When Bill Gates published his latest essay on climate change, the response was immediate. Many critics accused him of defeatism or saw the memo as another example of billionaires bending a knee to the climate denialism of President Donald Trump. (Trump himself was a fan.) Others told him to stop opining about climate change. “Respectfully, Bill Gates Should Shut Up,” read a headline by the online magazine Slate.

In his memo, the billionaire who once urged the world to “innovate our way out of a climate disaster” now seemed to be lowering the bar—arguing that global warming, while devastating, “will not lead to humanity’s demise,” and that the world's climate-change strategy should focus on human welfare over temperature or emissions goals. That message struck a nerve in a movement that ha

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