Is Bill Gates right? Call to put climate resilience before rising temperatures
Description
Is too much effort devoted to the planet's warming and not enough to helping humans adapt to the new normal? The Microsoft co-founder-cum-billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates is turning the heat up on activists traveling to the COP30, the annual UN climate summit this year in the Brazilian Amazon city of Belem.
We review the argument that the transition to cleaner energies is already bearing fruit, making the Paris Agreement projections of 2015 obsolete. Or, with coal and oil production still rising, is it too soon to take the foot off the gas of green investment?
In an age of echo chambers and slashed public spending, critics have seized on Gates's remarks as proof, they say, that climate change is a hoax – or, as is the case in Europe, to renew calls to roll back environmental norms in the name of competitiveness.
So, as insurance companies count the cost of rising sea levels, fiercer storms and deadlier fires, how to best invest in humanity's common future?
Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Charles Wente.
United States
