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.
Nah, not respectfully, bill Gates is a piece of shit who has spent millions in charities to pretend he’s a nice guy.
I too can pretend to be really nice by slamming millions around even though I have acted like a shit stain before.
i once tried to question him when he did an AMA like a decade ago, the mods/filters dint allow it though,specifically about him money laundering.
For a billionaire he is pretty nice. Which only makes him an absolute piece of shit.
By all means do so then, please. An asshole spending millions on charity helps way more people than a nice guy receiving government aid.
A guy receiving government aid has a MUCH smaller climate footprint than this asshole.
And a car has a smaller climate footprint than a ship transporting solar panels, or the factory producing them. What is your point?
What exactly is your point
That his carbon footprint being way higher than that of an average person is outweighed by the positive impact. If every billionaire spent a majority of their wealth on charity we would live in a completely different world.
We would also live in a different world if we taxed them, or stopped believing in fake borders and just started helping people regardless of which side of an invisible line two people fucked on. There’s lots of low carbon high value things that could be done, none of which involves one billionaire having life or death decision making power from his private jet.
While all of that is true, I dont understand how it contradicts my statement that a person spending billions on helping people has higher impact than another person that doesnt.
You so understand that people as rich as him didn’t get to be that rich by being all ethical and having good morals, right?
And you do understand that being a nice guy doesn’t mean you rely on government assistance?
You’re not dumb, are you?
I never said he was ethical in every way. I said he helps people more than someone who doesnt have the resources he has. You said you could spend a million on charity to seem nice andd I said do it. I dont care if youre an asshole in every other aspect, if you spend a million on charity thats still a good deed. Judging someone based on the idea of them being a hypocrite instead of accepting their good deeds as such is a little pathetic, its like hating vegans because they ‘think theyre morally superior’.
I also never said being a nice guy means receiving government aid, I just said Id rather have an asshole helping millions. There are enough nice guys that dont have a positive impact on poverty around the world.
Capitalism is pretty good at creating wealth, its been successfully increasing the average living conditions of people for centuries. The problem we currently have is that, while the average is still growing well, the median is decreasing because the richest hold most of the wealth and most of its gains, so the poor effectively get poorer. Why hate on the one guy that uses capitalism to help millions? If every billionaire donated most of their wealth, this system could actually work out pretty well.
Disrespectfully, Bill Gates needs to shut the fuck up
Gates often gets a pass because he gives away a lot of money and “advocates” for a wealth tax. But he’s still a billionaire and still hoards more resources and power than any single person could ethically possess.
Not really what the article is about
Bill Gates is a monopolist whose shady business practices in the 90s and 2000s make him a very evil man.
All billionaires are inherently evil by their own nature. Unless they literally won the lottery with take home $1 billion.
To become a billionaire you have to do some dark Machiavellian deeds whether by exteeme exploitation of human labour or manipulation of the most unethical proportions. A billion in wealth is something quite unimaginable before the 20th century, and the means to obtain that level of wealth in history has always been dark and dirty.
I think your point stands generally, but Paul McCartney is a billionaire and I don’t think writing a bunch of pleasant tunes qualifies as “dark Machiavellian deeds”.
The music industry is though.
True. In a sense, being a successful musician is more like winning the lottery. The best songwriter in the world isn’t going to sell shit without a label behind them.
Paul didn’t get that rich by writing music. He is a businessman and the music industry is quite a controlling evil mafia.
This is libelous. His business practices were also shady in the '70s and '80s.
Irrespectfully most tech moguls need to shut the fuck up, especially about shit that has nothing to do with tech
he was always known to be ruthless during his ceo days, his current image is trying to reinvent, and also to soften the blow of him being associated with epstein.
This does have to do with tech because the firm he founded is knee deep in the AI bullshit which is burning energy at an incredible rate.
You do know people can learn new things. Especially people with tons of money and time. You should try sometime, it’s fun!
I know people in the tech field can be very biased towards tech bullshit, and they tend to model everything through the cold vision of their industry.
Ok but define “tech” at this point. That made sense in 2000, maybe 2010, it’s… ubiquitous now
Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
He can blather as mich as he wants, stop giving the douche air time or column inches ffs.
That guy that told me to sell my GameStop shares and that investing in that company is gambling? Yeah just shut the fuck up already!
High-school dropout nepo-baby Bill Gates? That one?
The guy that stole IBMs UI setup and made Windows?
Xerox’s
TBF, he dropped out of Harvard.
Why do subscription billionaires think they automatically become “professionals” of societal progress?
But what about my good billionaire? :( /s
He should only take advice from Balmer. And to be clear, the cocaine Balmer.
Instructions unclear: drowning in an abundance of photographical developer
Might I add, also disrespectfully.
No respect needed.
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Respectfully, Bill Gates is a piece of shit.
