Essay by Eric Worrall
Micrsosoft’s recently admitted their carbon footprint has risen 30% since 2020.
Global Net-Zero Targets in Jeopardy as Rich Countries Lag Behind
By Felicity Bradstock – May 11, 2025, 10:00 AM CDT
- Bill Gates calls for wealthy nations to prioritize net-zero emissions, emphasizing their responsibility to combat climate change.
- Despite global net-zero pledges, rich countries lag in decarbonisation, risking the goals of the Paris Agreement.
- Gates highlights the need for innovation investments and stronger climate commitments from high-income nations.
Alongside environmentalists and climate scientists, Bill Gates is the latest public figure to call on high-income countries to do more to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. While reducing emissions in developing countries can be difficult, due to a lack of funding and infrastructure, meaning it could take several more years to expand the renewable energy capacity of certain regions, Western nations have no such excuse.
…This week, Microsoft’s founder, Bill Gates, said that rich countries “owe it to the world” to achieve net-zero emissions, during the opening dinner of the Ecosperity sustainability event in Singapore. Gates is the chairman of the non-profit Gates Foundation, which provides funding for a wide range of causes, including climate-related projects.
Speaking with Singapore’s Ambassador for Climate Action Ravi Menon, Gates stressed that high-income countries must achieve net zero even if the entire world cannot. “The notion that the entire world is going to get [to net zero] by 2050 is at this point not realistic,” said Gates. “There are levels of emissions that are small enough that the temperature worsening actually is not a problem,” he added. However, if rich nations can reach net zero, it demonstrates to other countries the potential to tackle the effects of the climate crisis.
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Read more: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Global-Net-Zero-Targets-in-Jeopardy-as-Rich-Countries-Lag-Behind.html
Back in the real world, Microsoft’s carbon emissions are skyrocketing, up 40% since 2020.
To be fair, Bill has apparently sold most of his Microsoft shares, and now owns around 1% of Microsoft – though that 1% is still worth billions of dollars.
But given Bill is responsible for creating Microsoft, and people at Microsoft still pick up the phone when he calls, he could have said something in his speech to Ecosperity about how he personally financially benefits from the profits of a company with a soaring carbon footprint.
Bill could also have explained to Ecosperity why he appears to think it is OK for him personally to make money from a company with a skyrocketing carbon footprint, but believes that everyone else should knuckle down and make sacrifices to reduce their carbon footprints.
If anyone has a link to Bill Gates’ Ecosperity speech please post in comments. Ecosperity has so far published a playlist of four videos related to the event.
Not only does Bill profit from Microsoft’s use of fossil fuel energy, but I bet he flies around on private jets and uses a lot of electricity in his many large houses. He is a hypocrite all the way around.
He’s now also against Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of underage females and he regrets all of the time he spent with Epstein at his home, ranch and private island.
He is a human turd of the highest order.
He’s starting to look like a less healthy Stephen Hawking, without the knowledge.
Gates is either stupid or evil. I’m pretty sure he’s not stupid.
“There are levels of emissions that are small enough that the temperature worsening actually is not a problem,”
That’s a curious statement. If read without “context”, it’s basically correct. Levels of emissions are small, and a slowly warming temperature isn’t a problem.
What do you suppose “temperature worsening” means?
It’s a non defined term until the oceans actually start boiling or you burst into flames when walking outside.
Ok, then. I am not too concerned. i don’t expect to see that in my lifetime, or even my kids’ lives. So all good.
Not rising at an “alarmist” rate?
It’s always rising, or falling, at an “alarmist” rate though. That’s why they’re alarmists.
Changing from degrees-Farenheit or degrees-Centigrade to degrees-Ameritemp.
Must mean the only kind that we know is bad – crop harming significant cooling.
also – how small _is_ small enough anyway?
The point, however, is that the two things are not in the least causally related.
Bill Gates is no longer a philanthropist. We all should pay to save his planet.
To paraphrase: He might be philanthropic, but that doesn’t mean he’s smart.
If high income nations actually seriously tried to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, they wouldn’t be high income nations any longer.
Mr. Beel……why don’t you spend your fortune on carbon capture….and according to you ….save the planet? Well? I CAN’T HEAR YOU !
