Essay by Eric Worrall
“… The richer they become, the more they can bend the state and economic system to their will …”
I wish we could ignore Bill Gates on the climate crisis. But he’s a billionaire, so we can’t
Money talks – and his essay denouncing ‘near-term emissions goals’ at Cop30 mostly argues the case for letting the ultra-rich off the hook
Let’s begin with the fundamental problem: Bill Gates is a politics denier. Though he came to it late, he now accepts the realities of climate science. But he lives in flat, embarrassing denial about political realities. His latest essay on climate, published last week, treats the issue as if it existed in a political vacuum. He writes as if there were no such thing as political power, and no such thing as billionaires.
…
Yes, the funds available for any good cause are scarce, but that’s not because of some natural law, some implacable truth about human society. It’s because oligarchic power has waged war on benign state spending, leading to the destruction of USAID and drastic cuts to the aid budgets of other countries, including the UK. Austerity is a political choice. The decision to impose it is driven by governments bowing to the wishes of the ultra-rich.
There are truckloads of money available. Just after Gates published his new missive, Oxfam revealed that the net worth of the 10 richest US billionaires grew by $698bn in the past year. That money alone, the increment in the wealth of 10 people, is almost 10 times the annual amount required to end extreme poverty worldwide. How have they managed to channel so much of the world’s money into their pockets? And why can’t we get it back through effective taxation? The answer is their translation of economic power into political power. The richer they become, the more they can bend the state and economic system to their will, ensuring that they become richer still. But Bill Gates says nothing in his essay about how and where extra money for both climate action and poverty relief could be found.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/08/bill-gates-climate-crisis-billionaire-essay-cop30
…
Poor Monbiot, still stuck in a 70s socialist time warp.
How many times has the idea of stripping rich people of their wealth been tested to destruction, only to end with some of the worst economic disasters and famines of the 20th century?
I’m not a fan of Bill Gates, plenty of times I’ve criticised his climate rants on WUWT. But whatever prompted his recent about face on climate change, any outbreak of climate sanity is something to be celebrated, not condemned.
In fairness, Bill Gates has given billions of dollars of his own money to trying to improve the lives of those poor people Monbiot claims to care about. Demanding Gates’ money be stripped from him because it is not being spent exactly how Monbiot would like seems a bit harsh. If Monbiot wants that kind of control over large sums of money, he should make his own money, instead of trying to take it off other people.
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Monbiot has always been deluded. Maybe he should do a mature science course.
and I thought these guys were all about following the science- until the science goes against them which it clearly is now
It’s always been clearly against them. It’s just that now it is even harder to ignore that the science is against them.
“Monbiot has always been deluded.”
Has rightly earned the nickname “Moon bat”
Yep – but simply batty is sufficient (IMHO).
I’d say a socialism detox course would be better.
But would it work?
You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.
True, they’ll make all manner of excuses to themselves and you. Especially Marxist fanatics which climate catastrophists are.
And isn’t that a great picture of him with those mad eyes.
Reminds me of Millibrain!
Rich billionaires are intelligent only if they support George Monbiot.
AGW is a billionaires vehicle and creation and almost all billionaires,especially those with private jets and frontbeach propertiees, believe in it,including Bill Gates who only tuned down his believe from 11 to 10.
One has to be Moonbiot crazy to blame the rich for rejecting AGW.
But Moonbiot is probably the first of the cult to finally admitt the one thing we always knew,
by calling Gates a politics denier.
As AGW was always about politics and never about science.
and this …
https://joannenova.com.au/2025/11/prepare-the-escape-pods-kier-starmer-says-the-consensus-is-gone-oecd-admits-its-losing-momentum/
Rich billionaires are the only kind!
Zimbabwen billionaires object
and
George Soros is so poor he has to steal taxpayers money.
In 1930’s Germany, just about everyone was a billionaire.
We should apply Biden’s maxim: you ain’t rich if you oppose AGW.
George Monbiot is unwell.
George Monbiot on ‘rewilding’ the countryside and the end of sheep
https://markpiesing.com/2016/10/08/george-monbiot-on-rewilding-the-countryside-and-the-end-of-sheep/
Climate activist George Monbiot calls for livestock farming to be abolished
https://www.thescottishfarmer.co.uk/news/20149214.climate-activist-george-monbiot-calls-livestock-farming-abolished/
Loser.
He is not unwell.
He is just spouting standardized Agenda stuff conspiracy real… theorists like Bill Cooper have been warning us about for 30 + years.
In this case – the war on meat production.
That’s why we have all this vegan propaganda and let them eat bugs stuff.
His former brother in warms Bill Gates would have never started his artificial shit meat company without this Agenda
as artificial meat can only exist in an environment where the competition is being phased out..
Lol
He is, you know. His neighbours in Wales will attest to that. Lord McAlpine had him grovelling for his evil transgression.
Well, leftism is a mental disorder.
Therefore he, just like the rest, can’t be well.
But in terms of climate “his” opinions are 100% identical with the Agenda – this has nothing to do with his mental state but with being a sellout.
