Bill Gates recently posted his new thinking on Climate Change declaring we've been thinking about it the wrong way. His article is sending shockwaves, some agreeing, some feeling he has betrayed the cause, and some like Trump declaring this is proof that climate change was a hoax. I definitely agree with Gates here (and not Trump, obviously) but his revelation speaks to something even bigger than climate change, and hints at what may be the greatest mistake in global political discussion about a wide range of topics, not just climate. We've been doing it wrong, and are paying a terrible price.

Gates' thesis is that the general climate community has been overstating the case for climate change. It's a major, serious problem, which he has personally done far more to address than almost anybody, but it's not the civilization-ending emergency crisis it is often painted as. This has stopped us from allocating our resources wisely to fight the true big problems like poverty and disease, which will do far more harm to people than even the worst that global warming threatens. The way to combat climate change not simply to stop emissions (which is good) but to give people the economic prosperity and tools to contend with the hardships to come, and many others.

Read Gates' own essay to get the full scope of his argument, but in the meantime there's something deeper. If you concur with his thesis, it's very interesting to consider why this is done, and what it means.

When you believe in a cause, you want others to join, and when you look out you see that many or most people don't "get it." This makes you naturally tolerant of overstating your own cause. You might not even overstate it yourself, but you will let it slide when your allies go too far. They are, you feel, just "moving the window."

It's an easy trap to fall in. You conclude it's a crisis, but perhaps not an emergency. But others are only treating it as a "problem" or dismissing it. If people declare it's an emergency, this should move the average position closer to "crisis" where you think it should be. (Just to be clear, this is assuming an emergency is worse than a crisis, which is worse than a problem.) It becomes moral to overhype because you imagine it will move the needle closer to where it should be, and that means solving the problem faster.

The trouble is, this is usually, perhaps always, an illusion. Overstating creates backlash. Both naturally, in those who can see that there's hype, and artificially, when you generate opponents who can use your own lies an exaggerations to reverse things. Tell people, "you have to drop everything and curtail your lifestyle to prevent the climate emergency" and those who don't believe in the emergency will turn into deniers. They'll start to believe your position is not just an error but a hoax, and they will convince those receptive to that message. In the end you may not move the window at all, but increase polarization, creating a chaotic state where things flip back and forth. We see this in the MAGA movement with its undoing of many environmental regulations as part of that backlash.

This is magnified by the new explosion in propaganda tools flowing through social media. And it's not just in climate. The same thing happened with Covid, which is a very serious disease which took my mother from me and many millions of other people's mothers. But the strength of our response to it spawned a movement that now doubts all vaccines, even distrusts all of science, and has put RFK Jr. as head of HHS. When the next epidemic comes, and it will, it will be very hard to get people to take even ordinary levels of precaution.

This story is repeated in so many areas of public debate, magnified again by the new propaganda techniques. It's a lesson for the Democrats. Each time they pushed too far, they drove too many voters into the arms of the Trump populists. This has happened in most countries of the world. If you believe you are right (as everybody does) you feel you should win, but you can't be an asshole about it, you must be careful about winning too much, for the blowback will get you things like the Dobbs decision, which did not advance the case of women's rights.

A solution to this is not at all easy. Nobody is "in charge" of the message in most cases. Causes are distributed, no one person or group gets to decide to stop overstating. Leaders can dial down the hype but it often doesn't help as the rank and file are happier with ideological purity and extremism. This is also fueled by the propagandists who want the polarization as it helps them. This is the challenge of 21st century political discourse, and I don't yet offer any solutions.