Don’t encourage him. His preferred route is adding aerosols to the atmosphere to increase the Earth’s albedo.
Its a good idea and one that will definitely work. Continuous Contrails of sulfur dioxide will in fact cool the earth.
So far, everything else that has been tried has not worked at all.
“will in fact cool the earth.”
And will melt 2000 year-old Roman fountain statues?
Not at all certain. Adding atmospheric aerosols will serve to further block Earth’s current IR emissions to deep space during both daylight and nighttime hours, thereby reducing the amount of cooling of Earth’s surface.
Increasing albedo is only relevant for calculations of incoming solar radiation that is absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere and surfaces.
So according to you decreasing the watts/sqM of incoming solar energy is not certain to cool the earth?
Got it.
Not if the net reduction in outgoing LWIR radiation (in your units of watts/sqM) is greater than the net reduction of incoming, absorbed solar radiation.
It’s a simple matter of math accounting of power flux balance, with attention to sign conventions.
Got it?
So they would be trails made up of chemicals
Well, yeah. I mean how else would you get the Earth’s albedo to increase? Everyone wear white hats?
People who are afraid of rising GMST and want to cool the earth need to step up and offer a solution that works. That’s what Bill Gates is doing. The last 40 years of methods have accomplished nothing.
Is that short for Beelzebub? (Asking for a friend.)
He’s in for nuclear.
He’s in for HIS nuclear.
We had a Thunbergian experiment with COVID deindustrialisation. But there was not the slightest change in the detailed expanded idiosyncratic Keeling curve sawtooth. I deduce it’s all natural not man made
I think “had” is still “have” Amazing anyone can believe the world shut down for a while without causing a recession.
I don’t remember voting for Bill Gates to create any policies affecting my life at any time.
He should run for office if he wants to do that.
Vote? I’ve been funding him since I bought an IBM clone in 1991
Oh nooooo Mr Bill!
How many divisions does Bill Gates command? Oh.
I’m watching the House and Senate budget negotiations and the maneuvering which is now going on between the Big Spender faction and the Deficit Hawk faction. I personally will not be too surprised if the Republicans fail to recind the Green New Deal spending of the previous Congress and its GND allies in the former Biden administration.
Ya know, the hypocrisy grows ever more tiring.
I wonder if Gates ever fantasized about dating Gretta.
Brrrrrfff. Mph. Oh yeah, that’s what breakfast tasted like.
There are levels of emissions that are small enough that the temperature worsening actually is not a problem
Bingo! Gates is smart enough to know that the current rate of warming and sea level rise is easily adapted to with human innovation. Just like humans have been doing for thousands of years so they can live in some of the coldest, hottest, driest, wettest, and stormiest places on Earth. Inklings of rationality are starting to break through his outer crust, but he hasn’t shed the crusty leftism of his peers. It’s just so vacuously fulfilling to be doing something, anything, to save the planet… that doesn’t need their kind of saving.
Here’s what matters about Bill Gates and climate:
TerraPower’s Natrium project is aiming for commercial operation by 2031. The company expects to receive NRC approval in late 2026, which could allow nuclear construction to begin in early 2027. The first Natrium plant is being developed through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, with plans to be online by 2030
According to Carbonic Catechism, Mr. Gates and Microsoft owe the planet $1trillion for their super mega ginormous carbon dinoprint. Pay up! .
Microsoft makes software. If they can’t go carbon neutral, nobody can.
Now hardware makers… that would be challenging.
They use computers. Lots of computers. They send updates via internet. Lots of updates to lots of computers.
How much can they offset all those employees breathing?
It takes lots of energy to run brains. Even artificial ones. Those data centers are real energy hogs, even if all they do is push electrons around.
Microsoft runs a lot of hardware, their Azure hosting service is a competitor to Amazon AWS and various Google hosting services such as Firebase.
The whole energy thing could be about to get a lot more interesting, scientists researching how to build a Venus lander which can handle an operating temperature of 870F have discovered Diamond acts like a semiconductor at that temperature.
