Trump reacts to Bill Gates' U-turn on climate change ahead of COP30 summit, says ‘won the war’

United States President Donald Trump declared victory over what he calls the climate change “hoax” following Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ apparent U-turn days ahead of the COP30 summit. The philanthropist said global warming would not “lead to humanity’s demise”.

In a post on TruthSocial dated 30 October, Trump wrote, “I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue. It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful.”

Climate change ‘will not lead to humanity’s demise'

Bill Gates made the remarks in a lengthy memo this week, saying climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise", a shift in stance many observers viewed as a departure from the 70-year-old's earlier tone.

While Bill Gates acknowledged the “serious” effects of climate change, he said, “people will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.”

He said reducing global disease and poverty would better equip the world’s poorest populations to cope with a warming planet.

According to Bloomberg, he wrote in the memo, "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.”

Gates admitted that some might accuse him of hypocrisy because of his own large carbon footprint or claim the memo was a “sneaky way of arguing that we shouldn’t take climate change seriously". However, he highlighted the substantial progress already made in reducing emissions and expressed confidence that future technological advances would continue to improve the situation.

Meanwhile, in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday morning, Gates explained that aid budget cuts by the Trump administration and other wealthy nations partly shaped his updated perspective on climate issues.

“The plea here is to say, OK, let’s take that very limited money and not have some partitioned off for particular causes,” he said. Gates called the US government’s decision to reduce funding for climate and clean energy initiatives a “huge disappointment".

He emphasised that his stance on the importance of the Paris climate accord and the need for businesses to curb their emissions remains unchanged. “I’m a climate activist, but I’m also a child survival activist,” Gates stated.

“Sometimes the world acts as if any effort to fight climate change is as worthwhile as any other. As a result, less-effective projects are diverting money and attention from efforts that will have more impact on the human condition: namely, making it affordable to eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions and reducing extreme poverty with improvements in agriculture and health," Gates stated.

Trump has long expressed scepticism about environmental issues and denounced climate change as the “greatest con job ever” during a speech to the UN General Assembly in September.

Since reclaiming the presidency in January after his successful 2024 election campaign, which drew hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from Big Oil, the Republican has reversed numerous green policies.