Dear Bill Gates: Please Care As Much About Our Planet As You Do About Immunization!

The Guardian newspaper has launched a campaign called Keep It In The Ground, to urge the world’s two biggest charitable funds to move their money out of fossil fuels. The clock is ticking: an increase of two degrees in global temperature is the danger zone threshold, and we are rapidly approaching that. 565 gigatons of carbon dioxide is the maximum amount we can safely release into the atmosphere to stay within the two degrees limit scientists have calculated. If we were to dig up and harvest every single fossil fuel reserve that has so far been identified by energy companies, the total number of gigatons would increase to a huge 2795 gigatons, which would certainly put the future of humanity and our animal friends in grave danger.

The message? Keep the oil in the soil and the coal in the hole. And yet reckless, greedy corporations are still looking for more reserves, spending $700 billion last year alone in their search for black gold. Saving energy in our home is an absolute waste of time as long as the problem isn’t tackled from the top. Enough is enough, and this Guardian campaign is urgently needed. As the world-famous and powerful founder and director of the Gates Foundation, Bill Gates is a key target for their message.

Speaking about the campaign, The Guardian’s (now ex) editor Alan Rusbridger wrote: “Journalism tends to be a rear-view mirror. We prefer to deal with what has happened, not what lies ahead. We favour what is exceptional and in full view over what is ordinary and hidden. For these, and other, reasons changes to the Earth’s climate rarely make it to the top of the news list. The changes may be happening too fast for human comfort, but they happen too slowly for the newsmakers – and, to be fair, for most readers.”

He goes on: “Even when the overwhelming majority of scientists wave a big red flag in the air, they tend to be ignored. Is this new warning too similar to the last? Is it all too frightening to contemplate? Is a collective shrug of fatalism the only rational response?”

Most of us would say no, and finally the mainstream press seem to agree, and are doing their bit to change all of this. But will this direct plea to Bill Gates make any difference?

The Microsoft founder recently claimed we should expect a coming epidemic that could wipe out 33 million people in less than a year- something that added fuel to internet conspiracies about Gates knowing something we don’t (some Ebola experts have claimed his immunization programs have sinister aims). And while this may sound far-fetched to say the least, Gates has made no secret of the fact he believes the world needs to be depopulated. Expecting poor people to drink human faeces while the super-rich glug champagne also says a lot about this dubious ‘philanthropist’ billionaire.

Either way, there’s nothing wrong with a little pressure to get involved in a worthy cause, so here’s hoping Bill takes note of the video campaign and decides to do the right thing. You can find out more about The Guardian’s Keep it in the Ground campaign or sign the petition here to pressure Bill and Melinda to move their money out of fossil fuels. The video above is a hard-hitting introduction to The Guardian’s campaign. The people’s plea to Bill Gates is below.


This article (Dear Bill Gates: Please Care As Much About Our Planet As You Do About Immunization!) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TrueActivist.com.

Popular on True Activist