Bill Gates pushes UN climate action to focus on poverty & healthcare instead of global temperature

Bill Gates has published a memo addressed to "everyone at COP30", calling them to "prioritise the things that have the greatest impact on human welfare".

Improving lives as the most important metric

The Oct. 28 memo called for a pivot in how global climate-policy is framed and resourced, especially since it's critical to "get the most value out of every dollar spent on helping the poorest".

The billionaire philanthropist argued that improving lives should be the most important metric, rather than indicators like global temperature.

He wrote:

"The global temperature doesn’t tell us anything about the quality of people’s lives. If droughts kill your crops, can you still afford food? When there’s an extreme heat wave, can you go somewhere with air conditioning? When a flood causes a disease outbreak, can the local health clinic treat everyone who’s sick?"

Climate change, along with disease and poverty, are major problems, the 70-year-old clarified.

But they should be dealt "in proportion to the suffering they cause".

Instead, he advocated for spending on agricultural innovations and healthcare.

This is because most poor countries are agrarian economies, and what impacts farmers greatly is crop resilience and resilient infrastructure to better cope with natural disasters.

As for vaccines, they are the "undisputed champion of lives saved per dollar spent", he wrote.

Trade-offs

While climate change is an important problem, Gates said it needed to be solved alongside other pressing issues like malaria and malnutrition, Financial Times reported.

Speaking to reporters, Gates was quoted as saying that he would rather choose a 0.1 degree increase in temperature if that meant getting rid of malaria.

Gates argued that past investments fighting climate change have been misplaced, and too much good money has been put into expensive and questionable efforts.

Trade-offs have to be made in order to deliver the most benefit with limited resources, he said.

And for every effort in the climate agenda, Gates added that he believes that it should be "prioritised by its ability to save and improve lives cost-effectively".

How was memo received?

His memo has been characterised as a "stunning claim about climate change", as well as a rejection of the "doomsday" view of climate change.

However, it was also recognised as possibly "shaking up" climate policy.

Top photo via Bill Gates/Facebook, Canva.