Bill Gates says global health spending key to halting climate change

“Global health is a little bit off the radar right now,” Bill Gates said

Bill Gates believes a key way to combat climate change is improving access to health care in developing countries, an area the billionaire philanthropist worries that governments are neglecting.

“Global health is a little bit off the radar right now,” he said on Tuesday in an interview at the Bloomberg House in Davos. “For the next ten years, where money is going to be so limited, if you want to care about climate impact, the health spending should go up, not down.”

On Monday, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that he co-chairs announced plans to spend $8.6 billion on health care technology and programs in 2024, the largest budget ever for the nonprofit. That includes efforts to develop new vaccines and cheap supplies to curb malaria, polio and maternal deaths.

Gates called for countries to donate 0.7% of their gross domestic product to aid.

Health spending has “not only humanitarian benefits,” but translates to economic and environmental gains, Gates said. “As we make the world healthy, that’s where you get population growth gets to a steady state.”

Along with health, Gates has backed climate technology companies through his fund Breakthrough Energy Ventures. He said that he’s “optimistic” about the state of climate funding, a field he predicts will be “supercharged” by artificial intelligence.

“Companies can help with the visibility, with the innovation. There’s a lot they can do,” Gates said. “But the $130 billion of aid money that’s given, we’re not going to get the private sector or even philanthropy to make up the numbers there. The numbers don’t work.”