How to Avoid a Climate Disaster
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How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs
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Publication date February 16, 2021
Media type Print (hardcover and paperback), e-book, audio
Pages 272
ISBN 978-0-385-54613-3 (hardcover)
OCLC 1122802121
Dewey Decimal 363.738/747
LC Class QC903 .G378 2020
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need is a 2021 book by Bill Gates. In it, Gates presents what he learned in over a decade of studying climate change and investing in innovations to address global warming and recommends strategies to tackle it.[1]
Contents
1Summary
2Publication
3Reception
4References
Summary[edit]
- Gates argues that both governments and businesses have a role to play in fighting global warming.
- While he acknowledges that there is a tension between economic development and sustainability, he posits that accelerated green technology would resolve it.
- He calls on governments to increase investment in climate research,
- but at the same time to incentivize firms to invest in green energy and decarbonization.
- Gates also proposes a carbon pricing regime that would account for all externalities involved in producing and using carbon-emitting energy.
- Gates thinks that decarbonizing electricity should be a priority, because it would not only reduce emissions from coal and gas used to produce electricity,
- but also allow an accelerated shift to zero emission transportation like electric cars.
- He advocates increased innovation and investment in nuclear energy, and warns against overly focusing on wind and solar generation, due to their intermittent nature.
Publication[edit]
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster was published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf on February 16, 2021. An audiobook narrated by Gates and Wil Wheaton was released the same day. A large-print paperback edition was published on February 23, 2021.[2]
The book debuted at number one on The New York Times non-fiction best-seller list for the week ending February 20, 2021.[3]
Reception[edit]
In its starred review, Kirkus Reviews called it a "supremely authoritative and accessible plan for how we can avoid a climate catastrophe."[4]
Publishers Weekly agreed, calling it a "cogent" and "accessible" guide to countering climate change. However, the publication wrote that "not all of his ideas strike as politically feasible."[5].
British newspaper The Economist praised Gates for the book's "cold-eyed realism and number-crunched optimism."[6]
Climate activist Leah Stokes described the book as largely "Technology solutionism" when compared to other books published at a similar time such as Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert.[7]
References[edit]
Interview Highlights
On his belief that the world has to reduce emissions of greenhose gasses from 51 billion tons a year to zero
Sadly, as long as you're emitting CO2, you're causing the temperature to go up. And so all the dire effects of coral reefs dying off, of it becoming, you know, basically impossible to work outdoors in the tropical regions — these things are simply proportional to how many of those emissions you make. And so it gets hotter and hotter until you actually get down to the ultimate goal, which is the zero emissions. And that's why you have to know all the different sources of emissions and look at why it's so expensive right now to make those products in a way that does not involve emissions.
On the fact that developed countries have contributed the most to this problem — and the argument that countries wanting to improve their standard of living should make different choices
The key thing is that if we — take India as a good example of a developing country whose historical emissions have been very low, but if they keep doing things the same way we've done them, their emissions will be very high. And so only through innovations that bring that down by about 95%, then it is reasonable you could say, OK, not only did the U.S. reduce its own emissions, but the U.S. used its — the power of government R&D and private market risk-taking to create these products that will allow you to keep building basic shelter and providing lights at night and air conditioning at a very basic level without the massive emissions that would result if they don't change.
On his being excited about nuclear energy — and people's fears about it
Even though nuclear, you know, per unit of energy, has caused far, far less deaths than coal or natural gas, any design that has high pressure or requires operators to do something as opposed to just using physics to show that the radioactive material cannot escape, it's always going to cause concerns.
Climate activist Leah Stokes described the book as largely "Technology solutionism" when compared to other books published at a similar time such as Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert.[7]
References[edit]
- ^ Cooper, Anderson (February 15, 2021). "Bill Gates: How the world can avoid a climate disaster". 60 Minutes. CBS News. Retrieved February 26, 2021.
- ^ "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates". Penguin Random House. Retrieved February 26, 2021.
- ^ "Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction - Best Sellers - Books". The New York Times. Retrieved February 27, 2021.
- ^ "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates". Kirkus Reviews. December 15, 2020. Retrieved February 26, 2021.
- ^ "Nonfiction Book Review: How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates". Publishers Weekly. November 23, 2020. Retrieved February 26, 2021.
- ^ "Bill Gates has a plan to save the world". www.economist.com. The Economist. February 20, 2021. Retrieved March 1, 2021. The most refreshing aspect of this book is its bracing mix of cold-eyed realism and number-crunched optimism.
- ^ "Reviewed: "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster" by Bill Gates, "The Ministry for the Future" by Kim Stanley Robinson, and "Under a White Sky" by Elizabeth Kolbert". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved March 8, 2021.
