Elizabeth Kolbert writes:

In the lead-up to this year’s COP, every country was supposed to announce an emissions target for itself, extending through 2035. The U.S.submitted such a target in the last month of the Biden Administration; it is now considered largely meaningless. Last week, China submitted its target, which was widely described as inadequate. Brazil’s target, too, has been criticized as insufficient. And, just a few weeks ago, the Brazilian government decided, for the first time, to allow oil drilling near the mouth of the Amazon. Critics called the move “an act of sabotage against the COP.” Marina Silva, the country’s environmental minister, defended the move, saying that Brazil has so far only approved oil exploration in the area and that, in any case, oil drilling is “perfectly compatible” with Brazil’s long-term plans to transition away from fossil fuels.

In the midst of the back-and-forth over Brazil’s move, Bill Gates weighed in with a memo to COP delegates. In it, Gates noted that the world’s poorest people are also the most vulnerable to the effects of rising temperatures. But, he said, these people have more acute problems than warming—namely, being poor. Therefore, he argued, money now spent on reducing emissions would be better spent on encouraging economic growth: “Health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change.”

Gates’s comments generated a swirl of attention, in part because, just a few years ago, he wrote a book warning of a “climate disaster.” Trump, on Truth Social, characterized the memo as an admission by Gates that he had been “completely WRONG,” and cited it as evidence that “I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax.” Gates countered Trump’s crowing by saying that it represented a “gigantic misreading of the memo.”

It is understandable, in the age of Trump, that people—billionaires included—would want to focus on more tractable problems than climate change, even if those problems are as immense as global poverty. After thirty years—or thirty-three, if you’re counting from Rio—it’s hard not to be discouraged by all that has, and hasn’t, happened. But there is no getting away from climate change. All other problems, poverty included, are linked to it and will be exacerbated by it. The notion that you can alleviate suffering in a world of uncontrolled warming isn’t just shortsighted, it edges toward magical thinking.