So, billionaire, Bill Gates has decided that climate change is no longer the existential threat to humankind that he has been claiming it was for at least the last two decades. So what does that mean? Does that mean Al Gore’s film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, was all hogwash? The film for which he was awarded an Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize, that gave us the dire warning that world was on the brink of disastrous flooding and a massive hellscape inferno the likes of an apocalyptic doomsday the earth had never seen before, if humans didn’t make sacrifices on the altar of ‘man-made’ climate change? You know, the same Al Gore whose mansion in Nashville, Tennessee, uses more electricity in one month than the average North American family uses in nearly three years, and whose gigantic heated swimming pool uses enough electricity to power six average homes for a year.

Does Gate’s claim mean that the two percent of scientists who questioned the validity of human-induced climate change were right and that the 98 percent of the scientists happily pocketing more government grants to pursue their ‘in depth work’ on solving climate change, were wrong? Does that mean the United Nations and all the leftist politicians and other climate grifters that took teenage climate ‘scholar’ Greta Thunberg’s climate change hysteria seriously can now sheepishly admit that they went a little overboard in using a young girl with some serious mental health issues as a pawn to promote their climate change agendas?

Does this mean that leftist politicians and news media can stop blaming every single weather event and natural disaster from hurricanes, tornadoes and heat waves to seasonal forest fires and flooding on climate change?

Does this mean that we can finally tell the Hollywood elites who have never given up a single one of their luxuries and perks – from their numerous mansions to their private jets and yachts to shut up about how much they care about the planet and the fight against climate change. That would include Leonardo DiCaprio, Jane Fonda, Madonna, Ben Affleck, and Harrison Ford along with dynamic decrepit duo of Daryl Hannah and Neil Young — to name just a few from a very long list.

Does this mean that we can now give credence to the opinions of climate realists like Steve Koonin, author of Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters? The same goes for Michael Shellenberger, author of Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, and Roger Pielke Jr., author of The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters and Climate Change. Have they been correct, all along, in their assertion that while climate change is real, it is not an existential threat, and that the obsessive focus on carbon distracted us from the real problems of the world such as abject poverty and disease? Because for years they have been censored, mocked, accused of being ‘climate change deniers’ and pushed out of institutions for saying what Bill Gates now seems to be admitting.

So what has changed Bill’s mind? Is it perhaps that he has seen the writing on the wall and the mounting skepticism about climate change among the general population?Recent polling in the United States indicates only two percent of Americans see climate change as a ‘top tier’ issue as was revealed on CNN of all places.

Is it because after two decades of ringing this alarm bell and scaring people half to death about the world ending in raging fires and floods, so much so that young people are gluing themselves to museum floors to demand more be done to fight climate change, the majority of the people aren’t buying it anymore. Perhaps because people have noticed how the Hollywood elite, and guys like Bill, and Al, and let’s not forget politicians like John Kerry the former Special Presidential Envoy for Climate for the Biden Administration, former Prime Ministers like Justin Trudeau of Canada, and Tony Blair of Britain, and the current Canadian PM Mark Carney, all climate change advocates, are still jetting around the world in their private jets living the high life.

They sip their fine wines and feast on caviar and prime rib, while telling the little people they will have to eat bugs to stop the planet from burning up.

Now Gates isn’t getting a free ride on this ‘change of heart’ because many conservative critics who have long been calling him out for his climate change alarmism aren’t cutting him any slack.

President Donald Trump couldn’t wait to land the first punch, claiming victory over the “hoax” of climate change on his Truth Social platform, “I (WE) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that we was completely WRONG on the issue.”

Conservative writer and lawyer Hans Mahncke, author of Swiftboating in America: Exposing the Russiagate Fraud was a bit more strident in commenting on Bill’s new stance on climate change posting on X. “While some may be tempted to applaud Bill Gates for finally seeing the light, the reality is that he inflicted untold damage on society and an entire generation. His relentless fear mongering convinced millions of kids (and plenty of impressionable adults too) that ‘climate change’ was an existential threat. Trillions were wasted on climate gimmicks, and trillions more were siphoned off by NGOs and grifters, all at the expense of the world’s poor and the causes that actually mattered. It was, and remains, a hoax of historic proportions.”

So does that mean all the western governments, including our Liberal government here in Canada can dial back all the wasteful spending on ‘climate gimmicks’ that include useless, but crippling carbon taxes, oil production caps, and emission reduction programs that have cost taxpayers billions and only serve to stunt the country’s economic growth and prosperity? Can they dispense with the pipe dreams of creating truly efficient renewable energy sources, other than nuclear power, and stop subsidizing car manufacturers with incentives to increase their production of electric vehicles that nobody wants?