===
Bill Gates Weighs In On 'How To Avoid A Climate Disaster' With New Book
March 14, 20215:05 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
MICHEL MARTIN
LISTEN· 8:068-Minute ListenAdd toPLAYLIST
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Transcript
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need, by Bill GatesKnopf
Editor's note: The introduction of this interview with Bill Gates should have stated that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is an NPR funder.
Climate change has been called the greatest existential threat of our time — and it has already had devastating effects on people throughout the world.
Now Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, one of the world's most prominent business leaders and philanthropists — the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been a supporter of NPR — is sharing his thoughts on how to solve it.
In his new book How To Avoid A Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have And The Breakthroughs We Need, he outlines how his own thinking on the topic has evolved over the years — and he describes a path forward that he says everybody can participate in in some way.
Bill Gates Weighs In On 'How To Avoid A Climate Disaster' With New Book
March 14, 20215:05 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
MICHEL MARTIN
LISTEN· 8:068-Minute ListenAdd toPLAYLIST
Download
Embed
Transcript
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need, by Bill GatesKnopf
Editor's note: The introduction of this interview with Bill Gates should have stated that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is an NPR funder.
Climate change has been called the greatest existential threat of our time — and it has already had devastating effects on people throughout the world.
Now Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, one of the world's most prominent business leaders and philanthropists — the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been a supporter of NPR — is sharing his thoughts on how to solve it.
In his new book How To Avoid A Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have And The Breakthroughs We Need, he outlines how his own thinking on the topic has evolved over the years — and he describes a path forward that he says everybody can participate in in some way.
Interview Highlights
On his belief that the world has to reduce emissions of greenhose gasses from 51 billion tons a year to zero
Sadly, as long as you're emitting CO2, you're causing the temperature to go up. And so all the dire effects of coral reefs dying off, of it becoming, you know, basically impossible to work outdoors in the tropical regions — these things are simply proportional to how many of those emissions you make. And so it gets hotter and hotter until you actually get down to the ultimate goal, which is the zero emissions. And that's why you have to know all the different sources of emissions and look at why it's so expensive right now to make those products in a way that does not involve emissions.
On the fact that developed countries have contributed the most to this problem — and the argument that countries wanting to improve their standard of living should make different choices
The key thing is that if we — take India as a good example of a developing country whose historical emissions have been very low, but if they keep doing things the same way we've done them, their emissions will be very high. And so only through innovations that bring that down by about 95%, then it is reasonable you could say, OK, not only did the U.S. reduce its own emissions, but the U.S. used its — the power of government R&D and private market risk-taking to create these products that will allow you to keep building basic shelter and providing lights at night and air conditioning at a very basic level without the massive emissions that would result if they don't change.
On his being excited about nuclear energy — and people's fears about it
Even though nuclear, you know, per unit of energy, has caused far, far less deaths than coal or natural gas, any design that has high pressure or requires operators to do something as opposed to just using physics to show that the radioactive material cannot escape, it's always going to cause concerns.
And so this is an area where we should keep it alive as an option. If we can create that green grid that will have to be three times as large because it's taking over from gasoline to power cars and natural gas to heat homes — if we could do that without something that isn't weather-dependent and still keep the reliability, that would be great. But as we saw in Texas, we have these weather events that are fairly extreme, and yet people expect their electricity to stay on.
On making the climate change debate more thoughtful and constructive — and puting hope in facts
Well, I don't think the understanding of climate change is nearly as deep as it needs to be. And, you know, unless this becomes a gigantic cause — and we see signs that's the case, the interest level usually when we have something like a pandemic, the interest in long-term problems often goes away. And we saw that during the financial crisis. During this crisis, actually, interest in climate, particularly in young people, went up quite substantially.
Now, part of that is they're seeing the sea level rise and the wildfires and the inability to do typical farming in the southern parts of the country. And, you know, so the early effects are upon us. But the pandemic shows that you can't wait until the disaster hits to be ready. And so the part about engaging an entire generation — I think there's incredibly creative people out there who are going to help drive that. And so my contribution was to say, OK, here's a plan: If we're going to use every year of the next 30 years and make this a priority, then, you know, here's the metrics, and here's the outline of how you accelerate about that.
On what people can do
Well, everybody needs to learn more. And they need to share those learnings, hopefully, with people from both parties. So your political voice is very important. Your purchasing voice and — an electric car, artificial meat, looking at the products you buy in terms of the emissions they're involved with — and then making sure that the company you work for is leading the way, buying green products with their purchasing power and taking, you know, their skillset and contributing. So, you've got to use all those ways of influencing the world — and drive both understanding and commitment to this thing to a level even beyond where we are right now.
On making the climate change debate more thoughtful and constructive — and puting hope in facts
Well, I don't think the understanding of climate change is nearly as deep as it needs to be. And, you know, unless this becomes a gigantic cause — and we see signs that's the case, the interest level usually when we have something like a pandemic, the interest in long-term problems often goes away. And we saw that during the financial crisis. During this crisis, actually, interest in climate, particularly in young people, went up quite substantially.
