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Let's start with the core issue: Bill Gates denies political realities. Though he came to it late, he now recognizes environmental science. But he lives in flat, embarrassing denial about how politics works. His latest essay on climate, published last week, discusses the topic as though politics didn't matter. He pens words that disregard governmental authority, and as if extreme wealth didn't exist.

Central Claim

His key position states that money is insufficient, so the representatives at the environmental conference in Brazil should shift funding from "short-term pollution targets" towards environmental adjustment 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, some implacable truth about human society. The reason is elite influence has declared war on public welfare investments, causing the dismantling of aid agencies and drastic cuts to the aid budgets of various states. Financial restraint stems from policy choices. The choice to implement it comes from authorities yielding to the demands of billionaire class.

Existing Wealth

Massive amounts of wealth exist. Just after Gates published his new missive, Oxfam revealed that the net worth of America's wealthiest ten individuals increased by nearly $700 billion over the last year. This amount by itself, the growth in ten individuals' fortunes, is approximately ten times the yearly funding needed to eliminate severe poverty worldwide. How have they managed to channel so much of economic resources into private hands? Why can't society reclaim it through effective taxation? The answer is their translation of economic power into political power. With growing fortunes, the greater their ability to influence political and economic frameworks to their desires, ensuring that they become richer still. But the philanthropist discusses nothing in his essay about methods and sources for additional funds for both environmental measures and economic assistance could be located.

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

Rich-Poor Dynamic

A clear connection exists between the economic hardship Gates professes to address and the riches he overlooks. In the US, homelessness is breaking records, and so is the share of assets owned by the top 0.1%. While this might not be Gates's own business model, by keeping pay low, driving up rental prices, undermining worker collectives and winning tax and spending cuts, the ultra-rich thrive on impoverishing other people.

Research Findings

A remarkable study in political science publications, among limited studies accessing this exclusive domain, found that the ultra-rich have radically different political views from the general population. The wealthy respondents in the study, sharply different from average people, considered fiscal shortfalls as critical of the issues it listed, and environmental collapse as unimportant. They were far more likely to insist that public retirement benefits and government medical care should be reduced, and far less likely to believe that the unemployed should have a "decent standard of living", or that there should be increased oversight of energy firms, financial institutions and insurance providers. They were fiercely opposed to redistribution.

Policy Impact

So whose views prevail? The tiny minority or the great majority? Even though the investigation happened under Obama, it found that billionaires maintained closer relationships with government figures than ordinary people. How about today? The current reality seems obvious.

Omissions and Assumptions

Here's another crucial exclusion from the billionaire's article: throughout thousands of words, Trump goes unmentioned. Should the billionaire address this, 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 fossil fuels. But Trump and like-minded politicians are employing every method to hinder the change.

Partly as a result, traditional energy sources stay very profitable. This might explain, notwithstanding Gates' assertion about eliminating petroleum company stocks in 2019, its investments in traditional energy securities have, actually grown.

Mental Aspects

For Gates, challenging billionaire influence might seem impossible. I don't mean only that it clashes with his worldview. Based on his notable omissions regarding this topic, he may actually be unable to conceptualize it. Perhaps this is a symptom of "billionaire brain": a deep inability to understand others' perspectives. Even though billionaires present research challenges, drawing conclusions from studies about wealth's impact on thinking could suggest that obtaining enormous fortunes compares to cognitive damage. Riches appear to disrupt specific mental processes, especially those involving compassion and viewpoint.

Political Calculations

However, strategic thinking might also be involved: his essay reads like nothing so much as a peace offering to Donald Trump. The former president clearly interpreted it this way: "We've defeated the climate change falsehood." 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!!!"

Background Information

Gates has historically been mistaken on the issue, though not for the reasons Trump imagines. He has consistently lagged behind the curve, echoing petroleum industry talking points (green technologies could reduce global CO2 emissions only at a "beyond astronomical" cost) well after their refutation. He has spread confusion and misinformation, including the unsupported claim in his recent writing that the purpose of Sri Lanka's disastrous ban on chemical fertilizers involved emission reduction.

Further Difficult Realities

Gates calls his essay Three Tough Truths About Climate. Therefore, here's another challenging fact he deliberately overlooks. If, as now seems likely, crucial Earth systems cross tipping points and suddenly collapse, the effects on human life, 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 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, although it may appear reasonable, generates substantial unreasonableness when addressing fundamental change, {prompting us to ignore the greatest