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LWe must address the central dilemma: Bill Gates is a politics denier. Though he came to it late, he now recognizes environmental science. But he operates in blatant, cringeworthy denial about how politics works. His new piece on climate, released recently, approaches climate change without political context. He composes text ignoring political influence, and no such thing as billionaires.

Primary Argument

His key position states that money is insufficient, so the representatives at the environmental conference in Brazil should redirect resources from "near-term emissions goals" towards climate "adaptation" and investing in poverty reduction and healthcare.

Admittedly, resources for positive initiatives are insufficient, but that's not because of some natural law, some implacable truth about human society. This results from wealthy interests attacking on benign state spending, causing the dismantling of aid agencies and severe reductions in assistance funding of various states. Austerity is a political choice. The choice to implement it comes from authorities yielding to the demands of the ultra-rich.

Available Resources

There are truckloads of money available. Just after Gates published his new missive, research showed that the total wealth of America's wealthiest ten individuals increased by nearly $700 billion over the last year. This amount by itself, the growth in ten individuals' fortunes, is approximately ten times the money needed each year to stop deep deprivation worldwide. What methods enabled such concentration of economic resources into private hands? And why can't we get it back through effective taxation? The solution lies in their conversion of financial influence into governmental control. As their wealth increases, the stronger their capacity to shape the state and economic system 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 environmental measures and economic assistance could be identified.

'His writing appears primarily as reconciliation with Donald Trump.' The billionaire alongside Trump at an exclusive meal for industry figures in Washington.

The Poverty-Wealth Connection

There's a direct link between the poverty Gates claims to care so much about and the riches he overlooks. 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 suppressing salaries, increasing housing costs, weakening labor organizations and winning tax and spending cuts, the ultra-rich thrive on impoverishing other people.

Study Results

A notable research in political science publications, among limited studies accessing this exclusive domain, found that the ultra-rich have radically different political views from the great majority. The wealthy respondents in the study, sharply different from average people, saw budget deficits as the most important of the issues it listed, and ecological crisis as insignificant. They were far more likely to insist that public retirement benefits and government medical care should be reduced, and far less likely to believe that unemployed people merit reasonable生活质量, or that there should be increased oversight of energy firms, financial institutions and insurance providers. They were fiercely opposed to redistribution.

Governmental Access

So whose views prevail? The small elite or the vast population? Though the study was conducted in the Obama years, it found that the very rich had far more access to politicians and officials than regular individuals. How about today? The situation hardly requires explanation.

Missing Elements and Presumptions

This represents another significant omission in Gates' writing: across extensive text, the former president receives no reference. Should the billionaire address this, he'd have to admit that another key premise is questionable: reductions in the cost of new green technologies lead inexorably to environmental progress. Of course it helps that wind, solar and other green technologies are becoming radically cheaper than traditional energy sources. But Trump and like-minded politicians are doing everything they can to impede the transition.

Partly as a result, traditional energy sources stay very profitable. This potentially clarifies why, notwithstanding Gates' assertion about eliminating petroleum company stocks in 2019, its oil and gas financial assets have, in fact, increased.

Psychological Factors

Regarding Gates, confronting extreme wealth power could appear inconceivable. 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. This might indicate "wealth-induced cognitive distortion": a profound incapacity to see the world from other people's point of view. While the ultra-rich are notoriously hard to study, inferring from investigations about money's effect on mental processes could suggest that obtaining enormous fortunes compares to cognitive damage. Fortunes seem to disturb particular brain operations, notably those concerning understanding and outlook.

Tactical Elements

Yet, political maneuvering could be present: his writing appears primarily as reconciliation with the former president. Trump definitely understood it as such: "I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue. This demonstrated nerve, and we're thankful. MAGA!!!"

Historical Context

Gates has always been completely WRONG on climate matters, although not for Trump's stated reasons. He has repeatedly been behind current understanding, echoing petroleum industry talking points (clean technology could decrease pollution only through enormous spending) well after their refutation. 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. Should, as appears probable, vital planetary systems reach critical thresholds and rapidly fail, the consequences for people, let alone the survival of other life forms (a topic he fails, as usual, to mention), would eliminate the gradual advancement he predicts. Since ecological transformation probably won't occur slowly and predictably, but through sudden changes of state, the conceivable consequences for people's quality of life are nearly impossible to anticipate. His argument that we should align all funding to current "data-based analysis" of improvements in human welfare, although it may appear reasonable, introduces in the face of systemic change a profound irrationality, {prompting us to ignore the greatest