Energy Musings - November 6, 2025

Cop30 has just opened, but it will be confronting increasing signs of cracks in the climate catastrophe narrative. The Bill Gates treatise on why climate is not the most important issue started it.

Climate Movement In Turmoil As COP30 Opens In Brazil

The climate change movement is showing serious cracks just as thousands of activists, politicians, and regulators arrive in Belém, a Brazilian city in the heart of the Amazon, for the 30th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, otherwise known as COP30, so that it will fit on a bumper sticker. The pow-wow starts today and runs to November 21 – two whole weeks. Get ready for a blizzard of climate catastrophe articles by the media.

How better to demonstrate the seriousness of these activists than by going to the iconic symbol of climate change – the Amazon Rainforest? The 2.7 million square miles of the Amazon basin are covered with 2.3 square miles of forest. Most of the Amazon Basin is located in Brazil, but it spans land in nine South American nations. Of course, the Brazilians had to build a multi-lane road through the forests to ease traveling to this remote city. We always thought preserving forests was a tenet of climate activists.

This is the Amazon image climate activists want you to see.

Source: cntraveler.com

This is what climate activists demanded for COP30.

Source: bajanbeacon.com

At the end of last year’s COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, UN Secretary General António Guterres said, “I had hoped for a more ambitious outcome – on both finance and mitigation – to meet the great challenge we face. But this agreement provides a base on which to build.”

Oops, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and the European Union have confirmed that the climate change narrative is losing its momentum. Gates posted a 17-page memo on his website in which he wrote the following:

“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. Although climate change will have serious consequences—particularly for people in the poorest countries—it will not lead to humanity’s demise.”

The climate movement nearly lost its mind. How could Gates, who just five years ago wrote a book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, in which he discussed the potential climate disaster unless carbon emissions were cut drastically and quickly, suddenly dismiss the danger?

Gates’ memo began with three thoughts he believed every delegate to COP30 should know. Before readers got to the paper’s opening quote, they were confronted with the following points.

· “Climate change is serious, but we’ve made great progress. We need to keep backing the breakthroughs that will help the world reach zero emissions.

· “But we can’t cut funding for health and development—programs that help people stay resilient in the face of climate change—to do it.

· “It’s time to put human welfare at the center of our climate strategies, which includes reducing the Green Premium to zero and improving agriculture and health in poor countries.”

The final point is what shook up the climate activists. Gates acknowledged that there is a Green Premium, and it can no longer be accepted due to the financial burden it levies on humans. In his view, “Climate change is not the biggest threat to the lives and livelihoods of people in poor countries, and it won’t be in the future.” Gates is espousing a climate view that undercuts the climate activists with their climate catastrophe narrative.

The pushback against Gates was quick and brutal. The climate activist website, DeSmog, wrote that “Gates funded climate crisis denier Bjorn Lomborg to the tune of $3.5 million. The news comes on the heels of Gates’ recent climate memo, which (wrongly) argues the climate community has a ‘doomsday outlook’ and diverts too many resources from the most effective solutions to improve human well-being. Climate deniers, from Lomborg to the denier-in-chief [President Donald Trump], celebrated Gates’ memo.”

The outrage ahead of COP30 was further fueled by an article in The Guardian saying that Exxon was sowing the seeds of doubt and delay to derail international climate treaties. Reportedly, DeSmog obtained hundreds of documents (and the checks) that show Exxon funding Atlas Network to spread climate denial in Latin America and all across the Global South. The Guardian is concerned that Exxon’s influence will have a lasting impact during COP30. This is likely the latest iteration of the “Exxon knew” campaign, which suggests that the company was aware its oil was contributing to global warming but didn’t care. That claim has been debunked numerous times, yet it continues to be repeated by climate activists.

Agreeing on a commitment to reduce carbon emissions created a significant challenge in the European Union and led to a substantial weakening of its pledge. The goal was to commit the EU to cut its emissions by 90% by 2040. This plan is to be voted on by the European Parliament before it becomes legally binding. Negotiating the details required an 18-hour marathon session due to opposition from various countries. The timing was important because it was to be presented at COP30.

Part of the EU deal was to require an emissions reduction between 66.3% and 72.5% by 2035. However, to get countries to agree to the 90% reduction by 2040, the plan had to allow countries to claim a 5% reduction by selling international carbon credits. Such a scheme was attempted in 2012 but failed due to a lack of demand and an oversupply of credits.

Countries will be able to claim an additional 5% reduction for emergencies such as wildfires. (We wonder what the standard is for declaring a wildfire?) Additionally, the 90% reduction target will be re-examined every two years and can be modified if it is causing economic setbacks. (What constitutes an economic setback?) Lastly, the start of an emissions trading scheme for homes and road transportation has been delayed at the insistence of Eastern European member countries.

The plan forced some leading proponents to compromise because it was a “take it or leave it” proposition. Failure to reach this agreement would have been an unacceptable outcome, given the EU’s desire to remain the leading climate change activist.

Lidia Pereira, a member of a group of EU lawmakers heading to COP30, told the Financial Times that “At stake is our diplomatic credibility when it comes to environment and climate policy. It is a responsibility of the European Union to show that you can decarbonize and grow, but this is an effort that has to be shared.”

Jacob Werksman, the EU’s chief COP negotiator, claimed countries needed to show that the Paris agreement was “working” because countries “were taking their obligations seriously.” This was especially true given the stance of the Trump administration, which is leaving the Paris Accord. Of course, the U.S. has led the world in reducing its carbon emissions by switching from coal to cleaner natural gas as a fuel for its power grid.

The problem the EU fails to address with its emissions reduction scheme has been the impact on European countries’ electricity costs, which are among the highest in the world. That cost is contributing to a hollowing out of leading country economies. We see that in the following two charts.

Germany’s economy has been weakened by its energy policies.

Germany’s economy has seen its manufacturing new orders fall for five years. The decline follows a decade of relatively stagnant flow of new orders. Unfortunately, we cannot redraw the 50-year trend line. However, suppose you examine the trend from 1975 to 2008, at the onset of the Great Financial Crisis, and visually extend the line to 2025. In that case, you see a significant gap between the expected new manufacturing orders and the experience. This is a reflection of the damage Germany’s energy policies have had on its economy.

Bad energy policies are contributing to rising U.K. unemployment.

In the United Kingdom, the cost of electricity, mainly due to the government’s energy policies in response to the push for net-zero emissions, has become a significant political and economic issue. The unemployment rate is nearly three-quarters of the way back to its peak during the COVID pandemic. It has a long way to go to match the rates experienced after the Great Financial Crisis, but workers are looking at a declining trend in average weekly earnings. Neither of these trends is good for the country’s economy.

Climate activists want the world to operate in a black-or-white condition. They refuse to acknowledge what Bill Gates has finally discovered – energy transitions take a long time and they involve trade-offs. Climate catastrophes are not the likely outcome of current energy policies. Helping the seven billion people living in developing economies who suffer from a lack of electricity, substandard diets, and health care should be our focus, not mindlessly pushing developed economies into energy chaos with intermittent and costly energy sources. We can do better, which is Gates’ real message.