Bill Gates calls out 'doomsday' view of climate change in memo

Bloomberg News, Bloomberg News on Oct 28, 2025

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Bill Gates, the billionaire philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft Corp., says it’s time to adopt a more measured tone when addressing climate change and the threat it poses to the world.

In a memo published on Tuesday, he called out what he characterized as a “doomsday view of climate change.”

According to Gates, who has long stood out as a vocal defender of the need to fight global warming, prioritizing the fight against rising temperatures above all else means that issues such as human health and equality risk being overshadowed.

“Climate change is serious, but we’ve made great progress,” he said in the memo. “We need to keep backing the breakthroughs that will help the world reach zero emissions. But we can’t cut funding for health and development — programs that help people stay resilient in the face of climate change — to do it.”

The upshot, Gates says, is that it’s now “time to put human welfare at the center of our climate strategies, which includes reducing the green premium to zero and improving agriculture and health in poor countries.”

Gates, who this year laid off some staff at his climate group, Breakthrough Energy, warned that the doomsday outlook has led climate advocates to focus too narrowly on near-term emissions goals, diverting resources away from more effective solutions to improve life on a hotter planet. He said the United Nations climate summit starting in Brazil next month, COP30, should seek to focus on how best to adapt to reality and ensure human welfare is a priority.

“This is a chance to refocus on the metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change: improving lives,” Gates said. “COP30 is taking place at a time when it’s especially important to get the most value out of every dollar spent on helping the poorest.”

The billionaire said he’s aware his comments will draw criticism from some climate advocates, and underlined his concern that he still acknowledges that climate change “needs to be solved.” He also said his view on the matter has been informed by his work with the Gates Foundation, whose top priority is health and development in poor countries.

“Sometimes the world acts as if any effort to fight climate change is as worthwhile as any other,” Gates said. “As a result, less-effective projects are diverting money and attention from efforts that will have more impact on the human condition: namely, making it affordable to eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions and reducing extreme poverty with improvements in agriculture and health.”