For decades, Bill Gates has warned of climate disaster — but his tone meaningfully shifted Tuesday as the billionaire Microsoft co-founder cautioned against taking a "doomsday view" on the planet's future.

In a memo posted online, Gates wrote that while climate change is still a major problem that needs to be solved, "People will be able to live and thrive on Earth for the foreseeable future." Gates, who has invested billions developing green technologies to cut greenhouse gases, says doomsday climate scenarios over-emphasize cutting emissions while "diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world."

The lengthy memo essentially argued that we should continue to innovate and back climate breakthroughs but not at the expense of

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