Who gets to define the future of humanity?

If we want to know what the future of humanity really looks like in the era of climate change, we’d be far better off looking at what’s happening in Jamaica right now. 

Hurricane Melissa – the most powerful storm ever recorded in the Caribbean – has left the island reeling. The videos and images emerging from Kingston and Montego Bay are devastating: flattened villages, hotel doors blowing off hinges, hospitals running on backup power and families searching for clean water. As of today, it has killed at least 49 people after sweeping through the Caribbean islands.

The storm reached Category 5 strength after passing over abnormally warm ocean waters. As climate scientist Michael Mann recently wrote in PNAS, “we are now, thanks to the effects of human-caused warming, experiencing a new class of monster storms – Category 6 hurricanes”. For decades, Category 5 was the upper limit. But new research confirms that climate change is fuelling storms so intense they defy even the scales designed to measure them.

And yet, beyond a few short news cycles, much of the world has already moved on. We seem to have grown used to climate disasters – a kind of crisis fatigue that dulls our sense of urgency. Jamaica may feel far away, but what’s unfolding there is not an isolated tragedy. It’s a glimpse of what’s coming for all of us if global warming continues unchecked. Every new record-breaking storm, every heatwave, every fire is another warning written in the language of human suffering.

In the same week that Jamaica was hit, the global conversation took a puzzling turn. Bill Gates published a memo suggesting the world should “pivot” from cutting emissions to tackling poverty and disease instead. His argument came just a day after the UN confirmed humanity had missed its 1.5°C target, warning of “devastating consequences” if warming continues. 

Gates’ point isn’t without merit. Reducing poverty and improving health outcomes are essential. But the framing, and the way it was amplified in media headlines, risks muddying the water when clarity is most needed. It turns climate action into a false choice: either we fight poverty, or we fight climate change. Either we save lives today, or we cut emissions for tomorrow.

But no amount of human welfare in Jamaica could have stopped, prevented or reduced the impact of Category 5 Melissa. The storm didn’t happen because of poverty; it happened because of climate change.

That binary is not just misleading but dangerous. Because in reality, these struggles are inseparable. Climate change is poverty when crops fail and food prices soar. It is disease when floods spread infection and heatwaves overwhelm hospitals. It is inequality when those who did least to cause the crisis suffer first and worst.

That reality cannot be addressed simply by improving living standards while leaving people exposed to an increasingly unstable planet. What concerns me isn’t whether Gates meant well – it’s whose experiences are centred when we talk about the future of humanity. 

The air is rarefied up on Billionaire’s Peak, even for someone as knowledgeable as Gates. But our understanding of the world comes from listening to people in Poverty Valleys, where heatwaves, floods and fires are already a daily reality. 

Climate impacts are everywhere – from the wildfires that swept through Beverly Hills earlier this year to hurricanes ravaging Caribbean communities – yet poverty dictates how severely those impacts are felt, and who is left with the least capacity to respond or recover.