Tough truths about climate
86 comments
·October 28, 2025jader201
ares623
That’s assuming over half the world’s population will just say “oh well, this is my life now. I wouldn’t want to bother those people in the good parts.” There will be upheavals everywhere.
kennywinker
I think he’s probably right, but to be clear there are billions of deaths that fit into his prediction. Humans living and thriving does not preclude a massive drop in population.
It is very hard to gauge what he actually believes will happen based on these words
RickJWagner
I agree.
This is the first message I am hearing, “There are more important things than climate change.”
It’s almost shocking to hear it. The cynical side of my mind is wondering if this is the start of a slow pivot for the political masses. Another news item today says that emissions reduction pledges are not forthcoming in new world climate discussions. Perhaps messaging about climate change is evolving.
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Animats
Depends on where you are in the world.
For the developed world, climate change will be annoying but not serious. The US may have to give up on Miami and New Orleans, and build seawalls for New York. Some crops may have to be grown further north. Some irrigation systems will need upgrades. More power will be needed for air conditioning. Those will not seriously damage a society. After all, right now the biggest problem in American agriculture is where to put all the excess soy and corn.
Countries in Asia with heavily populated big river delta areas of shallow slope are very vulnerable to small rises in sea level, because the coast moves a long way inland. China and Vietnam can probably engineer their way out of those problems.
Some countries near the equator with political instability are in big trouble.[1] Too poor and too disorganized to upgrade water and agriculture systems.
[1] https://www.rescue.org/article/10-countries-risk-climate-dis...
energy123
> For the developed world, climate change will be annoying but not serious.
Spillover of problems like mass migration away from the equator and increase in conflicts.
fulafel
Also increased threat of far-right rule in democracies and general dehumanizing attitude toward people in trouble.
ares623
Food supply chains disrupted. Piracy will increase and spread.
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supriyo-biswas
> Interesting and different perspective vs. what many others often say (but that’s one of the points he’s making).
The uncharitable interpretation being that he's trying to toe the line for the current US administration, while still signaling that he's part of the communities that he typically inhabits as part of his charity work.
hmahonen
Question is that how long is foreseeable future?
It is very likely that the time span for an individual is long enough that the change does not matter. Still the future will arrive and most likely sooner than we thought.
elihu
> "All greenhouse gas emissions come from one of five sources" > (Graphic shows electricity generation 28%, transportation 16%, agriculture 19%, buildings 7%, manufacturing 30%)
There's another large source of human greenhouse gas emissions that will perhaps be the most difficult to do anything about and which as far as I know we don't have much in the way of hard numbers about, and that is emissions from military activity. Not just wars, but ordinary peace-time training, patrol operations, hauling stuff around, and so on.
tylervigen
It's not separate. That would be included in manufacturing, transportation, and electricity.
xtiansimon
Ha! And military combat vehicles are exempt from emissions regulations.
simpaticoder
Gates is making a speculative case that climate change can be (should be) fought with the needs of the global poor at top-of-mind. He acknowledges the apparent zero-sum nature of it: impoverished people face much greater and more immediate threats than climate change, and fossil fuel tech (for example) really does address those urgent threats effectively. He solves this conundrum by speculating that we can have our cake (help the global poor) and eat it too (slow climate change) by inventing new tools and methods.
I hope he's right. I'm glad he's doing this advocacy. By doing so he's fighting two popular opinions, first that climate change is a hoax, and second, that climate change must be addressed even if it means sacrificing the well-being of the global poor. That said, I have grave concerns that Gates is simply wrong, that we cannot invent our way out of both climate change and the suffering of the global poor. His many remarkable mentions of AI do not, in my opinion, lend strength to his argument, nor does his mention of "almost commercialized" fusion. The former being a gimmick, the latter being forever 30 years away. If our hopes rest on tech like that, then we must prepare to be devastated and pick one side of the zero-sum.
mlrtime
>That said, I have grave concerns that Gates is simply wrong, that we cannot invent our way out of both climate change and the suffering of the global poor.
My take on this is that he has thought about this longer than anyone posting here and has the data to back it up... that is there are no other solutions given human nature.
Ekaros
Asking people to lower their living standards will not work.
So next best thing is to prepare for future changes with potential solutions now.
This is most realistic approach I can see. Start now developing solutions that then have to be put into place.
Eddy_Viscosity2
Inflation is already lowering the living standards of millions, but without any reduction on ghg. So the most realistic approach is that we have to deal both reduced living standards AND a changing environment. But the rich will be rich, so there's that.
robocat
[delayed]
czottmann
Unasked-for meta complaint about the site, not the article itself:
I hate that thing where you visit a blog post (judging from the URL) yet the blog post is seemingly endless (judging from the scrollbar), and when you scroll down you hop into the next blog post (URL just changes).
The scrollbar is useless in that case, I can't gauge the real length of the article. The Gates Foundation has more money than God, maybe spend a tiny little bit of it on a good UI designer, yeah?
tasuki
> The Gates Foundation has more money than God, maybe spend a tiny little bit of it on a good UI designer, yeah?
