Enemies of Energy: The heretic

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Enemies of Energy, a research report created for the Capital Research Center. The page for the full report is here: Enemies of Energy.

***

There’s a doomsday view of climate change that goes like this:

In a few decades, cataclysmic climate change will decimate civilization. The evidence is all around us—just look at all the heat waves and storms caused by rising global temperatures. Nothing matters more than limiting the rise in temperature.

Fortunately for all of us, this view is wrong. [boldface added] [i]

***

These were the first words of an open letter published in October 2025 and addressed to the attendees of COP30—the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference. The author was Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft. Though those words formed the beginning of Gates’s controversial essay, they work just as well as the conclusion for this report on the enemies of energy.^[ii]

At one point in his 5500-word missive Gates wrote: “From the standpoint of improving lives, using more energy is a good thing, because it’s so closely correlated with economic growth. [. . .] More energy use is a key part of prosperity.”^[iii]

Reminding readers that he had “invested billions in innovations” to reduce global temperatures, Gates’s essay still flashed many of the empty virtue signals of the doomsday extremists he was addressing. He continued to promote weather dependent energy systems and electric vehicles as solutions. And at one point he made sure to note that he purchases carbon credits that “fully offset” his own use of hydrocarbons.^[iv]

But still, the majority of what Gates wrote is hard to criticize.

He warned that the climate doomsday perspective was “causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.” ^[v]

He asked: “Is the money designated for climate being spent on the right things?” and then concluded: “I believe the answer is no.” ^[vi]

Predicting (accurately) that he would be criticized for saying it, Gates confessed that fighting global warming was not the most critical challenge confronting humanity, particularly the humans most exposed to the weather:^[vii]

Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. The biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been. Understanding this will let us focus our limited resources on interventions that will have the greatest impact for the most vulnerable people.^[viii]

Limited resources is a phrase that never gets used enough in policy debates.

In place of the climate doomsday view, Gates proposed the following new truths to guide the environmental movement:^[ix]

• Climate change is a serious problem, but it will not be the end of civilization. This is the section wherein he explained the important connection between energy use and prosperity. It included a thoughtful explanation of the value of emissions-free nuclear power, which Gates has been promoting for many years.^[x]

• Temperature is not the best way to measure our progress on climate. He suggested prioritizing human welfare rather than temperature and noted that “sometimes human welfare takes a backseat to lowering emissions, with bad consequences.” He provided a specific example of a “low-income country” that banned synthetic fertilizers, made from hydrocarbons, to “cut emissions” and managed instead to cut crop yields and increase food prices.^[xi]

• Health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change. This was a simple and obvious message: richer people can afford the things they need to adapt to weather extremes, rising seas and whatever else a rough world can throw at them. ^[xii]

So, the secret to protecting humanity from the weather is to promote prosperity rather than impede it. And the path to that prosperity runs through abundant and affordable energy. These things have been true since there were humans and prosperity.

Parents who cannot turn lights on nor clothe their children will not worry over the plastic pollution they pour into the ocean, the slaughtering of endangered species for profit, nor the air pollutants if someone builds them a coal-fired power plant to belatedly electrify their world.

But that prosperity, even if it comes initially from burning coal, will give them the luxury to worry about cleaning up their world and then conserving what they can afford to protect.

The introduction of this report told the story of the defacement of Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park more than a century ago. Then as now, the path to human flourishing was tied to abundant water and electricity. Options for both were harder to come by at the time, so damning the river and flooding Hetch Hetchy was portrayed as sensible.

But today’s America has vastly more options for obtaining energy and water, not least of which is using abundant energy to create fresh water. And a wealthier population can now afford to pay for these options. Today’s Americans would never have flooded Hetch Hetchy. We can afford not to.

The saving of the bald eagle, the proper disposal of our plastic waste, a national park system that is the envy of the world and hundreds of other examples demonstrate the same point. No nation has benefitted more from burning hydrocarbons than the United States. No nation’s land and creatures have benefited more from the wealth those hydrocarbons created.

That is an environment worth protecting. Doing so should once again become the goal of the environmental movement.

PDF hyperlink to full report

Endnotes

[i] Gates, Bill. “Three tough truths about climate.” GatesNotes.com. October 28, 2025. Accessed April 27, 2026. https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/three-tough-truths-about-climate

[ii] Gates, Bill. “Three tough truths about climate.” GatesNotes.com. October 28, 2025. Accessed April 27, 2026. https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/three-tough-truths-about-climate

[iii] Gates, Bill. “Three tough truths about climate.” GatesNotes.com. October 28, 2025. Accessed April 27, 2026. https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/three-tough-truths-about-climate

[iv] Gates, Bill. “Three tough truths about climate.” GatesNotes.com. October 28, 2025. Accessed April 27, 2026. https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/three-tough-truths-about-climate

[v] Gates, Bill. “Three tough truths about climate.” GatesNotes.com. October 28, 2025. Accessed April 27, 2026. https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/three-tough-truths-about-climate

[vi] Gates, Bill. “Three tough truths about climate.” GatesNotes.com. October 28, 2025. Accessed April 27, 2026. https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/three-tough-truths-about-climate

[vii] Gates, Bill. “Three tough truths about climate.” GatesNotes.com. October 28, 2025. Accessed April 27, 2026. https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/three-tough-truths-about-climate

[viii] Gates, Bill. “Three tough truths about climate.” GatesNotes.com. October 28, 2025. Accessed April 27, 2026. https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/three-tough-truths-about-climate

[ix] Gates, Bill. “Three tough truths about climate.” GatesNotes.com. October 28, 2025. Accessed April 27, 2026. https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/three-tough-truths-about-climate

[x] Gates, Bill. “Three tough truths about climate.” GatesNotes.com. October 28, 2025. Accessed April 27, 2026. https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/three-tough-truths-about-climate

[xi] Gates, Bill. “Three tough truths about climate.” GatesNotes.com. October 28, 2025. Accessed April 27, 2026. https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/three-tough-truths-about-climate

[xii] Gates, Bill. “Three tough truths about climate.” GatesNotes.com. October 28, 2025. Accessed April 27, 2026. https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-topic/reader/three-tough-truths-about-climate

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/enemies-of-energy-the-heretic/