Bill Gates became arguably the leading business voice on fixing the world’s woes. But all the revelations about his divorce, dubious workplace behaviour, and ties to Jeffrey Epstein are hurting the billionaire’s carefully crafted do-gooder public image.
The number of new people forced to move within their own countries by climate disasters rose to the highest in at least a decade in 2020, more than three times those displaced due to conflict and violence. People who migrated domestically due to extreme weather events rose to 30.7 million, or 75% of those uprooted within their borders, according to a report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. A record 55 million people in total had been forced to move at the end of 2020, with the number of climate migrants likely to be significantly underestimated due to incomplete data.
Climate change is causing more frequent and intense weather events. Contrary to fears of mass cross-border migration, many of the displacements are small-scale and localized, according to the report, costing economies about $20.5 billion globally in 2020.