Bill Gates: Go Ahead and Snooze the Doomsday Clock

According to Bill Gates, a once outspoken and highly resourced climate alarmist, you can hit the snooze button on the “Doomsday” alarm clock.

On Tuesday, the Microsoft co-founder wrote a blog post on what he wants the world – specifically everyone at COP30 – to know. Ironically, though, Gates not only suggests we don’t need to worry just yet about the end of the world, but that most of us will enjoy living in a prosperous era and place for years to come.

“Although climate change will have serious consequences — particularly for people in the poorest countries — it will not lead to humanity’s demise,” Gates wrote. “People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.”

Gates’ admission is in stark contrast to years of warning about climate change; we’ve all been on the brink of physical annihilation due to global warming for years.

“Climate change is a terrible problem, and it absolutely needs to be solved,” Gates famously warned. “It deserves to be a huge priority.”

For more than a decade, Gates has used a significant amount of his fortune investing in efforts to lower greenhouse gas emissions. His goal was to try to lower atmospheric temperatures, believing that by doing so, certain catastrophe could either be slowed down or prevented completely.

It would seem Bill Gates remains committed to many of these priorities. Now, he’s acknowledging the importance of helping people over lowering the air or sea temperatures by a few degrees.

“Our chief goal should be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions who live in the world’s poorest countries,” Gates wrote.

One of the most sad and unfortunate ironies of the environmental extremist movement is that, in many cases, scientists have pushed for policies which have hurt more people than they’ve helped.

Beginning in the late 1960s, one of the worst offenders has been Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb. He claimed that by the 1970s, “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” He predicted England would become “a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people.”

The environmental extremist also suggested “all important life in the sea will be extinct.”

Ehrlich has been so wrong for so long you’d think his words wouldn’t be heeded anymore – yet he’s still regularly quoted and held in high esteem by scientists and in the media.

It’s one thing to make ridiculously uninformed and radical predictions, but it’s a different story when such claims cause countries and people to change behaviors and lifestyles for the worse. The radical environmental movement caused countries to spend money they don’t have to make changes that won’t change anything in our climate.

In the past, Ehrlich called on families to have fewer children because he sees large families as unduly burdening the environment and quickening its collapse.

“We must have population control at home, hopefully through a system of incentives and penalties, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail,” he once wrote. “We must use our political power to push other countries into programs which combine agricultural development and population control.”

Gates’ recent post makes it clear he’s still on the climate change policy train, but with a twist.

“In short, climate change, disease, and poverty are all major problems. We should deal with them in proportion to the suffering they cause,” he wrote.

While having grown up in a Christian family, Bill Gates has most recently described himself as being agnostic. At the same time, his philosophical shift here, at least at its edges, appears to comport with what we’re called to prioritize as believers when it comes to the environment. God calls us to be good stewards of His creation (Gen. 2:15) – but to also care for the poor and needy (Proverbs 19:17, Isaiah 58:10).

Christians can rest easy, despite the claims of people who catastrophize, including Paul Ehrlich. The Earth’s end isn’t in mankind’s hands, but rather a matter of God’s sovereignty and a piece of His perfect plan. 

Image from Shutterstock.