Bill Gates Shifts Stance: Climate Change Serious but Not Existential Threat

Bill Gates has stirred global debate after publishing an essay asserting that climate change, while serious, will not lead to humanity’s extinction and that global resources should be redirected toward fighting disease and hunger.

The Microsoft co-founder and clean energy advocate, who launched Breakthrough Energy to accelerate green innovation, argued that the world must make a “strategic pivot” away from what he called the “doomsday” framing of climate change. In his October 28 essay, released ahead of the COP30 climate summit, Gates urged governments and philanthropists to prioritize reducing immediate human suffering over long-term carbon reduction targets.

“Climate change, disease, and poverty are all major problems. We should deal with them in proportion to the suffering they cause,” Gates wrote, suggesting that current climate investments have overshadowed more direct life-saving initiatives. He emphasized this point in an interview, saying that if forced to choose between eradicating malaria and limiting global warming by a tenth of a degree, he would “let the temperature go up 0.1 degree to get rid of malaria.”

Gates’s call for reallocation comes amid reduced international aid spending, which he partly attributes to former U.S. President Donald Trump’s cuts to programs such as USAID. He argued that the resulting shortfall has left millions in developing countries more vulnerable to hunger and disease, problems he says are more urgent than climate mitigation. “Health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change,” Gates wrote, citing research from the University of Chicago Climate Impact Lab suggesting that improving living standards can significantly reduce climate-related deaths.

The remarks mark a notable shift from Gates’s long-standing focus on climate innovation and have drawn sharp criticism from scientists and climate advocates. Jennifer Francis of the Woodwell Climate Research Center said that much of the human suffering Gates highlights is already being fueled by climate change. She argued that society must both “cure the disease” by cutting emissions and “treat the symptoms” like hunger and poor health.

Michael Mann, Director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability & the Media, also challenged Gates’s reasoning, calling it “backwards” and warning that no threat looms larger over developing nations than the climate crisis itself.

Gates concluded his essay by urging donors and policymakers to direct aid toward initiatives with measurable, immediate impacts on human welfare, insisting that this approach would save more lives — even as he maintained that investment in clean energy must continue.