Bill Gates & Climate Change: Why His Latest Comments Shocked the Climate Community

0:00 Billionaire Bill Gates says The world is too focused on cutting carbon emissions and not focused enough on helping people who are starving or sick. His argument. If people are fighting to survive, they won't care about climate change. But here's the twist. Many climate justice organizations have been saying this the exact same thing for decades. So why is it only now making headlines now that Bill Gates said it? We're gonna discuss that on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. Let's start the show. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live or a better ocean by taking action.

0:44 On today's episode, we're gonna be talking about a blog post that Bill Gates put up that is making the rounds along social media and other places that are commentating on it because it's a bit of a surprising approach or surprising article, but not surprising, in general. So essentially what we're looking at today is like really who gets to shape the global climate conversation? Right. That's really what we're looking at today and why the framing of this conversation matters. That's what we're gonna be talking about. So it's like, is Bill Gates actually helping this conversation by putting his blog post forward? Or is he hijacking a message that's been championed by activists and scientists for years? That's what we're gonna dive into today. I think it's something that we need to kind of look at because when I heard this online, I actually heard it on, Dylan.

1:30 I think a Dylan Page is a TikTok or who brings her along news. If you don't follow him, follow him on TikTok or Instagram. And I think he does a YouTube show too. He's really interesting 'cause he covers a lot of news that we don't normally see. I thought that's pretty interesting. He talks a lot about this blog post or this editorial piece that, Bill Gates put on his website that's making the rounds and essentially it kind of frames into his recent essay, I guess if you want to call it The Three Truths About Climate. He notes three things and we're gonna talk about that. So Gates argues that the doomsday narrative is wrong. Climate change is serious, but it's not the end of humanity, which could be arguable, I guess. he says that the world should focus less on carbon targets and more on improving lives, addressing hunger, disease and poverty first.

2:10 And then, for the last point of the quote, for the poorest people, climate change is not the only or even the biggest threat to their lives. So now I wanted to just say. Yes. Bill Gates is a billionaire. Yes. He, does a lot of charity to champion bringing the health of people around the world up. not to suppress it, but to bring it up. He's got a charity that does that. I know it can be controversial to talk about that, so I'm not gonna talk about the politics about that. But he's got a foundation that invests heavily in, renewable startups, so green energy, clean technology, startups. It's interesting to see him take a tank like this. Now, it caused a stir because. It surprised people to be like, Hey, wait a minute.

2:52 You talked about climate change before that we need to address it. and so like, what are you really talking about here? Some praised him for what he's doing. He is saying, yeah, we actually have to look at it more of a realistic kind of way. And then others are like, well, hold on a second. You're downplaying the mitigation and you're creating like a false choice between saving people's lives and saving the planet. Later. So saving people's eyes first, and then we will save the planet later. We can do both, I think is what a lot of people are saying. The press kind of, frames it a different way. So the AP News Associated Press says it's a pivot toward reducing human suffering, which is interesting. The guardian says, Gates says climate crisis won't cause humanity's demise. That's interesting. And then business insiders said, pushing back on Doomsday climate views, what this essay does.

3:36 So that's kind of like an interesting thing, right? But here's the thing, this is not new, this is new for Bill Gates and maybe he's been saying it for a long time. And finally put it down on paper to make the news rounds. 'cause we know that once Bill Gates speaks, people will listen. Whether you like it or not, people will listen. And to be honest, like I am little bit here and there with him. I like his charitable work that he does. I think it's really great that, you know, a billionaire does this kind of stuff, but he's also a billionaire that wants to keep his money. As an aside, story, he was on the Colbert, show, I guess the late night with Stephen Colbert. And, Colbert asked him, he's like, well, why don't you just give up? What do you need with like. A hundred billion dollars and he's like, why don't you just give like 99 billion away? And Bill Gates basically responded, well, I wanna keep that.

4:18 Why can't I keep that and do whatever I want with that money? And look, he's got a point, it's his money. He made the money. Some people say not very well, like, and he kind of played with some ethics as he got up there with Microsoft and so forth. and I'm not gonna go into that. It is what it is. It's a business thing. And that's what business people do, it seems like. People are kind of like, he deserves to do whatever he wants to do. Is it ethical? I don't know. Does he really need it? Probably not. I'm sure he can survive fine and be fine with $1 billion, but he wants to have control of what charity he wants to do. Put together, and he wants control of his money, so he got control of his money and that's what he kept it. So it's like a little bit like it's, yeah, I get what you're saying, but you could do a lot more with your money. But like, who am I to tell what people to do with their money?

4:58 Like really, you vote for what you want and you put money where your mouth is. And so he does that with charitable stuff and I guess it is the way it is. But regardless, what he's saying isn't really new. This has been going on with the climate adjusted movement, have said for decades They can't fight climate change if they're hungry, sick, or impoverished. That's really what has come down to one of the biggest examples of that is Cancer Alley in the US. There's a impoverished neighborhood that is situated right beside a number of oil refineries. So essentially all that pollution for years has come over to that neighborhood. They've suffered because of it. Early death, cancer, a number of different diseases that could be caused by emissions and stuff like that, that have come out, like pollution that's come out of those refineries.

