https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/12/al-gore-cop30-climate
By Harvey and Oliver Milman in Belém, Brazil
Excerpt:
Fear of being bullied by Donald Trump may have prompted Bill Gates to row back on the climate crisis, Al Gore has speculated, as he slammed the billionaire’s new position as “silly”, and the US president for his anti-climate stance.
Trump, “the most corrupt president in American history”, was “badly damaging the US economy” by pulling away from renewable energy and promoting fossil fuels, the former US vice-president warned.
“[Trump’s] already doing a lot of damage [on the climate],” Gore said, in an interview with the Guardian at the Cop30 United Nations climate summit in Belém, Brazil. “Maybe the biggest harm he’s doing is to the United States itself, and one figure now illustrates it. China is now exporting green technology to the rest of the world that has a cumulative export value that is significantly higher than all of the fossil fuel exports from the United States to the rest of the world. And that trend is obviously accelerating quite dramatically.”
Gates, a philanthropist and founder of Microsoft, made waves around the world when he publicly argued for pushing the climate crisis down the international agenda, in favour of more focus on health issues.
“The idea of slowing down on climate again, every climate scientist that I know and respect just threw up their hands and said: ‘What in the world is he thinking?’” said Gore.
“When Trump was elected the second time, Bill fired most of his climate staffers and went to the White House and lavished praise on Trump, and then put out this series of statements last week that puzzled anybody who was really concerned about the climate crisis.”
Gore noted that the chiefs of many large businesses in the US fear reprisals from the US president if they disagree with him, saying: “It may be that he is really worried that Trump will bully him the way he has bullied other ultra-wealthy business people. It looks like it may be possible that he’s scared of Trump.”
The US president responded to Gates’s reversal with praiseful social media posts.
Gore said: “I don’t know why [Gates] would do this … the only rave review of what he put out last week was from Donald Trump. Yeah, Trump loves it. That may be what Gates was shooting for.”
…
Setting up the climate crisis and the global health crisis as opposing choices for intervention, as Gates appeared to do, was wrong, added Gore, saying: “The idea that there is a binary choice between health and climate is an idea that’s been roundly rejected by virtually every scientist in this field, and the World Health Organisation has said long since that climate is the No 1 health threat to humanity.”
He added: “I almost felt badly for Bill when the same day he put his statement out, the Lancet, the very authoritative, deeply respected Lancet … put out its latest report showing the enormous health consequences of not accelerating climate action. The idea that you have to choose one over the other is quite silly.”
