Bill Gates Gave a Gift to Climate Deniers

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00:00Has Bill Gates turned into a climate denier? Not quite. But he's made a lot of climate deniers

00:04very happy this week by declaring that climate change isn't a big deal. It's a huge turnaround

00:09from what the billionaire was saying just four years ago when he published his book.

00:12Back then, he warned that heating would kill the coral reefs, forests, and beaches,

00:16acidify the oceans, and turn hundreds of millions of people into climate refugees.

00:20Now he's saying political leaders should stop worrying so much about global temperature rise

00:24and focus on things like health and agriculture. He bases this in part on the fact that the Trump

00:29administration has cut off USAID funding, causing a health and food crisis in poor countries.

00:33With only so many dollars to go around, we've got to save what lives we can now.

00:37It's hard to disagree, but Gates goes a step too far by arguing there's a trade-off between that

00:43and slowing down climate change. He's basically saying we should choose adapting to a hotter

00:47planet over stopping the planet from getting much hotter. The problem is that the planet has already

00:52heated up a lot, and that is already causing problems. Droughts, fires, floods, heat waves,

00:57and massive hurricanes like Melissa are making it harder to live, work, and farm. Rising heat is

01:03causing disease-carrying mosquitoes to spread around the world. Fighting climate change can't

01:07be separated from fighting poverty, famine, and poor health. Like the office meme, they're the same

01:12picture. Gates says climate change won't end humanity, but that's not the reassuring message he

01:17seems to think it is. A lot of human suffering can happen long before humanity comes close to going

01:22extinct. Gates is still spending some of his riches on fighting climate change, but his note sounds like he's

01:27quiet quitting the fight, or at least encouraging governments that are on the fence to do so. We

01:31don't have to listen to him. In fact, it's a mistake we can't afford to make.