5:42 These are not great refineries over the years, especially like in the seventies, eighties, nineties, and so forth. They have suffered because of it. They can't worry about climate change. They can't be like, oh, the world is heating up when their uncles, their aunts, their parents, their children are dying early because of the inhalation of gases and metals and so forth that are coming from these refineries. And they don't have any money to get outta, they can't pay for the medical bills, and so there's a lot of problems that are going on in their lives that they need to be fixed right away. This has been going on for a long time. Documentaries were made about these types of situations not only for this cancer alley situation, but for other places as well.

6:24 Climate change action does mean addressing inequality and giving power to communities most affected by climate impacts. That's what it means. So why is that when Bill Gates says it, it's a choice. It's not a choice is Yes. Let's bring up communities to make sure that one, they can survive. They are healthy, they can eat. They can make money. And then let's have that community start to talk about climate change. But other communities like my community and other communities around the world can still do stuff about climate change. And there still needs to be policies that need to do climate change. People will take what Bill Gates says, especially people in power now, and it'd be like, oh, we don't need to make a big thing about climate change.

7:10 Sure, we need to solve it at some point. We'll do that later. Let's just make sure everybody can eat. And let's be honest, another story is like this past US election. The Democratic party who lost badly we're talking about things that, people who are hungry and poor not necessarily care about right now, but can't really focus on right now. Abortion, equality, like all that kind of stuff seemed, according to the votes, not to matter. What they wanted to do was be able to have a job and be able to pay for the groceries. Those were the big things that people voted for. And now President Trump promised that whether he's gonna give it to him or not, we don't know. But that's what he promised him. People voted for that because they were starving. They couldn't afford groceries.

7:51 They needed that to change. That's what he ran on. That's the campaign that he ran and promise. Whereas the Democrats they kind of ran on it, but not really the focus. A lot of the times of the news was like, abortion, human rights, things like that, which are very important. But when you're starving, you just want to eat. You have these differences in like choices, making choices of Hey, I need to survive. I need the basic freedoms of life. I can take care of my family, I can eat, I can make money. And then you worry about climate change. You have those communities worry about climate change once they reach that point. So yes, you have to make sure that those communities, the people can actually be uplifted into this sector where we're talking about climate change and addressing climate change. But it doesn't mean we ignore it.

8:32 It doesn't mean we don't focus on it. It doesn't mean we don't put policies to put together. And I think that's a big thing. And it's something that we need to really ask. The question here is now like, what's the ramifications of the blog post really that Bill Gates put up. really, who gets to aside the global climate priorities? Scientists, governments, activists, or billionaires? Who gets to decide that type of thing, like all of a sudden. This billionaire says, Hey, you know what? People are starving. Did you know that people are starving? They've been working on that. His charity has been working on that for decades. People are starving, people are unhealthy, they're sick. They need food, and they need money, so let's give them that. Then we'll worry about climate change, but yeah, we know that.

9:13 So we're doing both. That's really what it comes down here. What's interesting is that when a person like Bill Gates speaks, he gets the national attention, the international attention, especially like case in point where all these, like the guardians covering 'em, the AP news is covering them. That's the big thing And let's be honest, like climate justice is becoming more mainstream now that more and more people are talking about. But when other organizations that have been talking about it for decades were saying it, they're like, no, you're just, being DEI, you're doing this, you're doing that. It's not really what we need. They've been pushed down. Small island nations and indigenous leaders have long connected human survival and climate action like that's been talked about all the time. For the last li at least, maybe four, there's been like an ocean justice conference that happens every oceans week.

9:59 And the reason why it started is because and this is in the us, the regular Oceans Week like CHOW, like Capitol Hill Oceans week wouldn't cover ocean justice type topics. The powers that be like the people who are really dealing with this. The organizations decide to do their own conference during Ocean's Week because it was important to talk about ocean justice during Ocean's Week, which included climate. It's a weird concept for me. Now, there could be benefits. There could be benefits of Bill Gates talking about this, and now that it's made national and international media and the attention is on what he's saying, then maybe people realize that we need to do both. But unfortunately, what could be misinterpreted is the fact that, hey, you know what?

10:42 Let's just go back to making sure people are good with food and money, and then we'll worry about climate change later, but we can't afford that. We're hitting tipping points. We're seeing industries go down. We're seeing major storms that have never been seen before on islands like Jamaica and Cuba and Turks and Caicos, and maybe even Bahamas of Bermuda, where you're having category five hurricanes that go from a two to a five within a day because the oceans are so warm. And they're rapidly increasing in the category levels of these hurricanes. The hurricane, Melissa, that hit Jamaica recently got up to 185 miles an hour. On an island like Jamaica that already struggles for infrastructure and so forth the airports were completely wiped out.

