Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates took a surprising shot at left-wing climate alarmists during an interview that aired last week, saying their attempts to radically change people’s behavior for the sake of the environment were not realistic.
Gates made the remarks while speaking to Bloomberg’s Zero podcast with host Akshat Rathi when he was asked by Rathi if a “revolution” was needed to address so-called “climate change.”
“I don’t think it’s realistic to say that people are utterly going to change their lifestyle because of concerns about climate,” Gates said. “You can have a cultural revolution where you’re trying to throw everything up, you can create a North Korean-type situation where the state’s in control. Other than immense central authority to have people just obey, I think the collective action problem is just completely not solvable.”
“Anyone who says that we will tell people to stop eating meat, or stop wanting to have a nice house, and we’ll just basically change human desires, I think that that’s too difficult,” Gates said. “You can make a case for it. But I don’t think it’s realistic for that to play an absolutely central role.”
“But just having a few rich countries, a few rich companies and a few rich individuals buy their way out so they can say they’re not part of the problem, that has nothing to do with solving the problem,” Gates added. “Those [remaining] two-thirds of emissions are pretty basic in terms of the calories and shelter and transport and goods being used. So, the excesses of the rich countries … even curbing those completely out of existence is not a solution to this problem.”
Gates later added that in order to combat “climate change” that people needed to not use the issue “as a moral crusade.”
“People who are in the climate space may not realize how many things are competing for the modest amount of increased resources that society has,” Gates said. “And that not that many people are prepared to be worse off because of climate requirements.”
Gates spoke to the Podcast back in August before the Democrats’ climate legislation, which was billed as a plan to fight inflation, was signed into law.
The release of the podcast episode comes as Florida just endured last week one of the most powerful Category 4 hurricanes to ever hit the United States — which has left dozens dead and caused many billions of dollars in damage.
