Bill Gates is offering the first $2B for renewable energy

You are contradicting yourself. First you oppose class warfare evoked by the headline. Later, you recreate it on your own terms.

Wanting clean air or medical advances isn't exclusive to the elite. Nor is the "misery" of others due to size of their wallet. The elite have political and fiscal means of dictating and incentivizing others to work towards a common goal; some positive and some negative. As decision makers in our capitalism, they need to be held responsible and accountable proportionally to the benefits and accolades they reap; you gotta take the bad with the good. Fwiw all things equal, we are all responsible for the air pollution and its cleaning.

You make an interesting point. Society needs leadership to initiate and orchestrate the big projects.

Kudos to Bill Gates for pursuing cleaner air.

I'm going to have to disagree and say their influence is the reason we don't have nicer things... Planned obsolescence, massive oil lobby, general Mills basically writing the food pyramid completely unbacked by science, I could go on forever.