Back in August, we wrote about Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates after he warned of another looming crisis that could be worse than the coronavirus. In his blog notes, Gates estimates that 3 million people could die by 2100 if climate change is not stopped.
More than a month later, Gates continues his gloom and doom warning about the danger of climate change. In an interview with Bloomberg’s Erik Schatzker, Gates answered the question about the overlaps between the challenge of fighting the pandemic and fighting climate change. Gates said:
“The pandemic illustrates that government didn’t look out for us despite the warnings that were out there. Climate fits that same paradigm. Sadly, the problem gets worse and worse, and there isn’t a solution like a vaccine where you can spend tens of billions of dollars and bring it to a close. No, climate change is much harder. The damage that will be done every year will be greater than what we’ve seen during this pandemic.“
When asked about the conspiracy theorists who believe that you helped to create and spread the coronavirus might be easy to dismiss if there weren’t so many of them. Gates said:
“It’s so crazy to suggest the opposite. We make vaccines, and that has saved millions of lives. To somehow say that a vaccine is malign or that the deaths aren’t really taking place, it’s surprising to me how interesting that is, and it spreads far more quickly than the truth. How should these social media platforms try to avoid being the source of these weirdly interesting falsehoods? That’s a debate or discussion we’re going to have to continue to have.”
In his earlier blog post, Gates wrote at the time that considering that “more than 600,000 people are known to have died from COVID-19 worldwide” as of August 3, Gates estimated that on an annualized basis, “that is a death rate of 14 per 100,000 people.”
Gates later compared and projected what the consequence would be if climate change is not addressed. Gate wrote:
How does that compare to climate change? Within the next 40 years, increases in global temperatures are projected to raise global mortality rates by the same amount—14 deaths per 100,000. By the end of the century, if emissions growth stays high, climate change could be responsible for 73 extra deaths per 100,000 people. In a lower emissions scenario, the death rate drops to 10 per 100,000.
Gates went to infer that, “by 2060, climate change could be just as deadly as COVID-19, and by 2100 it could be five times as deadly.” Gates projected that by 2100, 600,000 times five could die if climate change is not addressed.
You can watch the video of the interview below.
