There’s More Than Meets the Eye in Bill Gates’ Climate Memo

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1. Bill Gates’ plan is to re-arrange the deck chairs on the titanic, in an attempt to make the passengers more comfortable as the ship goes down.

2. The only time we should be talking about Gates is in the context of his relations with Epstein.

3. Is it that Bill Gates always has been and always will be nothing more than a greedy opportunist billionaire just like the rest of them?

4. If you read the memo, it comes across as contingency planning. Which we absolutely need to consider given models are getting more severe and we haven’t met a single climate goal.

5. > In the days that followed the memo’s release, scientists cried foul and President Donald Trump cheered. It has come up in virtually every climate conversation I’ve had since then. Gates is unlikely to be upset. When I saw him last week ahead of the release, he almost seemed to relish the idea of creating an outcry. “If you think climate’s not important, you won’t agree with the memo,” he told journalists at a small gathering in New York City. “If you think climate’s the only cause [to address] and apocalyptic, you won’t agree with the memo.”

   > But much of the attention and outcry misses the point. In the memo, Gates tries to take a “pragmatic” view, as he said at the gathering. He cites the difficult fiscal environment as governments cut foreign aid to explain the need to shift some money to urgent global health challenges. Acknowledging temperature rise projections, he calls for an increased focus on adapting to the effects of climate change. And he calls for judicious spending on the right technologies (think: advanced nuclear power or cleaner manufacturing) that can become economic and bring down emissions. Whatever you think of Gates’s tone, it’s hard to argue against any of those three points.

   It’s worth reading the whole article, but this captures the gist of it.

6. “We tried to stop the shooter who wants to shoot you, but we can’t. Therefore, I am going to work on minimizing the overall damage after you have been shot. It’s not like you are going to die necessarily, but we can make things better.”

   Does that sound right? Because I have heard a number of different interpretations.

7. The very predictable damage is already done. Climate deniers aren’t known for digging into details. All they’ve heard is “Bill Gates now says climate change isn’t a big deal,” and they’re off to the races. This is exactly what Big Oil wants.

8. He got divorced and then suddenly speeding up the end of the world didn’t sound so bad

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