Instead, Gates argues, the world’s philanthropists must increase their investment in other efforts aimed at preventing disease and hunger.
Climate change is not going to wipe out humanity, he argued, and past efforts that strive for achieving zero carbon emissions have made real progress. But Gates said that past investments fighting climate change have been misplaced, and too much good money has been put into expensive and questionable efforts.
Although Gates said investment to battle climate change must continue, he argued that President Donald Trump’s cuts to USAID threaten a more urgent problem, inflicting potentially lasting global damage to the fight against famine and life-threatening preventable sickness.
“Climate change, disease, and poverty are all major problems,” Gates wrote. “We should deal with them in proportion to the suffering they cause.”
The Trump administration’s funding cuts, Gates argues, necessitate an immediate and larger focus on investment and resources to support those abandoned efforts.
“Although climate change will have serious consequences – particularly for people in the poorest countries – it will not lead to humanity’s demise,” Gates wrote. “This is a chance to refocus on the metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change: improving lives. Our chief goal should be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions who live in the world’s poorest countries.”
Bill…what happens when the oceans acidify to the point that they stop producing oxygen? 98% of the oxygen in the world is produced by the ocean, Bill. As it stands currently, roughly 1/3 of all calories consumed on Earth are produced from petroleum derived nitrogen, much of which further pollutes the ocean due to agricultural runoff into the oceans, causing a cascading problem of worsening the acidifation of the oceans.
Climate Change will not only kill off all humans, but anything that relies on oxygen to breath…Bill. You might want to reword your statements to be more realistic like, “We might as well do right by our fellow man in our final moments and feed those who are worse off than us. At least we can provide this small comfort in our final moments.”
But we all know you’re not going to say that Bill.