President Donald Trump’s campaign to wind back the climate agenda of his predecessor belies a continued commitment in the U.S. to the clean-energy transition, according to Bill Gates.
Unwinding global collaborations to address climate change “works against us,” Gates said at Temasek Holdings Pte.’s Ecosperity Week conference in Singapore on Monday. The expectation is that the current pushback will subside, “maybe not overnight,” he said. But “there’s a lot of commitment to this cause in the United States.”
The Trump administration has taken a wrecking ball to green policies in the U.S., pledging to turbocharge coal, oil and gas production, while moving to slash international spending on global climate initiatives. That’s on top of Trump’s decision to once again withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement.
“This current trend, where there’s a little less cooperation going on, I don’t think that’s a permanent thing,” Gates said.
The billionaire co-founder of Microsoft Corp. was in Singapore in his capacity as the founder of Breakthrough Energy, which last year signed a memorandum of understanding with Temasek to identify “breakthrough” technology ventures in Southeast Asia.