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LWe must start with the core issue: The Microsoft founder ignores the role of politics. While he was slow to accept it, he now recognizes environmental science. But he operates in blatant, cringeworthy denial about the realities of power. His latest essay on climate, published last week, treats the issue as if it existed in a political vacuum. He writes as if there were no such thing as political power, and no such thing as billionaires.

Primary Argument

His primary argument suggests that funds are very limited, so the delegates at this month's climate summit in Brazil should direct money away from "short-term pollution targets" towards climate "adaptation" and spending on poverty and disease.

Yes, the funds available for any good cause are scarce, but it's not caused by inevitable rules, some implacable truth about human society. It's because oligarchic power has waged war on public welfare investments, resulting in the elimination of development assistance and drastic cuts to the aid budgets of other countries. Budget cuts represent political decisions. The choice to implement it comes from authorities yielding to the demands of extremely wealthy individuals.

Existing Wealth

Substantial financial resources are present. Shortly following Gates' latest publication, data indicated that the combined assets of the top ten US fortune holders increased by nearly $700 billion over the last year. That money alone, the increase in a handful of billionaires' net worth, is almost 10 times the money needed each year to stop deep deprivation worldwide. Through what means did they accumulate of the world's money into their pockets? Why can't society reclaim it through appropriate revenue collection? The answer is their translation of wealth into policy-making authority. As their wealth increases, the more they can bend political and economic frameworks to their will, ensuring that they become richer still. But the philanthropist discusses nothing in his essay about ways and locations for more resources for both climate solutions and hardship alleviation could be located.

'His essay reads like nothing so much as a peace offering to Donald Trump.' Bill Gates, right, with the Trumps at a private dinner for industry figures in Washington.

Wealth Inequality Relationship

There's a direct link between the deprivation Gates says concerns him and the fortunes he ignores. In the US, housing insecurity is achieving unprecedented levels, and so is the portion of wealth controlled by the wealthiest fraction. Even if this doesn't characterize Gates' specific methods, by keeping pay low, increasing housing costs, weakening labor organizations and securing tax reductions and budget decreases, extremely wealthy individuals benefit from others' economic struggles.

Research Findings

A notable research in political science publications, among the very few to have penetrated this secretive world, found that the ultra-rich have radically different political views from most people. The multimillionaires it interviewed, completely unlike ordinary citizens, saw budget deficits as the most important of the issues it listed, and environmental collapse as unimportant. They were significantly more prone to argue that public retirement benefits and government medical care should be reduced, and much less inclined to think that unemployed people merit reasonable生活质量, or that there should be more regulation of oil companies, banks and health insurers. They were vehemently anti-taxation and redistribution.

Policy Impact

So whose views prevail? The tiny minority or the great majority? Although the research occurred during the Obama administration, it found that billionaires maintained closer relationships with government figures than regular individuals. How about today? I scarcely think I need to spell it out.

Omissions and Assumptions

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: decreasing expenses for eco-friendly innovations automatically creates ecological advancement. Certainly, it's positive that clean technology prices are falling dramatically than fossil fuels. But The former president and comparable figures are taking all possible actions to block the shift.

Partly as a result, 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, in fact, increased.

Mental Aspects

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 might be literally incapable of thinking about it. Possibly this represents "extreme wealth mentality": a profound incapacity to see the world from other people's point of view. Even though billionaires present research challenges, extrapolating from research into how gaining wealth and status affects cognition could suggest that gaining massive wealth resembles experiencing brain trauma. Wealth seems to scramble certain cognitive functions, 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: "I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Gates has confessed his total mistake. This required bravery, and we appreciate it. MAGA!!!"

Previous Positions

The billionaire has consistently been incorrect on this topic, even if not for the explanations Trump provides. He has consistently lagged behind the curve, reciting fossil fuel claims (green technologies could reduce global CO2 emissions only at a "beyond astronomical" cost) significantly following their debunking. He has propagated misunderstanding and inaccuracies, including the unsupported claim in his recent writing that the purpose of Sri Lanka's disastrous ban on chemical fertilizers involved emission reduction.

Additional Tough Truths

The billionaire titles his piece Three Difficult Climate Realities. So here's another tough truth he studiously ignores. If, as now seems likely, crucial Earth systems cross tipping points and rapidly fail, the effects on human life, let alone the survival of other life forms (an issue he regularly neglects), would eliminate the gradual advancement he predicts. Because environmental change is likely to proceed not in gradual and linear ways, but through rapid shifts, the potential effects on human welfare are very difficult to forecast. His claim that financial support should match current analytical approaches to quality of life, even if it seems logical, generates substantial unreasonableness when addressing fundamental change, {prompting us to ignore the greatest