Bill Gates’s Climate Hysteria

By David Harsanyi

Tuesday, February 16, 2021

 

This past Sunday, Bill Gates (net worth, $133 billion) and Anderson Cooper ($110 million) got together on 60 Minutes to discuss the numerous sacrifices Americans will be expected to make to avert an imminent climate catastrophe.

 

First, we should refrain from referring to these sorts of conversations as “journalism,” since Cooper never challenges any of Gates’s wild predictions nor displays even a hint of professional skepticism regarding the subject matter. Cooper simply cues up the next talking point like a host of an in-house corporate video.

 

Gates, who has a new book out called “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,” told Cooper that he believes that climate change “is the toughest challenge humanity has ever faced,” and wealthy nations — not China or India, one assumes — must get to zero carbon emissions by 2050 or the world is basically kaput. Not 40 percent. Not five. Zero. Elsewhere in the interview, Gates called for a nationalistic “all-out effort, you know, like a world war, but it’s us against greenhouse gases.”

 

Americans use over 20 million barrels of petroleum products every day — now more abundant and easier to extract than ever before — so, unless some completely new technology emerges, it will take a fascistic technocracy to win this conflict. Now, I don’t use “fascistic” lightly here. Nor am I suggesting that Gates envisions goose-stepping Gestapo agents banging on your door every time you set the air conditioner below 75 degrees. And, anyway, what kind of monster would own an air conditioner with an extinction-level threat hanging over humanity? He does, however, envision the state dictating virtually every decision made by industry that relates to carbon emissions — which is to say the entire economy. If there is a more precise phrase that describes a state-controlled economy that directs both private and public ownership over the means of production during wartime, I will be happy to use it.

 

Of course, if Gates is interested in fighting a war against carbon dioxide from his 66,000 square foot home, that’s his business. I hope he invests heavily in new energy technologies — in addition to his private-jet company — because the ones we have now are hopelessly inadequate to the task of attaining the future he envisions, not to mention prohibitively expensive for the average person who bears the costs of the artificial scarcity.

 

During cold weather this week, energy prices spiked in Texas and other states, and millions faced rolling blackouts — already the norm in California — partly because significant fossil-fuel-generation capacity has been surrendered to unreliable wind and solar alternatives. It’s not just cost, it’s reliability.

 

That said, Gates’s book is most interesting when he is proposing ideas. Some seem silly and needless, but others such as carbon capture, thermal storage, cheap hydrogen, and next-generation nuclear plants are compelling enough. Even I — a self-professed troglodyte and genuine fan of fossil fuels — would be happy to switch it up once other affordable and reliable sources emerge.

 

But while Gates is far more honest about the tradeoffs of decarbonization than others, like most climate warriors, he still relies heavily on fearmongering and dire predictions to make those costs appear palatable.

 

Gates, for instance, told Cooper that “the Syrian War was a twentieth of what climate migration will look like.” (Is “a twentieth of the Syrian War” a scientific calculation?) In his book, he claims that in “the worst drought ever recorded in Syria — which lasted from 2007 to 2010 — some 1.5 million people left farming areas for the cities” and set the stage “for the armed conflict that started in 2011.”

 

The climate crisis has been ongoing for decades, we’re told, yet Gates is reduced to talking about Syria — whose conflict environmentalists blame on climate change, and others of us blame on sectarian violence, ISIS, and Baathist strongmen — because so few wars are fought over resources anymore. While Gates has been warning about the climate crisis, millions of people worldwide have secured regular access to food and water for the first time. Whereas the natural elements once regularly killed many Americans, since 1980, all death caused by natural disasters and heat and cold is well under 0.5 percent of the total. Deaths due to climate events have plummeted. Extreme global poverty has plummeted. State-based conflicts have plummeted. Air pollution has plummeted and deaths from air pollution have plummeted. When the state of the earth is improving in almost every quantifiable way, alarmists are compelled to rely on prophecies that have not only been notoriously wrong but rarely take into account human adaptability.

 

“How might climate change affect you and your family?” Gates rhetorically asks in his book. Every situation he offers as a reason for concern would almost surely be worse without affordable energy. Gates, for example, argues that rainfall has become less predictable for farmers. Some years they have 22 inches. Other years, 29. In the past, rainfall was apparently the same every year. Gates cobbles together a few stories about farmers struggling with this problem. Our very food is at risk, he warns. “It may sound as if I’m cherry-picking the most extreme example, but things like this are already happening,” Gates concedes, “especially to poor farmers, and in a few decades they could be happening to far more people.”

 

Yes, Gates cherry-picks throughout the book. American farming yields have dramatically increased because of technological efficiencies. Farmers have adapted to recent climate variations, as they’ve been doing for thousands of years. Food is now far more affordable, “especially” for the poor. Gates’s ideas would threaten this reality far more than climate change would.

 

Gates underplays just how difficult it will be to replace all of our cement and steel infrastructure with high-tech versions. Or how difficult it will be to replace all of our heating and air systems. Or how difficult it will be to move the country toward synthetic beef. “You can get used to the taste difference,” Gates assures us.

 

At one point, Gates mentions a study that finds that a 90 to 95 percent decarbonizing of the European power grid is expected to “cause average rates to go up about 20 percent.” Well, a 20 percent hike on your energy bills would damage the economy enough. That cost will also be borne by consumers of . . . everything. Unsaid is the fact that countries such as Germany, without a 90 percent decarbonizing, already have the highest electricity prices per household in the world, followed by Denmark, Portugal, and Belgium. In fact, eight of the world’s top ten priciest energy markets can be found in Europe. The difference between what Americans and Europeans pay for energy is huge. Germany is making deals with Russia to build a natural-gas pipeline, not another solar farm. And good luck getting Americans to pay eight bucks a gallon for gas.

 

Here’s what Gates should also be asking: “How have fossil fuels affected American families?” The answer is: They have made their lives better in incalculable ways. And while there are some negative externalities associated with fossil fuels, we have mitigated many of them. He should ask: “Is it worth intentionally creating great economic hardship for America and upturning modernity every year for the next 30 years?” Because that is the only way we get to zero carbon emissions in 30 years.