Bill Gates readily concedes that the world isn’t short of “rich men with big ideas” in How To Avoid A Climate Disaster. He brings an intellectual honesty to the climate change debate that is absent from Democrat policy prescriptions, and often ignored by Republicans. Gates has done his homework, producing a book spilling over with facts and insights. The climate impact of each human activity (use of power, making things, moving around) is presented, along with its contribution to the 51 billion tons of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) emitted annually. He presents the issues in an easily understood framework that many readers should find engaging and accessible.
Although Bill Gates is surely a Democrat, it’s unlikely progressives will welcome his contribution. He dismisses Democrat orthodoxy by showing that the energy transition will be very expensive. He feels we should be motivated by the moral obligation to counter planetary warming because it will harm poorer countries the most. Rich countries can afford to manage rising sea levels (see Netherlands).
Since the Gates Foundation is focused on disease and malnutrition in the developing world, his altruistic view isn’t surprising. And the moral argument is a respectable one. But it exposes the enormous political challenge in gaining popular support for higher domestic energy prices to stop, say, Bangladesh flooding. Last week Joe Biden rejected a French proposal to redirect 5% of our Covid vaccines to poorer countries until all Americans have been vaccinated. It was a minor acknowledgment of political reality. Few have the means or inclination to dedicate themselves to solving poor countries’ problems before their own.
How To Avert A Climate Disaster reaches positive conclusions because it argues that current technology and innovation make solutions within reach. It provides policy prescriptions but deliberately avoids the politics. In many cases Gates calculates a “green premium”, reflecting the cost of converting transport, power generation, cement or steel production to be emission-free. Not surprisingly he favors a carbon tax to create price signals that fully reflect the externalities of burning fossil fuels.
Renewables figure far less prominently than in the Green New Deal (see The Bovine Green Dream), a document Gates would likely view as fantasy if he didn’t studiously avoid such engagement. He illustrates the fundamental problem of solar and wind intermittency by considering the battery back-up a Tokyo 100% reliant on windmills would require to maintain power during a not-uncommon three-day typhoon. Even with optimistic assumptions about improved technology, the cost would be prohibitive. Gates concedes to have, “…lost more money on start-up battery companies than I ever imagined.” He knows a bit about the subject.
Although efforts to curb emissions around the world generate enormous energy and press coverage, any actual improvements to date have come mostly from coal-to-gas switching for power generation (i.e. the U.S.) or last year’s drop in global economic activity due to Covid. U.S. energy costs haven’t risen noticeably, although California’s energy policies have managed to combine high costs with unreliability (see California Dreamin’ of Reliable Power).
Gates believes poor countries should be allowed to increase emissions, since energy consumption is inextricably linked to improved economic well-being. “We can’t expect poor people to stay poor because too many rich countries emitted too many greenhouse gases” he argues from the lonely moral high ground.
Reaching zero emissions by 2050 requires western democracies imposing substantial new regulation and costs on economic activity for decades. Meanwhile, the world’s building stock will grow mostly in poorer countries, requiring cement, steel and all the other emission-producing byproducts of human advancement. This construction will add the equivalent of another New York City every month for decades.
Gates asserts that climate change will inevitably cost – inaction will lower GDP, and action will take lots of money. It’s well he doesn’t consider how governments will sell this to voters if an honest discussion ever occurs, because by comparison the technical challenges are more easily solved.
Recognizing the political impracticality, Joe Biden instead disingenuously talks about “…tackling climate change and creating good union jobs here” (his emphasis).
The technology already exists to capture the carbon dioxide emitted by burning fossil fuels, whether to generate electricity (27% of global GHGs) or produce steel (manufactures also including cement and plastics in total are 31% of GHGs).
Gates estimates that emission-free power in the U.S., to include gas and coal with carbon capture, would raise prices by 15%. The green premium to make ethylene (plastic), steel and cement without CO2 emissions would raise prices by around 12%, 23% and 110% respectively. We could already start implementing such policies if the support was there. But political leaders avoid such talk, recognizing that voters’ concern about climate change doesn’t include much tolerance for higher prices.
An energy investor today has to assess plausible outcomes, ignoring the shrill rhetoric of climate extremists unburdened by the costs, facts and technological challenges Gates lays out.