Many commentators view Gates’s shift on climate change as simply focusing on resilience and adaptation, rather than purely prevention and emission cuts. But, is it really; is he really walking back on his claim that climate change is an existential threat to humanity, or is he just moving the goal posts and muddying the waters around the issue? Because, as the saying goes, and it is ever so true — the Devil is always in the details. And the Devil is there indeed, because here is what Gates has really said in his very own words from his own gatesnotes.com memo on the subject.

According to the climate ‘expert’ Bill these are the three major points he makes at the outset of his memo.

The first is that climate change is still serious, but he writes, “We’ve made progress and we need to keep backing breakthroughs that will help the world reach ZERO EMISSIONS.

His second point is that “We can’t cut funding for health and development–programs that help people stay resilient in the face of climate change–to do it.

And his final point is that, “It’s time to put human welfare at the centre of our climate strategies, which includes reducing the Green Premium to zero and improving agriculture and health in poor countries. For those of you not familiar with the term Green Premium, it represents the additional cost of choosing an ‘environmentally friendly’ energy product or technology compared to its cheaper conventional, ‘less sustainable counterpart.’

Gates proposal is to try and reduce the Green Premium to zero, by making the cost of clean, zero-emission technologies and products equal to, or cheaper in price, than their fossil-fuel-based counterparts.

The entire memo is sixteen pages long, and talks about how his new views on climate change not being an existential threat to humanity, must be the major focus of the upcoming climate summit, COP30 which will be held Brazil in November of this year. He explains in the memo that, “It’s not too late to adopt a different view and adjust our strategies for dealing with climate change. Next month’s global climate summit in Brazil, known as COP30, is an excellent place to begin, especially because the summit’s Brazilian leadership is putting climate adaptation and human development high on the agenda.”

But really if you examine his three points closely, it is not difficult to see where Gates is going and what it means for those who want the climate alarmism to come to a complete halt as opposed to the climate activists and grifters who want to keep milking it for all its worth. The big red flag is point one — the need to keep backing breakthroughs that will help the world reach ZERO EMISSIONS.

That point certainly seems to give governments like our Liberal government in Canada, that has had a clear ‘green agenda’ for the past decade, and going forward, to ‘keep backing’ all of its policies aimed at achieving ‘net zero’. There is nothing Gates says, other slowing the pace of reaching zero emissions that will do much to change policy directions in countries that are on this track already — to keep backing breakthroughs — i.e. spending more tax dollars on them. What possible proof or measurement can be used to demonstrate they are slowing the pace in this area other than by their own claims?

His second point — that, “We can’t cut funding for health and development–programs that help people stay resilient in the face of climate change–to do it, may seem a little vague. But there is a paragraph in his memo that gets to the heart of it. It seems rich countries aren’t doing enough to help poorer countries deal with the effects of climate change. “The pool of money available to help them—which was already less than 1 percent of rich countries’ budgets at its highest level—is shrinking as rich countries cut their aid budgets and low-income countries are burdened by debt.”

What Gates seems to be blind to is that most ‘rich’ countries are also up to their eyeballs in debt and have already provided billions with the view to assisting poorer countries ‘adapt to climate change’. This includes countries like Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and even the United States. And one of the reasons they are in debt is because of the aid they already provided in this regard, and the ‘investments’ they’ve made in their own ‘green energy’ projects that have failed miserably. Just look at the train wreck Germany is if you want the best or worst example of that, depending on how you view it. So what might this point mean for the ‘rich’ countries, or the countries that are perceived as rich like Canada. Given the Liberal government’s penchant for virtue signalling, what is the likelihood that they will commit to sending more taxpayer dollars to these poorer countries for this noblest of causes?

His final point is that, “It’s time to put human welfare at the centre of our climate strategies, which includes reducing the Green Premium to zero and improving agriculture and health in poor countries. Gates argues that this means innovating in ‘clean’ technologies across key sections such as electricity, agriculture, transportation, manufacturing and buildings, until these sustainable options become as affordable or cheaper than dirty ones (you know like oil and natural gas).

But what does it take to ‘innovate’? Money, of course, so this sounds very much like giving governments already too heavily invested in ‘green energy’ the green light to continue to ‘invest’ more tax dollars to speed up research related to solar and wind energy, carbon capture, and hydrogen fuel, etc. along with anything else that proves to and to be ‘sustainable’ with the goal of making them more affordable for consumers in order to reduce that Green Premium to zero.

But according to Gates, “But we will have the tools we need if we focus on innovation. With the right investments and policies in place, over the next ten years we will have new affordable zero-carbon technologies ready to roll out at scale. Add in the impact of the tools we already have, and by the middle of this century emissions will be lower and the gap between poor countries and rich countries will be greatly reduced.”

And who, exactly will put in place those investments and policies and commit to them? Might that be governments that buy into Bill’s new climate agenda? Excuse my skepticism but Gates’s climate obsession is a bit tiresome and this whole ‘new approach’ just sounds like more ‘climate gimmicks’ wrapped up in the noble cause of lifting poor countries out of poverty. But its sounds an awful lot like the same horse, just one of a different colour.