Now, part of that is they're seeing the sea level rise and the wildfires and the inability to do typical farming in the southern parts of the country. And, you know, so the early effects are upon us. But the pandemic shows that you can't wait until the disaster hits to be ready. And so the part about engaging an entire generation — I think there's incredibly creative people out there who are going to help drive that. And so my contribution was to say, OK, here's a plan: If we're going to use every year of the next 30 years and make this a priority, then, you know, here's the metrics, and here's the outline of how you accelerate about that.
On what people can do
Well, everybody needs to learn more. And they need to share those learnings, hopefully, with people from both parties. So your political voice is very important. Your purchasing voice and — an electric car, artificial meat, looking at the products you buy in terms of the emissions they're involved with — and then making sure that the company you work for is leading the way, buying green products with their purchasing power and taking, you know, their skillset and contributing. So, you've got to use all those ways of influencing the world — and drive both understanding and commitment to this thing to a level even beyond where we are right now.
===
ow to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates review – why science isn't enough
The co-founder of Microsoft looks to science and tech to end climate crisis ... but can nations cooperate?
=====================
Bill Gates at the UN climate action summit in September 2019.
‘Show me a problem and I’d look for a technology to fix it’ … Bill Gates at the UN climate action summit in September 2019.
Photograph: Jason DeCrow/AP
Gordon Brown
Gordon Brown
Wed 17 Feb 2021 20.00 AEDT
291
Bill Gates has changed our lives through his Microsoft software; he has improved countless lives through his foundation’s work to eliminate polio, TB and malaria; and now he proposes to help save our lives by combating climate change.
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster details the transformation necessary to reverse the effects of decades of catastrophic practices. We need, Gates calculates, to remove 51bn tonnes of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere every year. Failing to do so would cost more than the 1.5 million lives already lost to Covid-19 and could cause, he calculates, five times more deaths than the Spanish flu a century ago.
Ever the technologist, Gates sets out a spreadsheet for getting rid of those 51bn tonnes of greenhouse gases and achieving net carbon zero emissions by 2050. We would need to use more renewables and fewer fossil fuels (which would account for roughly 27% of the reduction needed in emissions), and change how we manufacture our goods (31%), grow our food (18%), travel (16%), and keep our buildings warm or cool (6%).
To achieve this, Gates provides a set of measures that could, if the UK government is listening, be transposed point by point into the formal agenda for the this year’s 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference, Cop26, in Glasgow. He favours a green new deal, carbon pricing and heightened corporate responsibility. But Gates’s most important proposals involve new technologies. Just as his global health initiatives specialised in scientific solutions to combat disease – “show me a problem and I’d look for a technology to fix it”, he writes – his principal interest is in a technological breakthrough, the environmental equivalent of the Manhattan Project or the moon landing.
Gates is right about the scale and urgency of the problem. Global carbon emissions are now 65% higher than they were in 1990, and the term “global warming”, with its cosy overtones and accompanying stories of vintners making English and even Scottish champagne, does not adequately explain the intensity of storms, hurricanes, floods and severe droughts that are putting our planet on course to reach temperatures not seen in millions of years. Nor, as this book shows, does it satisfactorily reflect the biggest market failure in history and the most difficult global collective action problem the world has ever had to face.
Gates is right about the scale and urgency of the problem. Global carbon emissions are 65% higher than they were in 1990
Recognising that we cannot continue to deny electricity to 800 million of the world’s poorest people, his starting point is a plan to develop clean energy and cut its costs. Already, scientific advance has brought an astonishing reduction in the prices of solar, wind and wave energy, battery storage, electric vehicles, remote sensing monitoring and smart grids. But if we are to deliver affordable clean energy, we have to go much further. Gates demands what he calls “a renewable portfolio standard” of energy pricing and an immediate quintupling of climate-related research and development. This would include investing in nuclear fusion as well as nuclear fission; thermal energy (creating energy from hot rocks underground); carbon mineralisation; sea-based carbon removal to de-acidify the oceans; and direct air capture using scrubbing machines. Because even the most advanced solar panels currently convert only around a quarter of the sun’s energy, we need to address problems caused by the intermittency in the output of renewable energy, seasonal differences in its supply, and the high storage costs.
But we must also do more to capture emissions across the entire energy, transport and manufacturing sectors before they are released back to the atmosphere: to store them deep underground or in long-lived products such as concrete, or even by combining CO2 with calcium to produce limestone that could replace concrete.
Taken together these measures could meet the world’s objective of net carbon zero. But if politics was simply the application of reason and science to contemporary challenges, we might have not only solved the climate crisis by now but easily cured Covid-19 and other infectious diseases too.
