Bill Gates has spent billions sounding the alarm about one issue.
But the Microsoft founder just shocked everyone.
And Bill Gates made one stunning reversal that left activists fuming.
Gates abandons his climate doomsday predictions after a decade of alarmism
Bill Gates released a 17-page memo that represents a dramatic U-turn from the message he’s been selling for years.¹
The billionaire who warned about climate disaster in his 2021 bestselling book now says the whole movement has it backwards.²
Gates wrote that “climate change will have serious consequences” but “will not lead to humanity’s demise.”³
That’s quite the change of tune from someone who built a climate empire on apocalyptic warnings.
For a decade, Gates has been one of the loudest voices pushing for radical action on emissions.
He founded Breakthrough Energy in 2015 and spent billions backing companies working on clean energy.⁴
Gates lobbied Congress to pass the Inflation Reduction Act’s climate provisions.⁵
His 2021 book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster” laid out an urgent case for reaching zero emissions.⁶
The Microsoft co-founder told the world back then that “climate change is already affecting most people’s lives” and dealing with it would require “unprecedented” scale and speed.⁷
Now? Gates is calling that same approach a mistake.
Climate activists get blindsided by Gates’s strategic retreat
The memo Gates released ahead of next month’s UN climate summit in Brazil pulls no punches about what he now thinks is wrong.⁸
Gates accused the climate community of having a “doomsday outlook” that focuses too much on cutting emissions in the short term.⁹
He argued that obsessing over temperature targets diverts money from the initiatives he claims actually helps people – fighting disease and poverty in poor countries.¹⁰
“Although climate change will have serious consequences – particularly for people in the poorest countries – it will not lead to humanity’s demise,” Gates wrote.¹¹
When asked to choose between eradicating malaria and letting temperatures rise by a tenth of a degree, Gates said he’d “let the temperature go up 0.1 degree to get rid of malaria.”¹²
The timing of Gates’s strategic pivot tells you everything you need to know about what’s really going on here.
Back in March, Breakthrough Energy laid off dozens of employees including its entire US policy team and European operations.¹³
Gates also announced plans to wind down the Gates Foundation, which has poured billions into climate projects.¹⁴
This all happened right after President Donald Trump took office and began dismantling the Biden administration’s climate agenda.
Gates even donated $50 million to Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign in 2024 before Trump’s victory.¹⁵
After Trump won and started cutting foreign aid budgets, Gates suddenly discovered that maybe the climate movement had been going about things all wrong.
Climate scientists aren’t buying Gates’s newfound moderation.
Jeffrey Sachs at Columbia University called Gates’s memo “pointless, vague, unhelpful and confusing.”¹⁶
“There is no greater threat to developing nations than the climate crisis,” said Michael Mann of Penn State. “He’s got this all backwards.”¹⁷
Princeton climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer questioned whether Gates’s human-first approach ignores what’s happening to the natural world.¹⁸
Gates insists he’s still committed to climate work and pointed to his continued investments in clean energy companies.
But when you cut your policy team, slash your grantmaking budget, and publish a memo saying everyone’s been doing it wrong, that looks less like commitment and more like strategic repositioning.
Gates told CNBC that pulling back on climate initiatives is a “huge disappointment,” while simultaneously releasing a memo explaining why that pullback makes sense.¹⁹
The man who spent years building a climate empire is now deconstructing his own legacy – and climate activists who trusted his leadership are left wondering what happened to the Bill Gates who wrote about avoiding disaster.
Of course, the reality is none of it was ever about the environment but controlling people.
Surely, Gates hasn’t given up on that so, one must ask what it is exactly he’s been eyeing as a better control mechanism for the global elites and how he’s evidently found it in “eradicating malaria.”
¹ David Gelles, “Bill Gates Says Climate Change ‘Will Not Lead to Humanity’s Demise,'” The New York Times, October 28, 2025.
² Ibid.
³ Ibid.
⁴ “Bill Gates calls for climate fight to shift focus from curbing emissions to reducing human suffering,” ABC News, October 28, 2025.
⁵ Heather Clancy, “The Bill Gates Era of Climate Giving Has Ended,” Heatmap News, March 12, 2025.
⁶ “Bill Gates calls for climate fight to shift focus from curbing emissions to reducing human suffering,” ABC News, October 28, 2025.
⁷ “Bill Gates softens ‘Climate Disaster’ approach,” CNBC, October 28, 2025.
⁸ David Gelles, “Bill Gates Says Climate Change ‘Will Not Lead to Humanity’s Demise,'” The New York Times, October 28, 2025.
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ Ibid.
¹¹ Ibid.
¹² “Bill Gates calls for climate fight to shift focus from curbing emissions to reducing human suffering,” ABC News, October 28, 2025.
¹³ Lisa Stiffler, “Report: Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy cuts climate policy team and partnership support,” GeekWire, March 12, 2025.
¹⁴ David Gelles, “Bill Gates Says Climate Change ‘Will Not Lead to Humanity’s Demise,'” The New York Times, October 28, 2025.
¹⁵ “Bill Gates softens ‘Climate Disaster’ approach,” CNBC, October 28, 2025.
¹⁶ “Bill Gates calls for ‘strategic pivot’ in climate change fight away from curbing emissions,” NBC News, October 28, 2025.
¹⁷ “Bill Gates makes a stunning claim about climate change,” CNN Business, October 28, 2025.
¹⁸ “Bill Gates calls for ‘strategic pivot’ in climate change fight away from curbing emissions,” NBC News, October 28, 2025.
¹⁹ “Bill Gates softens ‘Climate Disaster’ approach,” CNBC, October 28, 2025.
