Mega-billionaire Bill Gates once championed climate transformation — supporting bold frameworks like the Green New Deal and urging that “we must get to zero” on greenhouse-gas emissions.
But now he’s changed his tune, saying climate change won’t “lead to humanity’s demise,” and that the real goal should shift away from curbing emissions to boosting “health and prosperity.” It’s hard not to read this as the kind of self-serving pivot that defines the powerful: big on altruism, light on obligation.
Gates points proudly to his venture fund Breakthrough Energy and its investments in clean tech. But what he ignores is how little the Green New Deal has considered the real electricity demand of today’s society — especially the soaring power needs of artificial intelligence.
He now declares that rising AI energy use is manageable, ignoring the reality that wind, solar, and the other staples of the green energy simply cannot deliver the reliability and volume of power required to run AI farms. To gloss over that gap is hypocrisy at the highest level.
Gates still touts a cleaner-energy future, but the math screams otherwise. He warns that the world might miss net-zero by 2050 because “the amount of green electricity … is not going to show up nearly as fast as we need.” Meanwhile, he invests in systems that devour electricity, but asks the rest of us to cheerlead his “innovation” model rather than demand accountability.
The Green New Deal offered a narrative of transformation without a practical foundation for the colossal energy loads of tomorrow. Bill Gates embraced that narrative — until it became inconvenient. Now he’s backing away, urging us to focus on “human welfare,” not pollution. That’s not compassion, that’s self-serving hypocrisy. And it’s a wake-up call: elites like Bill Gates who push green energy fantasies cannot be trusted.