Gates said he will be investing and giving more than ever to climate work in the years ahead and still has hope for the world to make progress on environmental issues.
Bill Gates is warning that the market alone cannot solve climate change, just as President Donald Trump pulls the US out of key global climate organizations.
“Government policies in rich countries are still critical because unless innovations reach scale, the costs won’t come down and we won’t achieve the impact we need,” the billionaire founder of Microsoft Corp. wrote in his annual lookahead letter released on Friday.
According to Gates, who founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures to bankroll climate-focused startups, “market forces do not properly incentivize the creation of technologies to reduce climate-related emissions” at a time when carbon pollution isn’t being priced in most countries. Without cutting greenhouse gases, the world will fail to lower the risks of global warming.
“If we don’t limit climate change, it will join poverty and infectious disease in causing enormous suffering, especially for the world’s poorest people,” Gates wrote. “Since even in the best case, the temperature will continue to go up, we also need to innovate to minimize the negative impacts.”
The latest letter comes about two months after Gates was criticized by some activists and small island states when he said prioritizing the climate fight above all else risks overshadowing issues such as health and equality. In the Friday memo, Gates reiterated his call for the world to focus more on adapting to climate impacts.
The Gates Foundation announced in November that it would commit $1.4 billion to support farmers on the frontlines of extreme weather. In his lookahead letter, Gates said by using artificial intelligence, “we will soon be able to provide poor farmers with better advice about weather, prices, crop diseases, and soil than even the richest farmers get today.”
His letter comes shortly after the Trump administration dealt a fresh blow to global climate action by announcing the US’s withdrawal from United Nations climate programs and an intergovernmental organization supporting the global energy transition. The administration has also previously curtailed foreign aid, including for climate-adaptation projects.
Since Trump’s return to the White House in 2025, the US has taken a U-turn on its domestic energy policy, ramping up government support for fossil fuels while shrinking subsidies for many green initiatives.
Despite these setbacks and layoffs last year on Breakthrough Energy’s policy teams, Gates said he will be “investing and giving more than ever to climate work” in the years ahead, and that he still has hope for the world to make progress on environmental and other pressing issues including public health, education and minimizing the disruption of AI. He also noted that addressing climate change can “improve rapidly with the right government focus.”
Read more on Bloomberg Business
