Why activism is allergic to the middle ground of causes

Some days ago, Bill Gates did the sort of thing that infuriates powerful activists.

- MANU JOSEPH

He said a doomsday was not coming.

He did this in a single detailed article on his blog Gatesnotes.com. He wrote that climate change is a very serious issue, even transformative, and that millions will be affected, especially the poor. If he had just said all this, it would have looked like the text of any compassionate and alarmist climate warrior, but then he framed it in his new conviction that climate change is not the end of the world. It will not be as bad as we have been led to believe. Also, carbon emissions are coming down, and they may come down faster: "...with the right policies and investments, innovation will allow us to drive emissions down much further." What would particularly disturb some well-financed climate activists was his articulation of the fact that funding for various issues is a zero-sum game—something is at the expense of something else—and all the billions going into climate action is money denied for human welfare in some of the poorest regions on earth. An implication of what Gates said is that intellectuals and millionaires pushing for ever greater climate spending may actually be perpetrators of human inequality without either knowing or acknowledging it.