Bill Gates: No One Wants to Be ‘The First to Say It,’ but the Paris Agreement Climate Goal Is Not Within Reach

US businessman Bill Gates arrives for TIME 100 Gala at Lincoln Center in New York City, on June 8, 2022. (Photo by Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)

Software billionaire Bill Gates recently admitted that the climate change target as established by the Paris Climate Accord will likely not be met.

The 2015 Paris Climate Accord has a goal of limiting global warming below 2 degrees C—and preferably below 1.5 degrees C—compared to preindustrial levels. In a recent interview with Reuters, Gates said that while no one wants to be “the first to say it,” the math shows the target is not within reach. Taking into account “the overall scale of our industrial economy … we’re going to have to do mind-blowing work to stay below 2 degrees.”

Gates has invested more than $2 billion in climate technologies. He founded the Breakthrough Energy Group in 2015, which funds areas that advance low-carbon tech.

Gates believes the global challenge is now shifting toward ensuring people are able to adapt to a harsher, hotter climate.

Breakthrough Group also funds adaptation-related work, which includes technologies that can develop crop strains capable of withstanding drought, help control forest fires, and so on.

Companies exploring low-carbon ideas need technical and investment support to help push them beyond the pilot phase and to scale up manufacturing, Gates said.

US Involvement

Under the Trump administration, the United States pulled out from the Paris agreement in November 2020. Back in 2019, when he announced the departure, Trump said that the “one-sided” climate agreement was “terrible” for the United States.

“It was almost as though it was meant to hurt the competitiveness—really, [the] competitiveness of the United States. So, we did away with that one,” he said at the time.

Then in January 2021, just hours after being sworn in, President Joe Biden issued an executive order to have the United States rejoin the agreement.

In a November op-ed, Stephen Moore, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, pointed out that the United States is not even the top polluter in the world, a position that goes to China.

In 2020, China ranked as the top-polluting nation, emitting 9,899 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. The United States came in at a distant second, with only half the emissions, at 4,457 million tons.

Moore batted for gas to be the “21st-century power source,” calling it the planet’s “wonder fuel.” He criticized the push to switch to “expensive 19th century” energy sources like solar panels and windmills.

Warming and CO2

In an interview with Epoch TV’s “Crossroads,” Gregory Wrightstone, executive director of the CO2 Coalition, a nonprofit organization with a mission to educate about the role of CO2 in the environment, pointed out that carbon dioxide (CO2) is actually beneficial to the planet, rather than a damaging pollutant as characterized by mainstream media.

Over the past few thousand years, there were three warming periods, with each of these warming periods being much warmer than today. However, not only were the carbon dioxide levels much lower, but these warming periods were hugely beneficial for mankind, giving rise to major civilizations.

Abundant CO2, which plants consume, helps plants retain more water. This raises the moisture content in the soil and helps to limit fires around the world, he pointed out.

Wrightstone noted that natural gas is a clean energy source as its byproducts from burning are mostly CO2 and water vapor, which are both “very beneficial molecules.”