Climate-Aware Billionaires Have Lost The Plot
Oligarchs like Gates, Musk and Branson want to do the right thing but are surrounded by people confirming biases they formed in the early 2000s
As we celebrate the passing of another year with the rituals of our religions, our families and our cultures, spare a thought for a poor benighted billionaires who are trying and failing miserably to address climate change. They have a place to stand, a lever long enough, yet cannot move the world. Everyone around them keeps telling them that they are right, yet nothing that they do succeeds.
Imagine, if you will, being Bill Gates, spending another Christmas in his echoing 100,000 square foot mansion in the suburbs of Seattle, Washington. No, this isn’t another story about his home automation system blue screening and leaving him shivering in the dark waiting for tech support because it runs on Windows, although that is a reason to pity him as well.
For two decades, Gates has been funding directly and indirectly through Breakthrough Energy Ventures innumerable startups in the climate space. Yet none are disrupting the world. None are actually breaking through and solving climate change. Not that Gates is aware of it, but an outsized number of them simply invite ridicule. Everyone…
