Fifteen years ago my friend and mentor, climate scientist Stephen Schneidersaid something that stuck with me. When it comes to climate change, “the end of the world” and “good for you” are the “two least likely outcomes.”
Extreme heat is harmful to health – what is the limit of the human body?
Steve's aphorism seems especially prophetic today. As the 30th UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) takes place this month in Belém, Brazil, misleading climate reporting in the media supports both of these extremes.
On the one hand, take the actions of billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates. On October 28, he stunned climate advocates by publishing a manifesto arguing that the climate crisis is less pressing than other major challenges facing humanity (see below). go.nature.com/23xed). Oddly enough, its publication coincided with a potentially devastating landfall in Jamaica strongest Atlantic hurricane everan event whose likelihood has increased due to anthropogenic warming.
Gates didn't mean that global warming is “good for you,” but his argument comes close to that view: Enough progress has already been made on climate, and we should instead prioritize solving what he believes are more pressing issues like poverty and disease.
Despite significant criticism from me and other climate scientists that this represents a false trade-off between climate action and public health, Gates dug in his heels. “What world do they live in?” he said in an interview with the publication Axiostelling reporters that he “willlet the temperature rise 0.1 degrees to get rid of malaria“
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Really, what world does Gates live in? The idea that action to combat climate change must come at the expense of efforts to address human health is a demonstrable fallacy. In our book Science under siege (2025), public health scientist Peter Hotez of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and I detail why these issues are actually inseparable. Human-induced climate change will worsen pandemics, as has happened with COVID-19, and vector-borne diseases, such as malaria. How Gates or anyone else proposes to “get rid of malaria” in a rapidly warming world is anyone's guess. This is a trivial argument.
Gates' turnaround has been celebrated by climate change advocates and fossil fuel advocates in politics, including US President Donald Trumpand in some segments of the media, including newspapers Wall Street Journal And New York Post — even if Gates disavowed their characterizations of his position.
Meanwhile, those who are at the opposite “end of the world” could hardly be more useful. “It may be too late,” Robert Hunziker, a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, California, told a news site just a month ago. Strike back. Such death narratives are often reinforced by the media, which exaggerate the terrible nature about the consequences that have already been laid, with breathtaking headlines about the supposed tipping points that have already been overcome. This fuels a collective sense of hopelessness.
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