Bill Gates: ‘Our grandchildren will grow up in a world that is dramatically worse off’ if we don’t fix climate change
Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates delivers his speech at the National Assembly on August 16, 2022 in Seoul, South Korea.
Pool | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The idea of becoming a grandparent is emotional for Bill Gates to even write about.
“I started looking at the world through a new lens recently — when my older daughter gave me the incredible news that I’ll become a grandfather next year,” Gates wrote in a letter published overnight on his personal blog, Gates Notes.
Gates’ 26-year-old daughter, Jennifer, and her husband, Nayel Nassar, are expecting their first baby in 2023.
“Simply typing that phrase, ‘I’ll become a grandfather next year,’ makes me emotional,” wrote the 67-year-old billionaire philanthropist, who earned his fortune from co-founding Microsoft in the 1970s. “And the thought gives a new dimension to my work. When I think about the world my grandchild will be born into, I’m more inspired than ever to help everyone’s children and grandchildren have a chance to survive and thrive.”
Gates goes on to summarize the work his namesake philanthropic organization, the Gates Foundation, is doing for children living in global poverty, to improve education, pandemic preparedness, and the fights against polio and AIDS.
Gates also talks about the work he is doing to combat climate change, both through the Gates Foundation by supporting early stage climate companies with his investment firm, Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
Current leaders’ response to climate change will impact future generations, which is the first point Gates makes in the section of his letter where he addresses climate change.
“I can sum up the solution to climate change in two sentences: We need to eliminate global emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050,” Gates writes. “Extreme weather is already causing more suffering, and if we don’t get to net-zero emissions, our grandchildren will grow up in a world that is dramatically worse off.”
Getting to zero will be the hardest thing humans have ever done.
Bill Gates
Co-founder of Microsoft, climate investor
The implications are enormous — and so is the challenge.
“Getting to zero will be the hardest thing humans have ever done,” Gates writes. “We need to revolutionize the entire physical economy — how we make things, move around, produce electricity, grow food, and stay warm and cool — in less than three decades.”
Gates got started in working on climate change when he learned about the struggles of small farmers in countries where his namesake philanthropic organization was doing work. The Gates Foundation funds climate adaptation work, helping people adjust to the implications of a warming world, where there is no profit to be made by a commercial enterprise.
“It starts from the idea that the poorest are suffering the most from climate change, but businesses don’t have a natural incentive to make tools that help them,” Gates writes.
“A seed company can earn profits from, say, a new type of tomato that’s a nicer shade of red and doesn’t bruise easily, but it has no incentive to make better strains of cassava that (a) survive floods and droughts and (b) are cheap enough for the world’s low-income farmers,” Gates writes. “The foundation’s role is to make sure that the poorest benefit from the same innovative skills that benefit richer countries.”
Not all of Gates’ climate work is philanthropic. Breakthrough Energy Ventures funds early stage companies that are working to build and grow companies to decarbonize various sectors of the economy. Building for-profit companies to address a problem that impacts the well-being of the global population may come across as unsavory from Gates, who already has a fortune to his name — $103.6 billion according to Forbes as of Monday.
But Gates says decarbonizing global industry is too large a problem even for his deep pockets.
“Philanthropy alone can’t eliminate greenhouse gases. Only markets and governments can achieve that kind of pace and scale,” Gates said. Any profits Gates makes on investments he makes in Breakthrough Energy companies will go back into climate work or into the philanthropic foundation, he said.
Plus, if companies working to address climate change can be self-sustaining, that will encourage other investors to put money into them.
“Companies need to be profitable so they can grow, keep running, and prove that there’s a market for their products,” Gates writes. “The profit incentive will attract other innovators, creating competition that will drive down the prices of zero-emissions inventions and have a meaningful impact on emissions from buildings.”
Greenhouse gas emissions still increasing
The bad news is that greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing.
“Unfortunately, on near-term goals, we’re falling short. Between 2021 and 2022, global emissions actually rose from 51 billion tons of carbon equivalents to 52 billion tons,” Gates writes.
On Monday, the secretary-general of the United Nations also underscored the grim reality of the current moment in climate change.
“We are still moving in the wrong direction,” António Guterres said Monday. “The global emissions gap is growing. The 1.5-degree goal is gasping for breath. National climate plans are falling woefully short.”
Despite the bleakness of the current climate moment, Gates is optimistic about the rising investment in decarbonization technologies.
“We’re much further along than I would have predicted a few years ago on getting companies to invest in zero-carbon breakthroughs,” Gates writes.
