. His claim that financial support should match current analytical approaches to quality of life, even if it seems logical, introduces in the face of systemic change a profound irrationality, {prompting us to ignore the greatest