Climate change won't end civilisation, says Gates

CLIMATE change “will not lead to humanity’s demise”, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has said in a long memo in which he argued that tackling global disease and poverty will help prepare the planet's poorest for a warming world.

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The missive was seen as a pivot by the 70-year-old Microsoft co-founder, a major backer of green technologies through his Breakthrough Energy organisation, and comes days ahead of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, whose leadership Gates praised for placing climate adaptation and human development high on the agenda.

Gates acknowledged that critics may charge him with hypocrisy because of his significant carbon footprint or argue the memo was a “sneaky way of arguing that we shouldn’t take climate change seriously”.

But he said that while climate change would have “serious” consequences, “people will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future”.

Gates’s memo outlined his “Three tough truths about climate”: climate change will not end civilisation, limiting temperature is not the best measure of progress, and health and prosperity are the strongest defences against climate destabilisation.