Noah Rothman writes for National Review Online about two different groups of cimate activists.
Climate change … is a manageable phenomenon that does not present an existential threat to humanity’s survival. At least, not according to Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates.
“Although climate change will have serious consequences — particularly for people in the poorest countries — it will not lead to humanity’s demise,” Gates wrote in an essay published this week ahead of the COP30 climate summit. Indeed, he observed, the eschatology to which climate change activists are inclined has contributed to negative outcomes, especially in the developing world.
“This is a chance to refocus on the metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change: improving lives,” Gates added. …
… This bit of apostasy from someone who was — or, at least, posed as — a true believer in the cataclysmic future that runaway climate change held in store for us has shaken the industry around environmental activism to its foundation. The memo sets the stage for a pivotal internecine conflict over the future of climate activism.
There has long been a debate within the climate change activist camp to which outsiders were not supposed to be privy. On the one hand, there are activists who emphasize meliorism. They believed that human activity caused climate change, but they also concede that human activity can stave off the worst of its effects and reduce the severity of its impact on individual lives. While dogmatic, their worldview is anthropocentric, and they seek to maximize outcomes for the greatest number of people.
On the other hand, there are the misanthropes. Those are the climate activists who struggle to see any redeemable features in modernity and humanity’s contributions to our present conundrum. …
… If Gates’s memo proves significant, it will be in how it initiates a mad scramble over the cash that the donor class is willing to contribute to climate-related initiatives. That will put pressure on the individual components of this undifferentiated blob to distinguish themselves and accentuate their respective core competencies.
