Abstract: In this article, I discuss the interventions of two well-known super-rich entrepreneurs and self-declared philanthropists, Bill Gates and Richard Branson, into the debate on how to tackle climate change. Based on the analysis of two of their manifesto-style monographs, I take issue with their propagation of technological fixes and with the leading role they sketch out for themselves and other ‘business leaders’ in the economic and social transformations they consider to be necessary. Concretely, I challenge the practicability of their ‘solutions’ on a planetary scale, problematise the ways in which these violate against notions of global environmental justice, and question the suggested reliance on state-assisted market mechanisms in making the struggle against climate change a lucrative business. The super-rich, I contend, should not be trusted as pioneers in identifying and guiding ways out of the climate crisis, rather should the operations through which they accumulate their wealth be identified as constitutive parts of it. Hence, a critique of the promethean approaches that the super-rich circulate serves as an important step towards creating space for an economic system that does not rely on high material throughputs anymore, for a social system that is based on the more equal satisfaction of human needs at the planetary level, and a cultural understanding of the good life that is grounded in a post-consumerist alternative hedonism. Practically, this requires cutting to size the super-rich’s absurdly above-average ecological footprints, their wealth, and their privileged informal access to political actors and decision-making processes.

Keywords: climate change, degrowth, entrepreneurs, environmental justice, technology