WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — US President Donald Trump claimed victory Wednesday over what he called the “hoax” of climate change, after billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates said a warming world would not end civilization.

“I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

“It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful.”

Microsoft co-founder Gates said in a long memo this week that climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise,” in what was seen as a major pivot by the 70-year-old.

Gates added that while climate change would have “serious” consequences, “people will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.”

He argued that tackling global disease and poverty would instead help prepare the planet’s poorest for a warming world.

Gates acknowledged that critics may charge him with hypocrisy because of his significant carbon footprint or argue the memo was a “sneaky way of arguing that we shouldn’t take climate change seriously.”

But he pointed to significant progress in cutting emissions to date, and said he was optimistic future technology would do so even more.

Trump has been a long-term skeptic on environmental issues and trashed climate change as the “greatest con job ever” in an address to the United Nations General Assembly in September.

The Republican has rolled back green policies since returning to power in January, following a victorious 2024 election campaign that received hundreds of millions of dollars on donations from Big Oil.