I didn’t know about the McAlpine stuff until now,
but this is also not an indicator for being unwell, but being evil (even if you target the partner of a Mafia- Don),
as Moonbiot is the one from the political wing that promotes pedophilia.
On the other hand he simply followed his Harbingers rules for radicals:
Accuse your enemy of the crimes you commits -Alinsky
He is mental
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/farmers-angry-after-sheep-blamed-6645065#
You’re right.
That’s even for non-existing lefty standards remarkable.
I’m kind of jealous.
I could become the worlds best comedian if i only had 5% of his ideas.
And as the artificial meat business goes down hill, one should note that Bill covered his bets by buying up farmland.
The really interesting thing about that part is that Bill is buying Farmland while a war on farmers is going on.
The same bizarre behavior as with front beach properties .
beach front properties
Thx
What’s his problem with sheep. Wool is a non-oil based fibre, that is harvested annually. As a byproduct they produce meat, so they clothe and feed people. They can survive on rough grazing, where growing crops is not easy, with minimal support. They, and deer, can be kept out of tree plantations with relatively cheap fences.
There can’t be many “crops” as useful to humans.
He’s one of those people who feel that farming/ranching is the same as enslaving animals.
So, wait a second there … was Bill Gates poor when he supported AGW?
Monbiot was a rich kid who wanted for nothing (except parental affection) and who p****d his fortune away…He could teach Gates a thing or two about being so well-off that you think you know it all…
He had a very lucky escape from Lord McAlpine. Luckily for George, McAlpine went to meet his maker…
My Agreement with Lord McAlpine
Posted on
12th March 2013
https://www.monbiot.com/2013/03/12/my-agreement-with-lord-mcalpine/
He hasn’t changed.
As expected Gates is now villified by the hardliners.
Warmhabism has never tolerated apostasy.
What was the UK getting aid for? Hard to believe the British Empire has fallen that far.
drastic cuts to the aid budgets of other countries, including the UK
Our foreign aid budget is now used to house, clothe and feed illegal migrants. 1500 turned since Thursday and they ain’t being stopped.
Trump’s US gives us tariffs. Aid? Yeah, right.
“How have they managed to channel so much of the world’s money into their pockets?”
Yikes, it’s as if they stole it all. Obviously they may be a bit overpaid- but they produce products and services that people wanted. And no doubt they paid a lot of taxes along the way.
“How have they managed to channel so much of the world’s money into their pockets?”
This is a misleading question. The world’s money supply isn’t fixed. All Initial Public Offerings (IPO) create new money. Bank loans and other financial transactions also bring money into existence. Gates, Ellison, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk and others are not “paid” out of an existing supply of money.
According to George Bill’s billions were okay when Bill was a well-behaved docile acolyte for the cause, but now that Bill has started to think for himself it’s suddenly a no-no. How pathetically transparent George is.
The left has been doing more and more of eating their own lately. When you build a coalition on diversity and not common ground what else can you expect?
There are obviously good and bad billionaires. Those who are fighting for our cause are good and those fighting against it are bad.sarc.
The one thing i agree w Monbiot is the perverse concentration of power.
We are living in a neo- feudalistic world. You don’t have to be a ‘socialist’ to see that.
In fact it is what classic economists have been warning about from Adam Smith to Karl Marx.
The ‘free market’ is a great idea but more than often not realised.
I understand that is not a popular opinion on this platform.
Karl Marx was not a ‘classical economist’. He was simply a lazy sod living off donations from his followers and the earnings of Friedrich Engels. Marx was a sponger and nothing more. He was simply looking for someone to take care of him as he never worked a single day in his life.
\
He was an aristocratic parasite, pure and simple, living off the work of others.
Marx managed to end up in a rather well to do cemetery. Funnily enough, Highgate cemetery is in the People’s Republic of Islington.
He switched class sides
The plot was probably paid for by Engels. Marx never had a dime to his name. Wikipedia states the utterly absurd.
“The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm remarked: “One cannot say Marx died a failure.” Although he had not achieved a large following of disciples in Britain, his writings had already begun to make an impact on the left-wing movements in Germany and Russia. ”
An impact???? Marx was the principal inspiration for the two greatest mass murderers of the 20th century: Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Marx should have been buried in a ditch filled with sewage.
Are you sure about Hitler?
If I remember correctly he was heavily criticising Marx.
The only reason why Hitler fought against the communists was because they also wanted to run everything. Hitler had no tolerance for anyone who tried to reduce his power.
Perhaps Stalin and Mao. The only reason why Pol Pot didn’t make that list is that he ran out of people to kill.
Bernie Sanders
We are no where close to feudalism. Try reading some actual history, not just Marxist lies.
The only perverse concentration of power is the power that government has seized thanks to all the socialists who want government to run everything.
The free market is a great idea that we get closer too when we stop using the government to try and perfect it.
I understand that you are so infected with the Marxist virus that you no longer have any connection to reality.
