From 'an existential crisis' to 'it would not be the end of civilization': Bill Gates creates a schism in environmentalism with his new stance on climate change

"There’s a doomsday view of climate change that goes like this," wrote Bill Gates:

"In a few decades, cataclysmic climate change will decimate civilization. The evidence is all around us—just look at all the heat waves and storms caused by rising global temperatures. Nothing matters more than limiting the rise in temperature."

Then he said, "fortunately for all of us, this view is wrong."

With that introduction in the last entry of his blog, the founder of Microsoft, a philanthropist who spent billions out of his own pocket on environmental causes, author of How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, opened a schism in the environmentalist camp.

And if there he awakened battle cries, in the opposite camp victory chants began to be heard.

Gates' turnaround

At conferences, with books and articles, donating millions, over the past two decades Gates was becoming one of the leading figures in climate change philanthropism.

Although the primary mission of his NGO Gates Foundation is to fight poverty and sickness, it also devotes resources to fighting climate change. In 2015, Gates founded Breakthrough Energy, a network of organizations dedicated to investing in climate change proposals.

"When we’re experiencing record-breaking temperatures, fires, floods, and other extreme weather events each week, it’s hard not to be disheartened," he wrote in an essay distributed by Breakthrough Energy two years ago. "When we think about the impact on our families and future generations, it can feel overwhelming."

In another blog from the same year he wrote: "Climate change is the hardest problem humanity has ever faced." And in one more, a year earlier: "There has never been a mobilization of this scope.. but humanity has also never faced an existential crisis like climate change."

Last March, perhaps in anticipation of this week's letter, Breakthrough Energy reportedly laid off dozens of employees. According to The New York Times, the first to reveal the cuts, "the change shows how Mr. Gates is retooling his empire for the Trump era."

Then came last week's article. Entitled "Three tough truths about climate," it is, in a nutshell, a call to redirect climate change aid toward poverty and health. In support of this, Gates takes aim at three climate change creeds:

Three "tough truths" that turned Gates from a general into a traitor to climate change environmentalism.

Victory cries and battle cries

"Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue," wrote Donald Trump this week, "I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax."

If the tone on Truth Social - and to a lesser extent X - can be summed up as celebratory, the opposite can be said of the progressive Bluesky: "Remember when Bill Gates got divorced because of his extremely close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein?" "The best thing Bill Gates ever did was marry Melissa Gates so she could take billions from him in a divorce to actually help humanity."

Among those voices was Dylan Spaulding, a member of the activist Union of Concerned Scientists: "Funny how its so easy to say this when you're a 70 year old white male worth more than $100 billion dollars."

Spaulding is also the author of two recent articles in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the organization behind Doomsday Clock that may well be the literal and graphic illustration of the "doomsday view" now denounced by Gates: "A design that warns the public about how close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making."

According to the Bulletin, "it is now 89 seconds to midnight."

"Here's the thing, Bill Gates: There is no 'patch' for the climate crisis. And there is no way to reboot the planet if you crash it," wrote Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists scholar Michael E. Mann. After accusing the billionaire of spreading "shopworn fossil fuel industry talking points," and cheered his side of the schism:

"The solution is going to have to come from everyone else, using every tool at our disposal to push back against an ecocidal agenda driven by plutocrats, polluters, petrostates, propagandists, and too often now, the press."

The shift was also noted by environmentalist media outlets with headlines such as Bill Gates is not a friend of the planet and Climate Change Kills A Person Every Minute, But Bill Gates Says It Won't Cause 'Humanity's Demise'.

Mass media quoted professors and activists condemning Gates' statements and also linked him to Hurricane Melissa:

For the moment, however, silence was heard from some of the best-known figures such as Greta Thunberg, refocused for months on Palestine, and the United Nations secretary-general, António Guterres.

Just a day earlier, Guterres warned of "devastating consequences" if the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C continued to be missed. (A statement dissonant with Gates' second truism: "Temperature is not the best way to measure our progress on climate.")

"We don't want to see the Amazon as a Sabana," Guterres said in an interview ahead of the COP30 Climate Summit next month. "But that is a real risk if we don't change course, and if we don't take a dramatic decrease of emissions as soon as possible." (Dissonant with Gates' first truism: "Climate change... will not be the end of civilization.")

In part, the impact of Gates' new stance will be measurable at the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference, to be held Nov. 10-21. The philanthropist repeatedly referred to the COP30 attendees, a mix of activists, academics and governors.

*Correction: A previous version of this article appeared to associate Dylan Spaulding with the assessment that “it is now 89 seconds to midnight.” That assessment belongs to the Doomsday Clock, not to Mr. Spaulding. Although he has authored articles for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, he is not affiliated with the organization.