I think it's precisely the problem: they hired an expensive designer, and the designer, for the obscene amount of money they were getting, felt like they had to do something special...
johngossman
This is one of these nuanced takes that will please few. It acknowledges all sorts of uncertainty and adopts ethical priorities that cannot be established empirically even if (unlikely) the facts are universally agreed upon. I applaud the attempt and wish there could be real debate over this and other complex positions.
ACCount37
It's true. Climate change is not an extinction threat. Never was, and certainly isn't now.
Climate change is the COVID of global natural disasters. Is it worth fighting? Yes. Can you do absolutely nothing about it and get away with it? Also yes. Cue the lackluster efforts.
The "really bad" +4C scenarios still have a death toll larger than that of WW2 - but spread out in time and space, across many decades and many countries. And the most vulnerable countries? The countries that are already on the brink. Climate change is not the "great equalizer" people want it to be.
In those "bad" scenarios, the main source of lethality for climate change is: agricultural failures, leading to local shortages and global price spikes, leading to famine. First world countries can eat a sharp +40% spike in food prices, at the cost of quality of life - but there are numerous countries where such a spike would have a death toll attached to it.
mariusor
And what do populations with a death sentence hanging over their heads usually do? Oh yeah, they take up arms and try to invade their better off neighbours.
Maybe that's a worst case scenario, but the better ones still include many millions of people displaced towards more temperate zones. It will lead to the greatest migration humanity ever suffered and I'm not sure that in a scenario of scant resources, that's going to go on in a peaceful and dignified manner.
ACCount37
The obvious counterpoint to any "hordes of climate refugees will destroy the first world countries" is that borders exist, and machine guns were invented over a century ago.
The reality of modern warfare doesn't favor large forces, poorly organized and underequipped, that are attacking reasonably well prepared defense positions.
Now, is there a will to use all the tools of modern warfare against climate refugees? Currently, no. But if "hordes of climate refugees will destroy the first world countries" stopped being a distant theoretical concern, and became a practical one? If there were real examples of border checkpoints in first world countries being breached by force, with border security overran, and thousands of somewhat armed and somewhat violent climate refugees pouring in through the breach? I expect that to change very quickly.
mariusor
Well, I wasn't try to imply that the refugees would win, and yes, that's entirely the point because the scenario qualifies as a breakdown of human civilization that Gates doesn't acknowledge. Even if some people will still be able to have their Sunday brunch while their country's borders are bathed in refugee blood.
OtherShrezzing
I’m not sure this article is especially helpful. It’s addressed to the attendees of COP, but the attendees of COP already believe (almost unanimously) that adaptation has equal importance to mitigation. And it’s one of the only forums where poorer & disaffected nations are given a real opportunity.
I’m also not sure that anyone anywhere earnestly believes that climate change is an extinction level event that’ll render the entire planet unliveable. Certainly not the people at COP.
The piece seems unnecessarily broadly combative and contrarian.
ACCount37
> I’m also not sure that anyone anywhere earnestly believes that climate change is an extinction level event that’ll render the entire planet unliveable. Certainly not the people at COP.
A lot of people do believe that, unfortunately. Decades worth of the most alarmist coverage possible sure didn't help the public awareness.
Now, people at COP? Hopefully not. But COP doesn't end with the people at COP. And there are a lot of people in this very thread whose reaction to "climate change cannot cause extinction of humankind" is shock and disbelief.
tonyedgecombe
>A lot of people do believe that, unfortunately.
No they don't.
mk89
Curious to see who are the first who will boycott MS/Azure/etc because of this.
fulafel
Interesting that there's zero mention of regulation, even thought that's cheap and effective in ramping down fossils use as proven by the carbon trading system in EU.
tonyedgecombe
Carbon taxes are probably the most effective tool but politically unpalatable.
superultra
This feels like someone in a marathon deciding to quit because they just ran really well for the last 10 minutes, with the assumption that since they were running really fast there’s no reason to think they won’t keep running fast. It’s deeply flawed logic.
The other issue is that while he might be right, the worst and biggest consequences of being wrong will not affect Bill. Or, frankly, anyone reading this comment.
It’s such a complicated problem for us humans because we often struggle to conceptualize beyond our own tribes, let alone humans who won’t exist for decades.
But the problem is that IF climate scientists are right - and other than a few cheery cherry picked stats, Bill has no evidence saying otherwise - then the longer we do nothing the bigger the impact.
Will humanity die? Probably not. But will it drastically affect QoL for nearly all humans on the planet save the 1%? Probably.
mlrtime
Right, but he knows this and he's drawing up his knowledge and solutions. You can point this out, but what solutions do you offer? And I'm sure you can paste some articles with solutions, but I mean actual solutions that people would be willing to change for, not hypotheticals.
raffael_de
@BillGates: Tell us some tough truths about Epstein island!
But Kudos on acknowledging the growing evidence that the climate change movement is mostly about ideology, money, power and redistributing wealth.
> Although climate change will have serious consequences—particularly for people in the poorest countries—it will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.
Interesting and different perspective vs. what many others often say (but that’s one of the points he’s making).
I feel a lot of climate articles — and the comments attached to their HN threads — tend to favor more of the doomsday message he’s arguing against here.