Bill Gates’s Climate Climbdown — While Miliband Doubles Down

At long last, the high priest of climate catastrophe sounds almost reasonable. About time.

The climbdown

After years of sermonising about apocalypse and net zero at any cost, Bill Gates now says climate change won’t cause “humanity’s demise” and that the priority should be improving lives, not chasing sacred numbers. He is right to ditch the doomsday routine and talk about human welfare and trade-offs. The 1.5°C fantasy is slipping away and honest people admit it.

That is what many of us have said all along. You do not pauperise people to “save” them. You innovate, you adapt and you weigh costs against benefits like adults.

The inconvenient memory

This is the same Gates who flogged How to Avoid a Climate Disaster in 2021 and flirted with solar geoengineering. Spraying particles in the sky to dim the sun. That sort of measure belongs behind glass marked “break in case of civilisation’s actual collapse,” not on the policy menu for a normal Tuesday. Now he talks about development, vaccines and real-world welfare as better uses of limited resources. Welcome to the conversation, Bill.

Reality bites

Energy and prosperity move together. We are sprinting into an AI world of data centres, chips and always-on compute. That takes power. Reliable, abundant, affordable power. You do not run a modern economy on wishful thinking and the occasional sunny afternoon. Even Silicon Valley can hear the grid groaning.

Meanwhile in Westminster: Miliband’s wind-and-solar fixation

Gates edges toward pragmatism while Ed Miliband steers Britain in the opposite direction. Labour won power then ripped up the de facto ban on onshore wind within days, fast-tracking turbines through planning and promising to make Britain a “clean energy superpower” by 2030. The government’s own pages boast of lifting the ban, accelerating consents and setting up “2030 Mission Control.” This is not a gentle nudge, it is a full-throttle push.