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A few days ago Bill Gates spoke again about climate change, and he did so with a different tone. In a recent text, he argued that the environmental crisis is “a very important problem”, but that “it will not lead to the end of civilization”, because “emissions projections have decreased and, with the right policies and investments, innovation will allow us to reduce emissions much more”. His message, rather than a resignation, was an invitation to change focus: stop thinking about climate action only in terms of temperature and emissions, and focus on something more immediate and human, such as reducing suffering and improving the lives of people who are already affected by it.
The comment unleashed a wave of opportunistic interpretations. The denialist right celebrated it as an ideological victory. Donald Trump, true to form, used it as proof that his skepticism was justified and repeated that climate change is a “scam.” But that reading is, as often happens, a manipulation. Gates does not deny the existence of the problem or the need for action. What he proposes, in reality, is a moral adjustment: if we can no longer avoid all impacts, we must direct efforts towards protecting those who suffer the most.
This distinction is crucial. For years, the climate debate has focused on goals such as not increasing temperatures above 1.5°C, achieving net-zero emissions or reaching carbon neutrality. But as the numbers were discussed at international conferences, the effects of warming were already being felt in places where global decisions rarely reach: displaced communities, lost crops, parched lands, worsened diseases, more expensive food. The climate crisis has ceased to be a future threat and has become an everyday experience.
In this context, the idea that the objective cannot be limited to thermometer control is not only reasonable, but is entirely in line with the discourse of most social and environmental organizations in the Global South. Climate action must include adaptation, cooperation and justice. It is not enough to measure success by reducing greenhouse gases, but by the ability to protect lives, reduce poverty and avoid unnecessary suffering. In other words, the challenge is not only environmental, but profoundly human.
Trump, on the other hand, represents the active denial of that idea. His speech remains anchored in suspicion towards any form of collective action. It defends a world where everyone is safe, where regulation is the enemy and solidarity a weakness. In this logic, climate change does not exist or, if it exists, it does not deserve attention because the costs will fall on others. It’s every man for himself politics, elevated to a government program. A policy that harms not only Americans, but the world.
Part of the damage that far-right regimes and other authoritarian governments are causing is that, by undermining collective action on behalf of the fossil fuel business, they are making it impossible to control rising temperatures. Reducing global warming is the simplest and cheapest way to avoid the damage of the climate crisis. But as it becomes less likely, it becomes necessary to look for other ways to mitigate its consequences, and the dominant strategy is to empower those in more vulnerable positions.
Therefore, the mistake in celebrating the far right is twofold. Gates not only reaffirms the urgency of the climate crisis, but also seeks to reorient action towards solidarity and international cooperation, something openly contrary to the individualistic ideas that this ideology promotes.
Global governance of the climate crisis is failing in its first objective, which is to stop rising temperatures to reduce the severity of the problem. But the problem is far from disappearing. Promises of climate finance are broken, international aid vanishes and the ecological transition advances at different speeds, reproducing the same asymmetries that produced the crisis. Faced with this, the notion of climate justice appears not as a slogan, but as a compass: reduce suffering where it hurts most, share resources, protect the most vulnerable.
Perhaps this is why Gates’ words, beyond their limitations and contradictions, resonate in this moment. Because they admit what many prefer to deny: that the disaster has already begun and that the response cannot continue to be a sum of unfulfilled commitments. That the planet will continue to exist, but the world we know may not. And that the real dilemma is not whether we can avoid climate change, but how we will decide to live within it, and who will be able to do so.
One might hope that the deniers will change their position, that the evidence will convince them, but this hope is naive. Their denialism is not a lack of information, but a form of power. So the meaning of Gates’ words is not to reassure, but to move the situation. In the face of the attack on life by the far right, the struggle has changed direction and we must focus on saving each other.
