Very true, but can be offset by how much a person bets successfully on new technologies. Technologies that succeed in the free market, without government interference, do so by using less energy than the old technologies they replace, and indirectly by polluting less. Most of the uber-rich active investors have huge negative carbon footprints because of that.
If Gates wants to be admired by the masses he should play that up much more than the lame virtual signalling. But he probably just wants government interference to bail out his misguided bets, so is really doing a sales pitch to loot the taxpayers.
Gates has always been a lover of the most energy inefficient organization of all: government. That's probably because they have always been his single largest customer. Centralized planning bureaucracies love computers for centralized data gathering, even if that data is gamed.
If green costs more, it isn't.
Flat out insightful on every point Reeses...