By RYAN M KATZ-ROSENE
Gates’ climate memo is being celebrated by skeptics, not least Donald Trump, while frustrating scientists and activists
Shortly before COP30 talks begin in Brazil, tech billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gates has launched a “narrative grenade” into the discourse of climate politics by publishing a lengthy memo calling for a rethink of how the climate crisis is framed and addressed.
Gates calls for a “strategic pivot” in climate strategy. That appears to have hit a nerve. Both social and traditional media were ablaze with erroneous assertions about Gates’ supposed reversal of opinion on climate change.
Despite reaffirming support for ambitious decarbonization, his letter is being celebrated by climate skeptics while angering some climate scientists. United States President Donald Trump weighed in, writing: “I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue.”
This is false. Gates makes no such admission. In fact, he specifically writes that “climate change will have serious consequences — particularly for people in the poorest countries.” He emphasizes that “every tenth of a degree of heating that we prevent is hugely beneficial because a stable climate makes it easier to improve people’s lives.”
Gates goes further, calling for major investments into global health and development (particularly on vaccines), and expresses continued support for pursuing net-zero carbon emissions — all of which seems to fly in the face of Trump’s climate and foreign aid agenda.
It is Gates’ initial framing — that climate change is “not the end of the world” — that seems to have resonated most strongly with climate skeptics.
The memo begins by critiquing the “doomsday view” that “cataclysmic climate change will decimate civilization.” Instead, he argues that “people will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.”
From that point, climate contrarians seized on the memo. One of the largest conspiracy accounts on X falsely declared that “today Bill Gates admitted himself that Climate Change is all a lie.” Others followed suit.
In 2019 Bill Gates was saying that we had to stop cows from farting, eat fake meat, and get to net zero emissions globally to prevent climate catastrophe.
If you questioned any of it, you were called an uneducated, science-denying caveman.
Today Gates said that we will never… pic.twitter.com/O0z0fDhoOd
— MAZE (@mazemoore) October 28, 2025
Even media outlets contributed to the confusion, with Futurism running an article with the deeply misleading headline “Bill Gates Says Climate Change Isn’t So Bad After All.”
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Related:
Watch: Morano on Fox: ‘Bill Gates has canceled the climate catastrophe!’ – 3 reasons for Gates’ conversion are: 1) Climate lies are so obvious now, 2) The Trump Effect & 3) ‘Gates needs massive amounts of energy’ for AI — which is ‘completely contrary to the climate agenda’