So we have to ask why, when what needs to be done seems obvious, we have been so slow to act. And why, when it is more cost-effective for advanced economies to fund the total cost of mitigation and adaptation in the poorest countries than to suffer decades of worsening pollution, has the world simply failed to come together?
Gates clearly prefers science to politics – “I think more like an engineer than a political scientist” – and his touching, admirable faith in science and reason reminds me of a similar faith, this time in economic rationality, held by the great prewar economist John Maynard Keynes. His breakthrough in economic thinking offered a way out of the world depression and mass unemployment of the 1930s. But he was unable to persuade the political leaders of the day, and in frustration decried politics as “the survival of the unfittest”. “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones,” he concluded.
We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN
Read more
Gates is modest enough to say: “I don’t have a solution to the politics of climate change,” but he too knows that the solution he seeks is inextricably tied up in political decisions. Seemingly unanswerable scientific evidence can be torpedoed by powerful vested interests, or sidelined by bureaucratic indifference, or undermined by weak and incompetent political leaderships that make commitments they do not honour. Or they can be sabotaged by geopolitical rivalries or simply by nations clinging to old-fashioned and absolutist views of national sovereignty. As a result, the multilateral cooperation necessary to deal with a global problem does not emerge, and the very real tensions between economic and environmental priorities, and between the developed and developing world, go unresolved.
I look back on the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009, when the UKand Europe’s enthusiasm for a deal failed to overcome both the reluctance of the US to make legally binding commitments, and the deep suspicion of China, India and the emerging economies of any obligations that they believed might threaten their development. So determined were they to avoid binding commitments that they rejected Europe’s offer to unilaterally bind itself to a 50% cut in its emissions. So bitter were the divisions that the Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, who bravely stood out for an ambitious deal, exchanged an angry war of words with the Chinese negotiator.
The Paris accord of 2015 helped reverse many of the setbacks of Copenhagen. Agreement was reached on a global target: to prevent temperatures rising to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels – preferably 1.5 degrees. And we created new obligations on each country to report, monitor and continuously review their emissions. And while we could not bind the major economies to precise commitments on carbon reductions, they agreed to a ratcheting up of their ambitions every five years.
The importance of Glasgow’s Cop26 in November is that it is the first of these “ratchet” points, and, with 70 countries already committed to net zero carbon emissions, it represents the best opportunity in years to make progress. It also comes at a time when the science is more definitive, the technology more cost-effective, and the price of inaction far clearer. What’s more, President Biden and his new climate envoy John Kerry are promising a renewal of American leadership, and corporations and cities are on board for change.
The Unterer Theodulgletscher glacier above Zermatt is melting at a markedly increased rate.
The Unterer Theodulgletscher glacier above Zermatt is melting at a markedly increased rate. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images
In addition to accepting Gates’s proposals for more funding of new technologies, I envisage advances in Glasgow on four major fronts. First, the globally coordinated fiscal stimulus we now need for a post-Covid economic recovery should have, at its heart, a green new deal, centred around a massive expansion in environmentally sustainable infrastructure and the creation of millions of much needed new jobs.
Second, new corporate laws should be agreed, to be applied worldwide, that ensure global companies disclose their carbon footprints, adopt impact-weighted accounting that would reveal the full environmental cost of their operations, and break with business-as-usual by publishing transition plans to a zero net carbon economy.
Third, we should advance the cause of carbon pricing by agreements to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and by taking up Biden’s plan for border adjustment mechanisms that, for the first time, tax carbon-intensive imports and exports. And fourth, we could agree a big boost to nature-based solutions from afforestation to the better land use now championed by the World Resources Institute. In doing so we could finally make a reality of the promised $100bn green climate fund that was planned 10 years ago to collect and allocate payments for climate mitigation and adaptation in the developing world.
But to operationalise the Paris agreement – to limit warming to 1.5 degrees – requires countries to halve their CO2 emissions by 2030. So vested interests like big oil will have to be enlisted for change. The populist nationalist and protectionist rhetoric of irresponsible demagogues will have to be taken head on. And supporters of a stronger set of commitments will have to show why sharing sovereignty is in every nation’s self-interest, and that coordinated global action is indeed the only way to end the mismatch between the scale of the environmental problems we face and our current capacity to solve them. Success will come by demonstrating that the real power countries can wield to create a better world is not the power they can exercise over others but the power they can exercise with others.
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need is published by Allen Lane. Gordon Brown’s Seven Ways to Change the World will be published by Simon & Schuster in June.
This article was amended on 24 February 2021. An earlier version included Gordon Brown’s recollection that Kevin Rudd “had to be physically restrained from punching the Chinese negotiator” at the 2009 Copenhagen summit. The Australian prime minister was reported to have been very angry about China’s stance in the climate talks but the writer has confirmed that no threat was issued.
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