Bill Gates: ‘We’re in a Worse Place Than I Expected’
Sept.
13, 2022
By David Wallace-Wells Opinion Writer
There are not many more contested
abstractions in the contemporary world than progress. Are things getting
better? Fast enough? For whom?
Those questions are, in a somewhat
singular way, tied symbolically to Bill Gates. By objective standards among the
most generous philanthropists the world has ever known, Gates is seen more and
more by critics, in a time of intensifying income inequality, as a creature of
the Pollyannaish plutocracy — with the billions given each year by the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation perhaps more significant as a symptom of the
world’s problems than a potential solution. Even a partial one.
In 2015 the United Nations
established 17 sustainable development goals — measurable benchmarks of human
progress that might guide a path “to end poverty, fight inequality and stop
climate change by 2030.” Every year since 2017, the Gates Foundation has released
a sort of progress report tracking key data points: poverty, malnutrition,
maternal mortality and 15 more.
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