Bill Gates Rethinks Climate Catastrophe

The climate conformity caucus is breaking up at long last, and the latest evidence is a change of mind by none other than Bill Gates. The Microsoft billionaire turned liberal philanthropist now says the “doomsday view” about the climate is wrong, and “it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.”

As epiphanies go, this is welcome. Mr. Gates, in his advocacy, has been a leading promoter of the view that a warming climate is an existential crisis that demands urgent political action. His 2021 book has the nuanced title, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.” Without innovation, he wrote, “we cannot keep the earth livable.” The effect on humans “will in all likelihood be catastrophic.”

Now, on the cusp of the latest COP30 climate conclave in Brazil next month, Mr. Gates offers different advice. An essay released on his website promises “three tough truths about climate,” the first of which is that rising temperatures are “a serious problem” but “will not be the end of civilization.”

Wait—this is a hard truth? You mean humanity isn’t doomed? The only people for whom this is a “tough” message are the climate zealots who remain committed to the idea that rising temperatures are a totalizing emergency. They say this to intimidate politicians into giving them billions of dollars in green subsidies, along with other powers to remake the modern economy and society.