Billionaire philanthropist and tech entrepreneur Bill Gates is pressing the global community to shift its focus in the climate response from narrowly aiming at temperature or emission targets to prioritizing improvements in human health and wellbeing.
In a blog post published just ahead of the COP30 climate summit, Gates argued that while climate change remains a serious challenge — particularly for poor countries — it will not bring about humanity’s end, and it is time to emphasise the “metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change: improving lives.”
Gates wrote that the “doom-and-gloom view” which dominates much climate discourse has caused resources to be steered toward near-term carbon-cut goals and away from interventions that may do more immediate good.
He warned that this misdirection may hamper efforts to deliver the greatest impact for the most vulnerable.
According to Gates, one unacceptable trade-off is between disease prevention and a fractional increase in warming.
He said that if offered the choice between eradicating malaria and allowing a 0.1 °C rise in global temperature, he would opt for eliminating malaria.
“If you said to me, ‘Hey, what about 0.1 degrees versus malaria eradication?’ I’ll let the temperature go up 0.1 degree to get rid of malaria. People don’t understand the suffering that exists today.”
He recalled that the global share of funds for helping low-income countries is shrinking — noting for instance that the vaccine-buying fund Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance will have 25% less money over the next five years compared to the previous period.
That, he says, makes it all the more essential to spend aid money in ways that generate the greatest human benefit.
In his view, innovation and technological breakthroughs remain vital — via his investment vehicle Breakthrough Energy, which he says has supported more than 150 companies working on clean-energy technologies.
But he emphasised that the core goal must shift toward whose lives are improved and saved.
Gates outlined three “tough truths”:
- Even with moderate action, the world is likely heading toward a 2 °C to 3 °C average temperature rise by 2100, higher than the 1.5 °C target.
- Energy demand will more than double by 2050, and although renewables have progressed, the world is still lacking key technologies at scale.
- With finite resources and shrinking aid budgets, we must apply rigorous data-driven analysis to allocate funds where they produce the greatest human welfare returns.
Gates’ stance has drawn pushback from some climate scientists and advocates who argue that focusing less on emissions now could lead to more severe climate impacts later, which in turn worsen poverty, disease and other human-welfare issues.
President Trump praised Gates on Wednesday, posting the following on Truth Social:
He wrote that a re-orientation from “just climate” to climate-plus-health-and-development might steer global efforts toward better outcomes for the most vulnerable.
“Climate change, disease, and poverty are all major problems. We should deal with them in proportion to the suffering they cause,” Gates concluded.