For the developed world, climate change will be annoying but not serious. The US may have to give up on Miami and New Orleans, and build seawalls for New York. Some crops may have to be grown further north. Some irrigation systems will need upgrades. More power will be needed for air conditioning. Those will not seriously damage a society. After all, right now the biggest problem in American agriculture is where to put all the excess soy and corn.

Countries in Asia with heavily populated big river delta areas of shallow slope are very vulnerable to small rises in sea level, because the coast moves a long way inland. China and Vietnam can probably engineer their way out of those problems.

Some countries near the equator with political instability are in big trouble.[1] Too poor and too disorganized to upgrade water and agriculture systems.

[1] https://www.rescue.org/article/10-countries-risk-climate-dis...

Spillover of problems like mass migration away from the equator and increase in conflicts.

It's certainly not wrong. If someone smashes your windows at night, robs you, you're in trouble.

If you're being threatened with a weapon, you're in trouble.

If you're unlawfully detained, you're in trouble, as much as you are in trouble when you're detained for a good reason.

But you're also in trouble when you leave your house in a freezing night and don't remember to put your keys in your pocket.

Dehumanizing people who are "in trouble" is as old as humanity itself.

Rape victims are also in trouble.

Even worse, trouble tends to accumulate and amplify existing trouble.

Some people think that's just how the world works.

It's certainly how a world of animals works.

And a "fair" world is hard to imagine, the human condition is partly an attempt to achieve it though.

Autarky can be often found in 19th century literature. The one we hopefully don't want to have or produce anymore.

It is very hard to gauge what he actually believes will happen based on these words

That's not clear at all. Claiming 25%+ of the world will die is the kind of hyperbolic doomsday claim the Gates is trying to move away from because it distracts from sane climate mitigation strategies.

The uncharitable interpretation being that he's trying to toe the line for the current US administration, while still signaling that he's part of the communities that he typically inhabits as part of his charity work.

It is very likely that the time span for an individual is long enough that the change does not matter. Still the future will arrive and most likely sooner than we thought.

Climate change could do a lot of damage it’s just not extinction level damage. Even large scale nuclear war based on current stockpiles isn’t going to result in extinction.

There’s levels of societal collapse, mass migration can destroy the existing social fabric without necessarily being that terrible. Fertility rates being so low means developed countries will likely want large numbers of immigrants.

At the other end stopping all CO2 production tomorrow would result in severe consequences. We can’t transport food to cities without burning fossil fuels. Obviously that doesn’t mean every current use case is worthwhile, but we can’t ignore the short term here.

The good news is we’re actually making a lot of progress on climate change. The electric grid being ~90% very low carbon emissions by 2050 is a realistic goal and would avoid the worst predictions.

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita

Add in more kids being born in 1985 than 2025 and per capita numbers matter. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-births-per-year

Poor countries are rapidly becoming wealthier which is obviously a good thing. Meanwhile wealthy countries are becoming a lot more efficient with their carbon emissions. Where those lines intersect is what matters in the near term because poor countries aren’t copying 1950’s technology. Skipping power hungry CRT screens and inefficient engines etc just makes economic sense. China emissions spiked as they industrialized but they are currently minimizing their investment in outdated fossil fuel based technologies in favor of solar and EV’s etc.

AI powered by renewables has ~zero impact on the climate.

Assuming you are right, when would you expect the rate of atmospheric co2 increases to start to decline?

CO2 from land use (deforestation etc) has already dropped by half since the 1960’s, but I know less about that so I’m unsure of the details. That said it’s well under 10% of total emissions so probably not a major factor for now. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-land-use?mapSelect=~C...

Globally more babies were born in 1985 than 2025. Population growth at this point is all down to people living longer but that’s a one time correction, we’re already in a steady state situation and heading to decline. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-births-per-year

That's not a reason to take such a scenario seriously.

WW2 with it’s restrictions & rationing, and almost all civilian economy/effort being redirected to the military is I think what a lot of people are wanting in my honest opinion.

This is the first message I am hearing, “There are more important things than climate change.”

It’s almost shocking to hear it. The cynical side of my mind is wondering if this is the start of a slow pivot for the political masses. Another news item today says that emissions reduction pledges are not forthcoming in new world climate discussions. Perhaps messaging about climate change is evolving.

Can't read the article, but if he doesn't think climate change will do it, is he offering any new alternatives?

> doomsday message

That term reveals a partisan position: it's a strawperson ridiculing those who talk about the great risks and harms of climate change. 'Don't look up!'

> Interesting and different perspective

It's an old, well-worn perspective, that is commonplace now - especially in American business and government, it's more common than the 'realist' perspective on climate change. It's incredible that they - the entrenched, very powerful status quo power structure - depict themselves as insurgents for advocating the same old climate denial policies.

IMHO: The entrenched capitalists (including Gates) and their power structure simply don't want to change - a bias of the status quo. They are asserting a reactionary conservative position - no change, no matter what, and hate those who want change - regardless of its validity in reality, with the idea that nobody can make them change. They make spurious arguments like Gates to divert people - a tactic they can do endlessly.

The idea that the answer to the enormous damage of the entrenched capitalists is empower them more is, when you think about it, laughable and absurdly myopic and self serving. They can't even carry out the charade for 10 minutes - now those entrenched capitalists are building massive power-consuming datacenters, eliminating ESG, destroying renewable energy in the world's biggest economy ... I'm sure they'll save us.

But notice I keep talking about entrenched capitalists. An essential of capitalism and free markets is creative destruction. These failed capitalists - and climate change is an historic failure, about which their predictions and decisions were enormous errors - should be destroyed (economically) and buried like Lehman Brothers, and new ones, who correctly anticipate it and deal with it, should be funded.

Really, all we need is to stop making taxpayers fund climate change - prevention, remediation, cleanup from disasters, etc. - and have a GHG tax that prices things according to their real cost, rather than subsidizing the current failures. Then real, innovative capitalists in a free market can thrive.

Like I don't think anyone thought the world would implode, but an increase in the number of places humanity can't survive? What if one of those places is South Florida? What if one of those places causes mass emmigration/immigration.

We're on track to warm the planet far past the point that of sustaining something you and I would recognise as human society. That said, we're also changing course which has the opportunity to mitigate things.

The meta part is, if everyone thinks we'll change course, that affects whether we do. There's no straight prediction that can be made.