If Greta Fenberg is reading this — my goodness, he seems like he's reversing himself

Bill Gates — CNBC Interview (October 2025)

“It’s a super-important problem, and there’s enough innovation to avoid really bad outcomes. We won’t hit our best goals — not 1.5 °C, maybe not even 2 °C — but as we try to minimize that, we have to remember overall human welfare. Everything can’t be solely for climate.”

“If aid budgets to poor countries were still going up as they did for the last 25 years, the trade-off between climate action and saving children’s lives wouldn’t be so acute. But those budgets are now going down — quite a bit. My plea is: take the limited money we have and don’t partition it into separate causes. Measure everything in terms of human welfare — how you actually help people.”

“I was a huge supporter of the Paris Climate Accord — it was a milestone because the world agreed this is a shared problem. Getting countries to commit was very important. The one thing that wasn’t realistic was the very ambitious goal of staying under 1.5 °C. Even if you took all the money away from health, you still wouldn’t reach that. The question now is: what temperature level will we end up at? We must minimize it — but not at the expense of everything else.”

“Companies like Microsoft have made net-zero commitments. That wasn’t a mistake. Their investments helped drive down prices of clean technologies like nuclear fission, fusion, and clean cement. When clean options become cheaper than dirty ones, market economics will solve the problem.”

“If Greta Thunberg or climate activists think I’m reversing myself, I’d say: wasn’t the goal to improve human lives? Should we give children a measles vaccine, or put the same funds toward a project that saves only 0.1 °C of warming? Those are the trade-offs we have to weigh. I’m a climate activist — but I’m also a child-survival activist.”

“People may say I’m changing the goalposts to placate President Trump or others who oppose net-zero, but that’s not the case. I’m glad we promoted new climate technologies, but I was disappointed that some progress was rolled back. We still need all countries working together, just as we need generosity in global aid.”

“If you think climate is the only problem, or not a problem at all, my memo will make no sense. I believe climate is very important — but it has to be viewed through the lens of overall human welfare.”