Last Tuesday, as the strongest Atlantic storm in 90 years slammed the western coast of Jamaica with 185-mph winds, Bill Gates was downplaying climate change.
The billionaire does not appear to have publicly addressed the disaster in Jamaica, which extended throughout the Caribbean, with Melissa having killed dozens across Cuba, Haiti, the Bahamas, and the Dominican Republic. And his overall point, frankly, does not hold up to scrutiny.
Gates isn’t alone; climate change has slipped down the world’s priority list in the past few years—and it shows. Governments and corporations are shelving emissions goals, budgets are being redirected from climate initiatives to warfare, the media is pivoting away from climate journalism, and even activists are urging a softer, more “hopeful” tone. It all signals a vibe shift in how we talk about climate change, reframing it from the existential risk it actually poses to a less urgent, peripheral issue—even as the floodwaters reach our front doors.
Maybe there is hope for a world where being rich doesn’t mean you are assumed to be wise and all knowing and should be consulted on everything.
I mean… looking at people like Neil deGrasse Tyson, you don’t need to be super rich for people to give your intelligence too much credit.
He’s definitely a very smart man, in his field, but yeah that doesn’t translate to having the answers to everything or even having common sense sometimes.
he also, has a list of women accusing him of sexual misconduct, none of the incidence could be proven, but they were 4 separate women in very different locations. He’s charming on talk shows. No actual scientists get invited on talk shows.
I mean, Carl Sagan, but yeah not really much currently. I feel like due to streaming everything has been kind of put in it’s own little box, everyone can have their own show and no one needs to interact with people different than them.