The advantage of a hot semiconductor is it makes heat management much easier, but since they need a minimum operating heat and easier heat management would allow more chips to be packed closer together, the energy consumption for diamond semiconductor datacenters would likely actually go up.
Amazon and Google operate more data centres than Microsoft but the latter’s network connects over 60 data regions, 200 data centres and over 175,000 miles of terrestrial and sub sea fibre worldwide, sufficient to go around the world 7 times.
‘The US Needs a Bigger (Energy) Boat’ D Rossito, Pickering Energy Partners (Rossito 20240620.pdf)
I assume Gates’s definition of “wealthy nations” excludes the BRICS,
Strange how “non-profit” agencies keep getting richer and richer. !!
Ya, like I care what Gates has to say. Take a hike Bill.
My problem with Bill is I can’t convince myself that he believes our CO2 emissions are damaging the planet so I have to ask “Why does he say these things?”. I haven’t found a reasonable answer for that question that leaves him in a desirable light.
And wealthy too
Can anyone link to an in depth article about this recent increase in the number of ultra wealthy people suggesting or making major societal changes? Are they taking over government functions? Are they somehow qualified better than average to do this? Geoff S
I urge Bill Gates to set a responsible example if he wishes to hector to other people, by selling his executive jet, stopping all air flights and never travelling in polluting cars/winnebagos etc etc and ensure that his fancy billionaire’s lifestyle is not guzzling carbon, polluting the atmosphere nor creating localised heat islands due to his behaviour patterns.
If he thinks that he gets to tell the rest of the world what to do when he is gallivanting all over the globe consuming carbon, then he should STFU and face up to his own incontrovertible hypocrisy.
Bill Gates and his affiliation with the WEF and their desire to depopulate the world makes him totally unworthy of anyone wasting a nanosecond of time to listen to him.
From the above article:
“Bill Gates calls for wealthy nations to prioritize net-zero emissions, emphasizing their responsibility to combat climate change.”
Well, Billy-boy, please give the world (a) your definition of “climate change”, and (b) why you want to cause climate to become unchanging and how you proposed doing so?
(a)
— Is climate change global temperatures increasing or decreasing over 30 years of more?
— Is it imagined adverse effects from increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration due to mankind burning fossil fuels and making cement, or is it the documented beneficial effects of atmospheric CO2 “greening” the Earth by some 10-20% over the last 50 years?
— Is climate change sea ice increasing or decreasing at both poles?
— Is climate change increased flooding or increasing drought on Earth over the last 30 or more years?
— Is climate change responsible for decreased excess-cold-related deaths, or decreased excess-heat-related deaths?
— Is climate change somehow now more dangerous than it was, oh, about 12,500 years ago when Earth exited the last glacial period, which was a very good thing for human civilization although such caused global sea-level to rise by about 60 m (197 feet) over a period of about 5,000 years due melting glaciers on land . . . that’s an average SLR rate of about 12 mm/yr, yet some people don’t think modern day humans can survive a current SLR rate of about 4 mm/year (ref: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/05/05/sea-level-nasa-versus-noaa/ )
(b)
Earth has never had a long interval of zero “climate change”. Why would you want to fight all of nature’s forces (hah!) in an attempt to force an unnatural situation on humanity??? And do you really think such a thing is even possible? For instance, please tell us how you propose that wealthy nations—let alone all Earth’s nations together—”combat” Milankovitch cycles and their resonances (look it up if you have to!) that are associated with long term changes in Earth’s climate.
“If you can’t define something you have no formal rational way of knowing that it exists. Neither can you really tell anyone else what it is. There is, in fact, no formal difference between inability to define and stupidity.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Good old ZAAMM. Did you know his son was stabbed outside the Zen centre in San Francisco?
Try Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon.
Best wishes
Gates and all the rest of the advocates for rich nations to throw more money at the poor ones to help achieve their emissions-reductions goals can rest assured it’s not going to happen. Doing so would lead to higher taxes in the richer ones where critics of the idea are suspicious of where the money would go in the first place. Given the questionable record of how foreign aid money is distributed and spent, there’s too much existing suspicion that it winds up in the pockets of corrupt and inefficient government members rather than to improve environmental causes.