11:23 The homes were completely wiped out, and the people who are down there vacationing at the resorts, many of them were worried more about their luxurious resort and getting a buffet than they cared about the fact that people that lived on the island still went to the resorts to make sure that their customers, the tourists were gonna be okay, even though they probably didn't have a home to go to when they got back, let alone food. And they were complaining that they were getting bagged lunches instead of a buffet. Like ridiculous. Like just the priorities of people and not understanding the effects of climate change on people, that it's gonna affect whether people get sick, are impoverished, get their homes ripped apart by major hurricanes. That all has to do with climate change.

12:04 It's making it everything worse. So we have to do both. We have to make sure that people are okay, and we also have to make sure that we reduce emissions so that climate change isn't going to make things worse for the people who are most vulnerable, especially on small island communities like Jamaica, like Cuba, Like Bermuda, like Bahamas and other places around the world. We've seen this shift over the last 10 years in marine science, in marine conservation, and it's been a slow shift and there's been resistance, but it's been better where conservation organizations are going to communities and asking, do you need our help? And if so, how can we help? What are your priorities? What are you trying to do? To make sure that that community is okay?

12:45 Vulnerable communities, small island communities, fishing villages and so forth. And we're seeing that on land too. We're seeing it with climate, making sure that people are okay. This has been going on for a long time. So while all of a sudden does a billionaire write something and all of a sudden it's like, Hey, we need to make sure people are okay. Let's not worry about climate change so much. Like I'm seeing a lot of people who are sick. Yes, we see this all the time. We know this is happening, It's just like blind ignorance. It's almost like, Seaspiracy, remember the movie Seaspiracy that Netflix puts on. The first five minutes. The guy, the producer who did the movie, which is a horrible movie, by the way, a horrible documentary. All of a sudden says, Hey, this is what I discovered. This is what I discovered. I love the ocean. I love being around the ocean, but when I'm around the ocean, I discovered that there's marine pollution.

13:28 I discovered that there's overfishing and that the oceans are not healthy anymore. I'm gonna go and I'm gonna find out what the problem is. And because he didn't know a lot about just ocean conservation in general. 'cause he hadn't really talked to a lot of people. He targets the wrong people. He targets the organizations that are doing their best to try and get stuff done and puts a target on their back so that people get mad at them instead of looking at the real problems and avoids all the problems. And it's like this white savior syndrome that we keep seeing. We have to listen to communities, but we have to go into those communities. We have to understand. Talk to the people who have gone into the communities. If you can't go to this communities, like I can't go to the communities.

14:08 I don't have the money to travel around the world and do all this kind of stuff. But I listen to people who have done the work before through this podcast and understand that it's a lot more complex. That's what we always say like, climate change reduction and climate action is really complex to do because there are people who are suffering from other things. And if we take away those other things, then they can focus more on climate change. But we can still have people focus on climate change. That's really the whole point of this episode. Focus on both. And don't just wait for a billionaire to be like, oh, by the way, we should just do one or the other. No, no, no. Both. I don't know if he meant it like this or not, but it's definitely being misinterpreted, which is just like what happens every time we do anything nowadays, even this episode might be misinterpreted.

14:52 I don't know. But we have to be careful in how we frame the conversation around climate and who frames that conversation and how much influence they have. Like, yes. Bill Gates is not a climate scientist. He's not an oceanographer, he's not a marine biologist. He is a billionaire that did really well. He's got a lot of influence. He knows charitable strategic thinking and actions and I get that. And he's got influence 'cause he's got a lot of money. He's been on a lot of platforms. He's been part of a lot of conversations with government officials from all over the world, and I understand that, but they're not always right. And I think instead of just coming out and saying we have to do one or the other, maybe start to think and talk to people who are doing the work and know a little bit more, but it just sounds like he doesn't know a little bit more.

15:33 I don't wanna say that 'cause I don't wanna seem mean, but it sounds like he just doesn't know a lot of it, what's happening. And I think that's something he really needs to do. So that's sort of what I'm saying here. This is something that we need to focus more on. We need to be careful in how we choose our words. We need to be careful of what we publish. And we need to speak to more people within the conservation world to say, Hey, what are you guys doing? What have you been doing for a while? Or at least acknowledge that it's been done. Don't just take the credit. It seems like he's just going, Hey, I just discovered something. We need to do this. You need to listen to me. So I'd love to hear your opinion on this. Let me know in the comments below if you're watching this on YouTube. If you're listening to this episode on your favorite podcast app, please let me know what you think. Hit me up on Instagram at how to protect the Ocean That's At How to Protect the Ocean, or Go to speak up for blue.com/contact.

16:16 Just fill out the form. It'll go to my personal email. I'd be happy to answer back as soon as possible. Thank you so much for joining me and listening every time. I really hope you got a lot out of this. I'd love to hear your ideas. Let me know what you think. And I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host Andrew Lewin, from the true nor strong and free Go Blue Jays, but this will probably be out, so hopefully. We'll be world Series champions by the time you listen to this 'cause it'll be over by then. But go Blue Jays and thank you so much for joining us. Have a great day and happy conservation.