Just days before the opening of COP30, Donald Trump claims to have "won the war against the climate change hoax."
While the UN has just warned of the delays experienced by most countries in their fight against global warming, Donald Trump claimed on Wednesday, October 29, to have won "the war against the climate change hoax." This statement follows remarks by the American billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gates denouncing the "catastrophic vision" of experts on global warming. It comes one week before COP30, the thirtieth United Nations Climate Change Conference, which will be held on November 6 and 7 in Belém, Brazil.
“I (WE!) just won the war on the climate change hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted he was totally WRONG on the issue,” the US president claimed on his Truth Social network, using all caps as usual. Praising what he called Bill Gates’s “courage,” Donald Trump, known for his climate change denial and defense of the fossil fuel industry, concluded his message with his famous slogan “MAGA” (for “Make America Great Again”).
In a lengthy post published on his website Monday evening, Bill Gates wrote that global warming would "not lead to the extinction of humanity ." The Microsoft co-founder also called for COP30 to refocus the debate on "improving living conditions" rather than on temperatures or greenhouse gas emissions.
While climate change will have "serious consequences," added the philanthropist, whose fortune, according to Forbes, exceeds $100 billion, "people will be able to live and thrive across most of the planet in the near future." He believes that poverty and disease remain humanity's most pressing problems, and addressing them will help the most vulnerable populations live in a warmer world.
Bill Gates' about-face“We must continue to support advances that will help the world achieve net-zero emissions,” writes this staunch advocate of innovation as a central solution in the fight against climate change. A priority, according to him, must be to drastically reduce the cost difference between CO2- emitting solutions and decarbonized alternatives, which are currently more expensive.
Bill Gates, who left all executive functions at Microsoft in 2008 to devote himself to philanthropy, founded Breakthrough Energy in 2015. This fund has invested more than two billion dollars in emerging technologies, such as low-carbon cement or zero-emission aviation.
As for the Gates Foundation, set up in 2000 and initially dedicated to the fight against diseases, particularly through vaccination, it has, from the beginning of the 2010s, also tackled the fight against climate change, to the point of making Bill Gates one of the world figures in this field.
The billionaire's new vision is irritating climate scientists, who accuse him of offering a false choice between climate action and reducing human suffering. "In reality, the two are intrinsically linked," Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned Scientists told Agence France-Presse.
“Climate change is undermining efforts to eradicate poverty and achieve human development goals around the world,” she added. “Hurricane Melissa, a storm fueled by climate change, is just the latest example of the deadly and costly consequences of climate change for nations already suffering from complex humanitarian situations.”
The world is not on the right trajectoryThe IPCC – the scientists mandated by the United Nations on climate – estimates that emissions must fall by 60% by 2035, compared to 2019, to have a good chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial period, the most ambitious goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement.
But the summary report on countries' climate commitments to 2035, published on October 28, shows that the world is far from being on track. Climate plans drawn up by countries around the world are expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by only "about 10% by 2035," according to a UN calculation published Tuesday, which remains very incomplete due to the delay of around 100 countries in publishing their roadmaps.
With a climate already on average 1.4°C warmer today, many scientists now believe that the 1.5°C threshold will very likely be reached before the end of this decade, as humanity continues to burn ever more oil, fossil gas and coal.
Le Monde with AFP
