Bill Gates Is Playing Both Sides of the Climate Crisis.

jacobin.com Bill Gates Is Playing Both Sides of the Climate Crisis

Bill Gates presents himself as a climate champion, but his trust has actually increased its fossil fuel investments since his divestment pledge. It's just the latest example of the billionaire appointing himself to solve problems he helps perpetuate.

Bill Gates presents himself as a climate champion, but his trust has actually increased its fossil fuel investments since his divestment pledge. It's just the latest example of the billionaire appointing himself to solve problems he helps perpetuate.

United States | News & Politics @midwest.social

BrikoX @lemmy.zip

5d ago

Bill Gates Is Playing Both Sides of the Climate Crisis

jacobin.com /2025/02/bill-gates-oil-divestment-climate/

38 0

23 comments

Na, he's only playing the one side - his own. Always has, always will. All billionaires do, that's how they ended up that way.

Wow, so the vicious thieving robber-baron who has promoted himself as a champion of the people is actually a two-faced liar?
Colour me shocked.

There’s no such thing as an ethical billionaire.

This was painfully obvious when he was confronted by a journalist over the fact that GenAI was boiling the planet alive and he said that we will figure out the climate crisis later. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/27/ai-bill-gates-climate-targets-datacentres-energy

Thats not news he did that for years and its 90+% fossil investments vs renewables

Everyone drop what you're doing right now and just go read about the Sultans of Caves of Qud. Grand tales, obituaries a mile long strewn with deeds. In actuality they were fragmented warlords who didnt get much done, but if you looked at their tombs you'd think they were gods. This is exactly that; powerful people trying to prove their shit doesnt stink through propaganda.
- Unexpectedqud

The people that love Gates are the same ones that love unchecked corporate power.

Owning stocks in oil companies has nothing to do with funding oil companies. The money doesn't go to the oil company.
It's like buying a used DVD. The film industry doesn't get any money from your purchase.
- It does if the company issues new shares...
  
  When was the last time Exxon Mobile issued new shares? I searched for quite a bit and couldn't find anything. ( A stock spit isn't issuing new shares.)
- Theoretically someone with a lot of money could buy a large percentage of a company's shares, become a major shareholder, and then vote on company resolutions. If anything, owning shares gives you power to change the company.
  
  These are for profit public companies, they are legally required to prioritize profits over anything else. Even if you had a controlling stake if you tried to push through something that would decrease profits, like lowering fossil fuel production, or even adding expensive carbon capture methods that would cut into the bottom line, the rest of the shareholders could sue you.
- Owning a stock keeps the price high though as you're restricting supply, and it looks like his trust has also bought more shares so it's increasing the demand as well.
  A high stock price doesn't fund the industry directly, unless it's a smaller company that's still issuing stock which he also seems to be invested in a lot of those. It does increase the power of the industry though. If a lot of people divested from fossil fuels that would lower the value of the stock and the net worth of the principal owners. Those principal owners are currently using their money to bribe politicians into ignoring the climate crisis and to increase fossil fuel extraction. If they had less money to do that, then it'd be a lot easier to pass legislation to address climate change.
  He also seems to be buying bonds in the industry as well which is more directly funding the industry. Also, a high stock price allows the companies to get more bonds at a cheaper rate, so that also helps to fund the industry.
  All of this is also missing the main point of the article in that bill gates is profiting from the fossil fuel industry and has a stake in seeing it continue, while pretending he's a champion for climate change.

23 comments