Bill Gates presents himself as a climate champion, but his trust has actually increased its fossil fuel investments since his divestment pledge. It’s just the latest example of the billionaire appointing himself to solve problems he helps perpetuate.
Owning a stock keeps the price high though as you’re restricting supply, and it looks like his trust has also bought more shares so it’s increasing the demand as well.
A high stock price doesn’t fund the industry directly, unless it’s a smaller company that’s still issuing stock which he also seems to be invested in a lot of those. It does increase the power of the industry though. If a lot of people divested from fossil fuels that would lower the value of the stock and the net worth of the principal owners. Those principal owners are currently using their money to bribe politicians into ignoring the climate crisis and to increase fossil fuel extraction. If they had less money to do that, then it’d be a lot easier to pass legislation to address climate change.
He also seems to be buying bonds in the industry as well which is more directly funding the industry. Also, a high stock price allows the companies to get more bonds at a cheaper rate, so that also helps to fund the industry.
All of this is also missing the main point of the article in that bill gates is profiting from the fossil fuel industry and has a stake in seeing it continue, while pretending he’s a champion for climate change.