You may have already heard about Bill Gates’s recent turn on global climate change. On his blog, he published a long essay — here are the essential points.
Gates insists that he still holds the orthodox view of human-driven climate change, right down to the details that no longer withstand scrutiny. He repeats the familiar claims: that people living near the equator will be the most affected, or that rising temperatures will generate more hurricanes. In reality, equatorial regions are not warming the way the models predicted, and warmer oceans would reduce hurricane formation. In other words, Gates remains a faithful believer.
Yet despite this, he now calls for a “zero green premium.” Meaning: existing technologies should be replaced with climate-neutral alternatives only when those alternatives are no more expensive, no less available, and carry no additional disadvantages. Gates argues that such technologies can be created — it simply requires more effort and investment.
When it comes to climate policy in general, he says something remarkable: governments should carefully measure the real-world impact of warming — say, two degrees — and compare it with the real-world consequences of climate interventions. In other words, policymakers should avoid the all-too-common trap in which the cure hurts ordinary people more than the disease.
This is a long way from the climate absolutism that dominates Europe. Five years ago, not even Bill Gates could have said such things without being publicly destroyed by radical climate activists.
We are not at a point where climate skepticism prevails. But for the first time in years, there is a genuine plurality of positions — some of them diametrically opposed — and no single faction holds absolute cultural or institutional power. And that is precisely the kind of environment in which different opinions can finally be voiced without fear.
Freedom of speech is not born from lofty ideals about freedom of speech. It is born from a balance of power.