Bill Gates says climate crisis won’t cause ‘humanity’s demise’ in call to shift focus to ‘improving lives’

Bill Gates: ‘The biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been.’ Photograph: Clemens Bilan/EPA

Bill Gates has called for a “strategic pivot” in the effort against the climate crisis, writing that the world should shift away from trying to limit rising temperatures to instead focusing on efforts to prevent disease and poverty.

Writing on his Gates Notes website, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder criticized what he described as a “doomsday view of climate change” which is focusing “too much on near-term emissions goals”.