There is a stunted type of political vision that can only ever imagine the world getting better through the cognitive largesse of the power elite. This vision begins from the bedrock beliefs that (a) there is a social hierarchy, (b) it is basically meritocratic, and © it produces a rising tide that lifts all boats.

The cognitive largesse can take two forms. (1) Geniuses can innovate, gifting us with new technologies or business ideas, or (2) Geniuses can make large, magnanimous gifts to the less-fortunate.

If one buys into this political vision, then it stands to reason that you should never do anything to make the rich and powerful uncomfortable. Taxes and legal restraints and unions just slow them down and make them feel less generous. The path to building a better world necessarily runs through the better angels of their nature.

(I wrote about all this in my 2020 essay about the Clock of the Long Now. It’ll also be in the forthcoming book.)

In 2021, Bill Gates wrote an entire book titled How To Avoid a Climate Disaster. He took seriously that climate change was a generational threat. The better angels of his nature were up to the challenge. And he indicated in the book that he knew this would be a long, hard slog.

It has only been four years. By some measures, we have seen remarkable progress. The cost of renewable energy has plummeted. If we just have the political will to prevent fossil fuel companies from extracting market-bending favors, the trajectory of the energy sectors would look pretty damn promising right now.

But the politics of 2025 couldn’t be much farther from the politics of 2021, particularly in the United States. The Trump Administration has declared climate change a hoax. They are defunding scientific research and canceling already-existing clean energy projects. They are weaponizing the IRS to pursue political enemies, a list which includes the climate movement.

And meanwhile, centrist pundits from the “popularist” school of thought have decided that climate is a bummer of an issue, and are telling Democratic elected officials that the electoral cost of taking the climate crisis seriously outweigh the benefits.

This is a time when your fair-weather-friends flee to the hills.

And now it seems that Bill Gates has gone full Llomborg. Bjorn Llomborg has been a mini-celebrity for around 25 years. His schtick, in a nutshell, is as follows:

• Climate change is real, but it won’t be all that bad.
• There is a finite and fixed pool of resources that humanity can spend making things better.
• So the responsible thing to do is to apply cost-benefit analysis and make sure our money does the greatest good for the greatest number.

Aw shucks. It turns out that we can do way more good by focusing on mosquito nets and world hunger! Inaction on climate change is downright responsible, when you think about it! Think of this as proto-effective altruism. Llomborg has been banging this drum since before William MacAskill hit puberty. He figured out long ago that there is money and fame in telling the rich and powerful, “everything will be just fine.”

It’s pathetic, but it isn’t the least bit surprising. The fight against climate change was always going to require technologies and markets and a social movement with the political will to make inconvenient demands upon the powerful. This was never going to be easy, nor was it ever going to be quick.

Bill Gates and his pals were never going to be anything but fair-weather-friends to the climate movement, because they lack the political vision to imagine that the problems of global climate change are also problems of the global social hierarchy that they sit comfortably atop.