Perhaps it's unsurprising that a billionaire has no interest in structural and political change. But @BillGates's belief that he can save the planet with technologies alone, while dissing popular movements and systemic transformation, is as naive as it is arrogant.
Moreover, his attack on divestment campaigns suggests he hasn't grasped even the basic dynamics of preventing climate breakdown:
It doesn't matter how many solar plants you build unless you simultaneously, and proactively, shut down fossil fuel investment.
Otherwise the political power of those with sunk costs will impede and stymie transition. Technical change is essential, but it's only a partial answer to economic power, and no answer at all to political power.
Gates's claim to be using "sustainable aviation fuel" in his private jets is just nonsense.
Because of jets' vast energy demand, there is currently no fuel that can be sustainably scaled. Biofuel for jets means massive ecological destruction.
The same goes for his claim to be offsetting his vast carbon footprint. There is simply no atmospheric space left for offsets, especially if they're used to justify such profligacy. Every sector needs to be decarbonised. Offloading cuts onto other sectors solves nothing.
Fundamentally, the problem is too much money. However green a person thinks they are, their destructive impacts match their spending. The more you spend, the more you destroy. We all deceive ourselves about the amount of harm we do. Gates turns out to be no exception.
Billionaires, regardless of their good intentions, are a threat to life on Earth.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
We should all try to live by Kant’s Categorical Imperative. In the environmental case, it means: “unless everyone can do this without causing harm, I should not do it.”
If everyone sought to live like @BillGates, we would overwhelm the Earth’s biophysical capacity within days.
The living world is being destroyed by exceptionalism:
“I’m special. So - unlike everyone else - I deserve that holiday in the Seychelles, that joint of beef, that SUV, those shares in an oil firm, that private jet.”

We should live in a way that everyone can live: modestly.

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More from @GeorgeMonbiot

16 Feb
I keep being asked why I don’t go into politics.
There are a few reasons:
1. I'd be rubbish at it.
2. I mean really rubbish.
3. I'd prefer to see women, people of colour and young people entering politics, rather than someone else with my profile.
But more importantly … 🧵
4. To create change, we need an ecosystem: people with a wide variety of skills, performing a wide variety of tasks.
We need researchers, journalists, campaigners, organisers, supporters, fundraisers, administrators etc, as well as politicians.
5. Some of these tasks are incompatible. For instance, if I went into politics, I wouldn’t be free to decide what I think, or to change my mind as soon as the evidence changes. I would have to bite my lip and follow a party line. In other words, I couldn’t do the things I do now.
Read 5 tweets
16 Feb
The government is trying to prevent a "re-evaluation" of our imperial past. What doesn't it want us to see?
In this thread from last year, I list some of the skeletons it is seeking to keep in the closet.
Quick, look the other way!
Here's another thread on the UK's hidden colonial atrocities and their connections to today's power structures, which intersects with the first one, but draws on more examples:
Behind these histories lies an even bigger and more sacrilegious truth. It's that the system we call capitalism, which exists vaguely in our minds, but that most people see as "something to do with buying and selling" is really a system of global theft.
Read 8 tweets
15 Feb
Billionaire power exists in conflict with democratic power.
Billionaires happen because of regulatory failure (weak anti-trust, employment, environmental laws etc).
They persist due to fiscal failure (not enough tax).
No one, in a functioning democracy, should be this rich.
When billionaires become sufficiently powerful, and governments become sufficiently weak, people start believing that they can solve the problems that made them so rich, and which they have almost certainly exacerbated.
You might as well believe in magic.
But we are now creating a superman myth, investing people like Musk and Gates with powers they either do not or should not possess.
In doing so, we enhance their power, and democracy is further weakened.
Read 9 tweets
11 Feb
It would be madness to build these roads in the midst of a climate emergency, and when businesses are at last adopting 21st Century technologies for meetings, instead of sending people all over the country.
We should be retiring roads, not building them.
theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/f…
These days, new roads tend to be built not for the benefit of travellers, but for the benefit of contractors.
There is an interesting, perverse logic which ensures that the very worst schemes get selected. I try to explain it here:
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Read 4 tweets
8 Feb
Revolting. And please remember the "justification", which is the justification for mass slaughter of this kind the world over:
To protect livestock.
Why must the natural world have to give way, across so much of the planet, to cattle and sheep?
In the UK, we've wiped out our larger predators, but our wildlife is still being slaughtered, at the behest of the same industry.
Even moles are massacred, for fear that they might spoil cattle feed.
Read 6 tweets
7 Feb
Perhaps there's one thing most of us can agree on?
*Repeated lockdowns are a symptom of policy failure.*
To avoid them, we need:
- A professional test, trace, isolate, support system
- Widest possible vaccine coverage
- Universal mask wearing wherever transmission is likely
🧵
- Major refurbs of schools, colleges, workplaces etc, to make them C19-safe.
- For schools, this means:
a. dedicated government funding for ventilation etc
b. Nightingale classrooms and outdoor learning facilities
c. Hiring new teaching assistants and vaccinated retired teachers
- Clearly stated objectives for the current lockdown, and a set of published criteria that must be met before ending it.
- An overall pandemic strategy, publicly visible, so that it can be debated and refined.
- More funding and greater security for the NHS.
Read 6 tweets

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