How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We...

Excellent book. Bill Gates, really outlines the ins and outs of something most of the society ignores. Such optimism on his innovative perception and will on solving this global issue. I highly recommend.

A year or so ago I read The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells, which laid out in often horrific details, the kinds of things that would happen to the planet if we didn’t change our ways.

Bill Gates goes for the much more practical, “So what can we do about it now?” approach. This book is basically his plan to cut our carbon emissions from 51 billion tonnes to zero by 2050. That’s it in a nutshell. If we don’t then, like a bath, with even just a slow dripping tap, we’ll end up overflowing and facing some of the consequences that Wallace-Wells laid out in his earlier work.

To do this, in this enormously readable book, Gates takes us through where the emissions come from, and examines ways to work through each of those sectors, which he breaks down into making things, plugging in, growing things, getting around and keeping warm and cool.

He tackles each in turn, although he notes that we spend a lot of time thinking about “getting around” – aka transport – which accounts for 16% of net emissions, but not so much on making steel and concrete. The food industry also gets a good look-in.

Gates is putting his money where his mouth is. Throughout the book he talks about the various companies he’s invested in. This could sound a bit, “Aren’t I clever?” but it doesn’t. He’s just being practical. It comes from the work he and his wife Melinda have carried out through their Gates Foundation in doing very practical things like fighting malaria. So he’s constantly referring to people he’s met, and businesses he’s keenly following.
And throughout, he is very pragmatic. Only a few of us are willing – or even able – to pay a “Green Premium” for some of life’s essentials. He readily acknowledges that the lower the income you are in, the bigger a proportion of your overall costs something like transport will be. So paying even a small premium is simply not affordable. He’s also very aware that the big growth in greenhouse gases is likely to come from developing parts of the world where billions are coming to expect the same kinds of middle-class lifestyles that Americans and Europeans have experienced.

So, what are the solutions? Well, this isn’t really a list of things that you or I can do directly – assuming neither of us is a world leader. There are some of those things, but this is more about policy as well as corporate and governmental support and investment. When we buy the cheapest concrete or steel, there is no carbon-cost attached to it. There’s no incentive to use the greener materials.

And where there are financial incentives, they don’t necessarily help. The energy industry is rife with them, but they protect the enormously cheap fossil fuel industry. On the other hand, laws might make it ridiculously hard to build things like windfarms (a particular problem, seemingly, in the US).

There are things which make you raise your eyebrows a bit. Gates doesn’t believe that just planting lots of trees will fix things. He’s got nothing against trees but I think sees them as a too simplistic solution that will require ongoing care to payback their investment over centuries. He is a big proponent of nuclear fuel, pointing out that while wind and solar energy are fantastic, they don’t provide consistent power. And even though at heart, Gates is a technologist through and through, he doesn’t see battery technology meaningfully moving on, which causes difficulties if you need to store vast amounts of power to even out supply on windless or cloudy days.

Some will look at Gates, flying around in his private jet and wonder if he really practices what he preaches? He acknowledges his own shortcomings, but I think this book shows that he is indeed putting his money where his mouth is.

Getting to net zero will not be easy, as he repeats throughout, but it’s achievable and he’s laid out a plan to get us there.

Thought provoking. Insightful.

The book is written in a way that's easy to read, not too long, and deeply impactful throughout. In only a few hours I was able to dramatically further my understanding of the larger picture on climate change. This included the breakup of challenges that we face to avoid a climate disaster (which I personally found somewhat surprising), along with the current and future measures needed to tackle it (some of which I already knew more about than others).

This is a really good accessible book explaining how we have arrived at the edge of climatic disaster and how we can all do something about it. There will be need for rethinking of policies and there are some hard problems such as how to make CO2 free cement. The challenges of increased economic growth around the world, keep our standards of living, more people having our standards of living, and at the same time cutting CO2 emissions from 51 billion tonnes to net zero in 30yrs is enormous. There are some sobering examples if what will happen eg reductions in food production in a warmer world. Bill highlights the 5 key sectors that emit the most CO2 and identifies the incredible opportunities and returns on green investments. He also advocates for technological advances to lower the 'Green Premium' paid for replacing products and services that normally emit CO2 eg purchase price electric vehicles being more expensive than existing petrol vehicles. There are already some success stories such as drought and flood tolerant crops. But the message is clear, at all levels of society, be it governments, corporations or individuals action has to happen.
This is a very readable book which I found hard to put down ( I read it over 3 evenings). It gives clear facts and makes recommendations that make sense, for example the need for more research and development spending and the problems of existing investment in clean tech due to higher costs, risks and long term payback particularly in energy systems.
Finally, the impact on the world economy of COVID-19 reduced emissions by 5%. Bill Gates was surprised by how little this was given the economic shock showing our reliance on fossil fuels in our daily lives. Change is possible but it has to come soon.