Public money for climate research and development has gone up by one-third since the 2015 Paris climate accord, and in the United States, laws passed this year will put $500 billion toward moving the U.S. energy infrastructure away from fossil fuel-based sources, according to Gates.
Private money is also going into climate technologies at a good clip. Venture capital firms have put $70 billion in clean energy startups in the past two years, Gates writes.
U.S. President Donald Trump (L) listens as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks in the Cross Hall of the White House during an event on “Investing in America” on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Monday said that he initially asked Nvidia for a 20% cut of the chipmaker’s sales to China, but the number came down to 15% after CEO Jensen Huang negotiated with him.
The comments came after news broke over the weekend that Nvidia agreed to pay the federal government a 15% cut in return for receiving export control licenses that will allow it to once again sell the H20 chip to China and Chinese companies. Nvidia’s Huang visited Trump in the White House on Friday.
“I said, ‘listen, I want 20% if I’m going to approve this for you, for the country,'” Trump said in a press conference in Washington.
Trump said that Nvidia’s H20 is an “old chip that China already has” and is “obsolete.” He compared the H20 chip to Nvidia’s current fastest artificial intelligence chip, which is called Blackwell, and said that he wouldn’t allow those to be sold to China without significant downgrades, such as a 30% to 50% reduction in performance.
“The Blackwell is super-duper advanced. I wouldn’t make a deal with that,” Trump said, adding that it was possible to make a deal for a “somewhat enhanced in a negative way” version of Blackwell.
“That’s the latest and the greatest in the world. Nobody has it. They won’t have it for five years,” Trump said.
One reason for the U.S. export controls is fear that providing advanced chips to China could allow the foreign power to leapfrog the U.S. in AI capabilities. Many have said that could pose a threat to the national security of the U.S.
Trump said that China already has chips with some similar capabilities to the H20.
Huang has said that it is better for U.S. national security if Chinese AI developers use U.S. technology, and that denying them access to Nvidia chips would actually encourage the Chinese chip industry to develop and catch up.
“He’s selling a essentially old chip,” Trump said. “Huawei has a similar chip.”
The H20 is a Chinese-specific chip that has had its performance slowed down. It is related to Nvidia’s H100 and H200 chips that are used in the U.S. The H20 was introduced after the Biden administration implemented export controls on AI chips in 2023.
In April, the Trump administration said it would require a license to export the H20 chip, and in May, Huang said that “effectively closed” the market off to Nvidia. Huang said that Nvidia was expecting to sell about $8 billion in H20 chips in the July quarter before sales were stopped.
“While we haven’t shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide,” an Nvidia spokesperson told CNBC on Monday.
Trump on Monday also said that Huang plans to visit him again to negotiate export licenses for the Blackwell chips.
“I think he’s coming to see me again about that,” Trump said.
A White House official confirmed to CNBC that AMD, the second-place AI chip maker, will also pay 15% to receive an export license for its China-focused AI chip, the Instinct MI308.
WATCH: Nvidia, AMD to pay U.S. 15% of AI chip sales in China to secure export licenses
After four previous scrubs or delays in a row since August 7th SpaceX launches Amazon KF-02 Kuipeer Satellites after the 5th attempt August 11th 2025 at 8:35 AM SLC-40 Cape Canaveral, Brevard County, Florida USA.
Scott Schilke| SipaUSA |AP
Amazon shipped another batch of internet-beaming satellites into orbit on Monday atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, after four previous launch attempts were interrupted by weather issues.
Monday’s launch is the fourth Kuiper mission, and Amazon now has 102 satellites in orbit.
The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 8:35 a.m. ET. Roughly an hour after launch, SpaceX confirmed all 24 of Amazon’s Kuiper satellites were successfully deployed.
The mission was originally scheduled for last Thursday, but SpaceX was forced to scrub the launch, along with three more attempts over the past few days due to rainfall.
For the second time, Amazon turned to Elon Musk‘s SpaceX, its chief competitor in the low-earth orbit satellite market, for help building out its constellation.
SpaceX’s Starlink is currently the dominant provider of low-earth orbit satellite internet, with a constellation of roughly 8,000 satellites and about 5 million customers worldwide.
Amazon is racing to get more of its Kuiper satellites into space to meet a deadline set by the Federal Communications Commission.
The FCC requires that Amazon have about 1,600 satellites in orbit by the end of July 2026, with the full 3,236-satellite constellation launched by July 2029.
Amazon has booked up to 83 launches, including three rides with SpaceX.
While the company is still in the early stages of building out its constellation, Amazon has already inked deals with governments as it hopes to begin commercial service later this year.
WATCH: Amazon launches first Kuiper internet satellites into space
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