Bill Gates Isn’t Spending Enough

Catherine Clifford of CNBC reported in September that Mr. Gates did not agree with those who call for reduced consumption—a “degrowth” of industrial society:

“I don’t think it’s realistic to say that people are utterly going to change their lifestyle because of concerns about climate,” Gates said to Akshat Rathi in an episode of the Bloomberg podcast, “Zero,” which published on Thursday. The interview was recorded in August before the Inflation Reduction Act was passed…

“Anyone who says that we will tell people to stop eating meat, or stop wanting to have a nice house, and we’ll just basically change human desires, I think that that’s too difficult,” Gates said. “You can make a case for it. But I don’t think it’s realistic for that to play an absolutely central role.”

Good call cautioning against an engineered change in human nature. Regimes that have tried such engineering created much of the misery of the last century. Ms. Clifford added:

Even if those countries and individuals who have enough abundance in their life and are able to cut back, that won’t be enough reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to sufficiently rein in climate change, Gates said.

One can debate how exactly the climate is likely to change in the future and what role industrial emissions will play. But Mr. Gates seemed to be doing a public service in demonstrating to his fellow warmists just how empty their domestic virtue signals are if much of the world continues to increase emissions.

This is what makes this week’s message from Mr. Gates so disappointing. In a new open letter, he strangely appears to be presenting the argument against imposing costs on the U.S. as an argument in favor of it. Mr. Gates writes in his “annual memo about the journey to zero emissions”:

More than 70 countries have committed to reaching net zero, including big polluters like the United States and the European Union. Even if the US and Europe get there, however, we won’t have solved the problem. Three-quarters of the global population lives in emerging economies like Brazil, China, India, and South Africa, and although historically they played a very small role in causing climate change, they are now responsible for two-thirds of total greenhouse-gas emissions. China by itself emits more than one quarter. So solutions can’t be dependent on unique conditions in a single country or region. They have to work in all countries, or the temperature will continue to rise.

Thinking globally instead of nationally reveals why we can’t solve climate change simply by using less energy. Low- and middle-income countries are building aggressively to achieve the standard of living their people aspire to—and they should be. Many countries in Europe and North America filled the atmosphere with carbon to achieve prosperity, and it is both unrealistic and unfair to expect everyone else to forgo a more comfortable life because that carbon turned out to change the climate.

It’s true that it’s unreasonable and futile to ask the major emitters to stop developing and it’s true that without their participation emissions will not be meaningfully reduced. Therefore it’s unreasonable to demand that Americans with low incomes, middle incomes or even high incomes fund such reductions.

Yet Mr. Gates proceeds anyway to celebrate a “more ambitious role” for government in developing green technologies.

This suggests he doesn’t have a lot of confidence in such technologies, but there’s an easy way for Mr. Gates to demonstrate his conviction. Instead of asking for more government help, Mr. Gates should go all in.

There are clearly a lot of assets in the portfolio he could liquidate to fund his green vision. His main investment vehicle often holds large stakes in railroads and auto dealerships, but there’s perhaps one investment that would make for an especially powerful symbolic selloff. The Journal’s Benjamin Katz reported in February of 2021:

Bill Gates is doubling down on private-jet travel, as the niche industry recovers more quickly amid the coronavirus pandemic than the wider commercial aviation market.

The billionaire’s Cascade Investment LLC agreed Friday to team up with

Blackstone Group Inc.

and private-equity firm Global Infrastructure Partners in a $4.7 billion deal for Signature Aviation PLC. The deal would boost Cascade’s stake in the world’s largest operator of private-jet bases to 30%, from a previous 19%.

Bloomberg estimates Mr. Gates’s net worth at $108 billion. Shouldn’t at least 107 of those billions be invested in unprofitable climate ventures before middle-class taxpayers are asked for another nickel?

***

James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival.”

***

Follow James Freeman on Twitter.

Subscribe to the Best of the Web email.

To suggest items, please email best@wsj.com.

(Lisa Rossi helps compile Best of the Web. Thanks to Jackie Harty.)