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LWe must start with the core issue: Bill Gates is a politics denier. Though he came to it late, he now acknowledges climate change facts. But he lives in flat, embarrassing denial about how politics works. His latest essay on climate, released recently, approaches climate change without political context. He pens words that disregard governmental authority, and no such thing as billionaires.

The Main Contention

His main contention is that money is insufficient, so the delegates at this month's climate summit in Brazil should shift funding from "near-term emissions goals" towards climate resilience and spending on poverty and disease.

Yes, the funds available for any good cause are scarce, but that's not because of some natural law, an unavoidable reality of communities. The reason is elite influence has declared war on benign state spending, causing the dismantling of aid agencies and severe reductions in assistance funding of additional nations. Budget cuts represent political decisions. The selection to enforce it originates with governments bowing to the wishes of the ultra-rich.

Available Resources

Massive amounts of wealth exist. Shortly following Gates' latest publication, data indicated that the combined assets of the 10 richest US billionaires increased by nearly $700 billion over the last year. This amount by itself, the growth in ten individuals' fortunes, is almost 10 times the money needed each year to stop deep deprivation worldwide. How have they managed to channel so much of global wealth into personal accounts? What prevents redistribution through proper tax policies? The explanation involves their transformation of wealth into policy-making authority. The richer they become, the greater their ability to influence political and economic frameworks to their preferences, ensuring that they become richer still. But the billionaire mentions nothing in his essay about how and where extra money for both climate solutions and hardship alleviation could be located.

'His writing appears primarily as reconciliation with Donald Trump.' Gates photographed with the former president for business leaders in Washington DC.

Rich-Poor Dynamic

A clear connection exists between the economic hardship Gates professes to address and the wealth he fails to mention. In the US, housing insecurity is achieving unprecedented levels, and so is the percentage of resources held by the ultra-rich. Although this may not describe Gates' personal approach, by keeping pay low, driving up rental prices, weakening labor organizations and securing tax reductions and budget decreases, billionaires prosper while others experience hardship.

Research Findings

A notable research in Perspectives on Politics, among the very few to have penetrated this secretive world, found that billionaires maintain completely separate political opinions from the general population. The multimillionaires it interviewed, sharply different from average people, saw budget deficits as the most important of the issues it listed, and environmental collapse as unimportant. They were far more likely to insist that public retirement benefits and government medical care should be reduced, and significantly less prone to accept that jobless individuals deserve adequate living conditions, or that there should be stricter rules for petroleum corporations, banking entities and medical coverage companies. They were vehemently anti-taxation and redistribution.

Policy Impact

What opinions win out? The small elite or the vast population? Although the research occurred during the Obama administration, it found that billionaires maintained closer relationships with government figures than ordinary people. What about currently? The current reality seems obvious.

Missing Elements and Presumptions

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: reductions in the cost of new green technologies lead inexorably to environmental progress. Certainly, it's positive that clean technology prices are falling dramatically than conventional power. But Trump and similar demagogues are taking all possible actions to block the shift.

Partly as a result, fossil fuels remain highly lucrative. This could be why, despite Gates's claim that his foundation had divested all its "direct holdings in oil and gas companies" in 2019, its fossil fuel stock and bond holdings have, truly expanded.

Mental Aspects

For Gates, challenging billionaire influence might seem impossible. I don't mean only that it clashes with his worldview. I mean that, judging by his remarkable silences on the issue, he could genuinely find it impossible to consider. Perhaps this is a symptom of "billionaire brain": 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 obtaining enormous fortunes compares to cognitive damage. Fortunes seem to disturb particular brain operations, especially those involving compassion and viewpoint.

Strategic Considerations

Yet, political maneuvering could be present: his article seems designed as appeasement toward Trump. The former president clearly interpreted it this way: "We've defeated the climate change falsehood." Gates has confessed his total mistake. This demonstrated nerve, and we're thankful. MAGA!!!"

Background Information

Gates has historically been mistaken on climate matters, though not for the reasons Trump imagines. He has continually trailed scientific consensus, reciting fossil fuel claims (clean technology could decrease pollution only through enormous spending) significantly following their debunking. He has propagated misunderstanding and inaccuracies, including the unsupported claim in his recent writing that the objective of Sri Lanka's catastrophic restriction on artificial fertilizers aimed at pollution decrease.

Additional Tough Truths

Gates names his article Three Challenging Environmental Facts. So here's another tough truth he studiously ignores. If, as currently expected, essential environmental mechanisms pass turning points and rapidly fail, the impact on humanity, not to mention the existence of other species (a topic he fails, as usual, to mention), would destroy the smooth and steady progress he foresees. Given that climate alteration may not happen incrementally and steadily, but through sudden changes of state, 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, introduces in the face of systemic change a profound irrationality, {prompting us to ignore the greatest