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LWe must start with the core issue: The Microsoft founder denies political realities. Though he came to it late, he now recognizes environmental science. But he lives in flat, embarrassing denial about political realities. His new piece on climate, shared days ago, treats the issue as if it existed in a political vacuum. He composes text ignoring political influence, and no such thing as billionaires.

Central Claim

His primary argument suggests that funds are very limited, so the representatives at the environmental conference in Brazil should shift funding from "immediate carbon reduction objectives" towards climate resilience and investing in poverty reduction and healthcare.

Yes, the funds available for any good cause are scarce, but that's not because of some natural law, an unavoidable reality of communities. It's because oligarchic power has waged war on government social programs, resulting in the elimination of development assistance and severe reductions in assistance funding of various states. Budget cuts represent political decisions. The decision to impose it is driven by leaders submitting to the preferences of billionaire class.

Current Funds

There are truckloads of money available. Shortly following Gates' latest publication, Oxfam revealed that the net worth of the 10 richest US billionaires expanded by hundreds of billions in the past year. These funds independently, the increase in a handful of billionaires' net worth, is nearly tenfold the money needed each year to stop deep deprivation worldwide. What methods enabled such concentration of economic resources into private hands? Why can't society reclaim it through appropriate revenue collection? The solution lies in their conversion of wealth into policy-making authority. As their wealth increases, the stronger their capacity to shape the state and economic system to their desires, ensuring that they become richer still. But the billionaire mentions nothing in his essay about how and where extra money for both environmental measures and economic assistance could be identified.

'His essay reads like nothing so much as a peace offering to Donald Trump.' Gates photographed with the former president for industry figures in Washington.

Rich-Poor Dynamic

A clear connection exists between the economic hardship Gates professes to address and the wealth he fails to mention. In the US, homelessness is breaking records, and so is the percentage of resources held by the ultra-rich. While this might not be Gates's own business model, by keeping pay low, increasing housing costs, undermining worker collectives and securing tax reductions and budget decreases, extremely wealthy individuals benefit from others' economic struggles.

Study Results

A remarkable study in political science publications, one of the rare examinations of this private sphere, found that extremely wealthy individuals hold vastly distinct political perspectives from the great majority. The wealthy respondents in the study, sharply different from average people, viewed government debt as paramount of the issues it listed, and climate breakdown as the least. They were significantly more prone to argue that social security and federal healthcare should be cut, and significantly less prone to accept that jobless individuals deserve adequate living conditions, or that there should be increased oversight of energy firms, financial institutions and insurance providers. They were fiercely opposed to redistribution.

Policy Impact

Which perspectives dominate? The small elite or the vast population? Even though the investigation happened under Obama, it found that billionaires maintained closer relationships with government figures than regular individuals. And now? The current reality seems obvious.

Missing Elements and Presumptions

That's another telling absence in Bill Gates's essay: throughout thousands of words, Trump goes unmentioned. Were Gates to do so, he'd have to recognize that an important foundation of his argument is unstable: lower prices for sustainable technology inevitably produces environmental improvement. Naturally, it's beneficial that renewable energy costs are dropping significantly than traditional energy sources. But Trump and similar demagogues are taking all possible actions to block the shift.

In part due to these factors, traditional energy sources stay very profitable. This could be why, notwithstanding Gates' assertion about eliminating petroleum company stocks in 2019, its investments in traditional energy securities have, truly expanded.

Psychological Factors

For Gates, challenging billionaire influence might seem impossible. I don't mean only that it clashes with his worldview. Considering his significant avoidance of this subject, he may actually be unable to conceptualize it. 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, 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, notably those concerning understanding and outlook.

Tactical Elements

But perhaps there's also calculation here: his article seems designed as appeasement toward Trump. The former president clearly interpreted it this way: "We've defeated the climate change falsehood." Gates has confessed his total mistake. It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful. MAGA!!!"

Previous Positions

Gates has always been completely WRONG on this topic, though not for the reasons Trump imagines. He has continually trailed scientific consensus, repeating traditional energy arguments (renewable energy could lower carbon output only with massive expenses) significantly following their debunking. He has disseminated uncertainty and false information, including the unsupported claim in his recent writing that the objective of Sri Lanka's catastrophic restriction on artificial fertilizers aimed at pollution decrease.

Further Difficult Realities

Gates calls his essay Three Tough Truths About Climate. Thus, here's another difficult reality he carefully avoids. If, as now seems likely, crucial Earth systems cross tipping points and rapidly fail, the consequences for people, let alone the survival of other life forms (a topic he fails, as usual, to mention), would ruin the consistent development he anticipates. 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 claim that financial support should match current analytical approaches to quality of life, although it may appear reasonable, creates significant illogic when confronting systemic transformation, {prompting us to ignore the greatest