I would suggest you read the Gates report. I'm not sure how much to engage here, except to say emphatically that Gates said nothing of the sort. TL;DR - health and development funding should be considered as a more marginally impactful form of foreign and domestic government investment, but only because of the rapid (and ongoing) progress already seen in emissions reduction.

Here's a quote:

> To be clear: Climate change is a very important problem. It needs to be solved, along with other problems like malaria and malnutrition. Every tenth of a degree of heating that we prevent is hugely beneficial because a stable climate makes it easier to improve people’s lives.

Reducing sprawl is plainly a good strategy to reduce transportation and infrastructure needs, and preserve wildlife.