Being rich is exactly the problem the prominent climate alarmists have! Okay, not Gates-rich, but secure enough that any economic consequences of their plans won’t affect them much.. energy prices doubling? Well it means to shorten the Carribean vacation by a few days if at all..
I think it was in the Debatte with Koonin where Dessler suggested the generator supplying his house as a solution to increased blackout risks.. showing how far decoupled he really is from normal people or industrial production.
For most of them (including those no-friday-school German teenagers) this is an entertaining game and intellectual puzzle which won’t ever affect their life in a significant manner.
They are rich enough that doubling energy costs just means smaller Christmas gifts for the staff.
“There are truckloads of money available. Just after Gates published his new missive, Oxfam revealed that the net worth of the 10 richest US billionaires grew by $698bn in the past year. That money alone, the increment in the wealth of 10 people, is almost 10 times the annual amount required to end extreme poverty worldwide. How have they managed to channel so much of the world’s money into their pockets? And why can’t we get it back through effective taxation?”
This is a boneheaded view of wealth and free exchange. It’s not “money” in the sense of a stash of cash or an amount available for withdrawal from a bank account. It’s not executive salary. This is the clever misdirection about the wealth of “billionaires.” If there has been a large gain in a short period of time, it has to be unrealized gains in the value of the businesses or other assets owned.
Those are productive businesses. Liquidate to feed the poor? Confiscate the means of production for a central committee to run? What will you do next year? Who will grow those businesses to sustain a flow of useful goods and services?
It seems climate lunacy and economic fallacy are twins.
See my comment above at 12:57
Monbiot seems confused. He claims to be interested in stopping climate change and extracting the wealth to do it from the world’s rich people. He seems unaware that restrictions on fossil fuels, however they come, strike the world’s poorest people the hardest.
It’s not that Monbiot is a hypocrite; that’s the least of it. He’s an eco-colonialist of the worst order. “I forbid you to develop the fossil fuel resources that could lift you and your people out of poverty.”
But then, socialism has never been about enriching or empowering the workers of the world. It’s been about the centralization of power by the Philosopher Kings. (Naturally, references to Plato are deliberate.)
Monbiot’s full article gives his views on renewables hurting poor people, he appears to think big oil is conspiring to keep renewables unaffordable, to carve a space for obscene big oil profits.
Separated at birth?
As usual, Moonbat has it completely wrong. Wealthy people can support “climate action” because they possess the means to avoid most of the pain.
“the funds available for any good cause are scarce,”
Yet the funds available for the destabilisation of western society through a variety of means, “climate change™” being one of them, seem to be inexhaustible…
… from sources like Soros and several other far-left billionaires.
What a bizarre explanation as seen through a warped socialist lense.
It’s just wild speculation on my part but the most logical explanation for Bill’s epiphany is the $80 billion Microsoft wants to invest in AI. Unfortunately “green energy” doesn’t quite fit the bill when you need reliable, on demand electricity for your AI centers.
Gates didn’t give up on Climate Change. He only said it is existential. Good, but hardly a reversal of his beliefs.
And $698B will fix extreme poverty? Oh, George, give us a break. Is that forever, of just for one year? And whose estimate is that?
The thing about seizing wealth is that it is a one time thing. One year you seize the money. The next year, there is nothing left, you seized it all last year.
As opposed to taxing income, which you can do year after year, assuming that you don’t raise tax rates so high that you kill the golden goose. Which socialists always end up doing.
Is the Beady-Eyed Moonbat an endangered species?
Man I’m glad this guy isn’t on our side. It couldn’t be more clear, there is no proper scientific evidence to prove additional CO2 will cause runaway global warming. None. So why on earth should we waste trillions of dollars, massive amounts of rare resources, limit everyone’s choices, raise energy prices, cause higher inflation in general, cause energy poverty, cause more brown/blackouts, desecrate thousands of acres of landscape with ugly inefficient wind and solar farms, shut down affordable, safe, efficient energy generators like fossil fuel and nuclear all for no good reason. That is madness of the highest order. All that and push a left wing socialist mantra at the same time. This guy needs help, lots of it.
Story tip: The UK energy regulator – Ofgem
Comically, Ofgem requires the [Distribution Network Operators] DNOs to develop their future plans under the assumptions of RCP8.5.
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/11/08/ofgem-caught-using-climate-armageddon-worst-case-scenario-for-energy-planning/
It is strange, Moonbat decries the existence of billionaires and their “bending the rules”, but he does not decry the existence of his boss, Jeremy Grantham. Wonder why that is?
Socialists only object to money they don’t control.
Since global surveys reveal that climate action is an increasingly low priority for the vast majority of those polled, does that automatically make them rich? Or do they realize that such action would be guaranteed to decrease their wealth and comfort/convenience levels with a variety of new taxes, laws, restrictions and mandates? The reality is that the call for climate action is being ignored everywhere as people have recognized it as essentially a scam designed to pick their pockets.
“Yes, the funds available for any good cause are scarce,” because the money gets spent on BS stuff like climate that we have zero control over instead of things like finding a cure for chronic Hepatitis B.