There are probably better ways to tell people that global warming is not one of your Foundation's priorities than to say: "we don't think about it."

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Gates Foundation on Global Warming: "We don't think about it."

At the Engineers Without Borders International Conference co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Seattle philanthropist Bill Gates Sr., when asked what the Gates Foundation thinks about global warming answered, "The fact of the matter is we don't think about it. We haven't paid a lot of attention to environmental issue."

Gate's remarks come at the end of keynote address to hundreds of attendees at the EWB international conference at the University of Washington in Seattle, in which he identified a mass movement for global equality and compared it to the civil rights movement. Gates sees "the same conviction that change matters and is possible" now as he did in the 1960s.

The declaration that environmental issues do not matter and that it is not worth the Gates Foundation's resources is an unfortunate one. Despite the Gate's Foundation's commitment to addressing global health issues like malaria and starvation, they seek to do so without considering the impact environmental degradation has on global health. Global warming is fundamentally a global health issue. Desertification, water scarcity, flooding, migration and political instability are all results of climate change. Moreover, these problems have direct implications with health problems like malaria and starvation.

What bothers me is that from the very top of the Gates Foundation, it is being said that we consciously ignore the context of particular global health issues. Often, environmental degradation is ultimately responsible for decreased public health. If the very local, regional and global context is ignored, if the reality of the situation is ignored- How can any solution truly meet the needs of the community and do so in an equitable, economical and sustainable way? This is evidence of a disconnect between the day-to-day lives in impoverished communities and the methods and perspective of the Gates Foundation.

Yes, good things come from the work done by the Gates Foundation. But- sitting at the very pinnacle of global capital it's a long way to the bottom.

http://umdsilo.blogspot.com/2008/03/gates-foundation-on-global-warming-we.html