Emerging economies will continue to grow, feeding all the increase in global energy demand as they seek OECD living standards. Their GHG emissions will rise. How tolerant will western democracies be of rising costs for virtually everything while we save the planet and allow poorer countries to catch up?
Bill Gates is an unfailing optimist – invariably the most pleasant posture for living. But your blogger found the comprehensive list of what needs to be done dauntingly improbable. Mitigants of the results of global warming are probably a better investment than betting on decades of extended selflessness by 1.3 billion OECD citizens, the rich world whose collective actions Gates believes will save all 7.6 billion of us.
There are already bold options available. We could phase out coal. We could require carbon capture on industrial use of fossil fuels. We could use more nuclear, whose safety record per unit of power generated is unmatched. Instead, more solar and wind is the climate extremists’ mantra in spite of intermittency and the NIMBY challenges of building transmission lines to move power from sparsely populated solar and wind farms to population centers (see Review Of Russell Gold’s Superpower for an example of how hard this is).
Burning less coal, carbon capture and compensating for renewables’ unreliability all support growth in natural gas demand. Gates argues against a shift to natural gas for power generation. He fears the 30-year life of a typical combined cycle power plant would embed its CO2 emissions for too long. It would show progress to 2030, while putting zero by 2050 out of reach. But if tangible results within the timeframe of election cycles are needed, it’s hard to see a better way.
If in a decade that’s how things have turned out, Gates the pragmatic optimist will hail it as success. We should too.
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars | 11,186 ratings
Price: 15.75
Last update: 01-03-2025
About this item
In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical - and accessible - plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe.
Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal.
He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions - suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise.
As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.
This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF of charts, graphs, and pictures from the book.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates
“How to Avoid a Climate Disaster” is a practical approach to climate change. Bill Gates, yes that Bill Gates provides readers with a useful approach to the technical challenges we face in dealing with climate change. This beneficial 256-page book includes the following twelve chapters: 1. Why Zero?, 2. This will be hard, 3. Five Questions to Ask in Every Climate Conversation, 4. How We Plug In, 5. How We Make Things, 6. How We Grow Things, 7. How We Get Around, 8. How We Keep Cool and Stay Warm, 9. Adapting to a Warmer World, 10. Why Government Policies Matter, and 11. A Plan For Getting to Zero, and 12. What Each of Us Can Do.
Positives:
1. Accessible, practical and succinct book.
2. The fascinating topic of climate change from an engineering solution approach.
3. An easy book to follow. Gates does a great job of simplifying terms and focusing on the world of the possible. The tone is hopeful and positive. “This book is about what it will take and why I think we can do it.”
4. A good use of charts and photos to complement the narrative.
5. Provides an early on summary of what it will take to avoid a climate disaster. “To avoid a climate disaster, we have to get to zero. We need to deploy the tools we already have, like solar and wind, faster and smarter. And we need to create and roll out breakthrough technologies that can take us the rest of the way.”
6. The book provides a way forward to avoiding a climate disaster. Gates breaks the book down in a logical manner, which makes it easier to reference at any given time.
7. Provides a brief explanation of why global temperatures are rising. “The reason we need to get to zero is simple. Greenhouse gases trap heat, causing the average surface temperature of the earth to go up. The more gases there are, the more the temperature rises.”
8. Provides a brief history of why energy transitions take a long time and the enormous challenges ahead of us. “To sum up: We need to accomplish something gigantic we have never done before, much faster than we have ever done anything similar. To do it, we need lots of breakthroughs in science and engineering. We need to build a consensus that doesn’t exist and create public policies to push a transition that would not happen otherwise. We need the energy system to stop doing all the things we don’t like and keep doing all the things we do like—in other words, to change completely and also stay the same.”
9. An excellent discussion on how much greenhouse gas is emitted by the things we do.
10. Explains what it will take to keep getting all the things we like from electricity and deliver it to even more people, but without the carbon emissions. “Nuclear fission. Here’s the one-sentence case for nuclear power: It’s the only carbon-free energy source that can reliably deliver power day and night, through every season, almost anywhere on earth, that has been proven to work on a large scale.”
11. Discusses storing electricity and other innovations. “Capturing carbon. We could keep making electricity as we do now, with natural gas and coal, but suck up the carbon dioxide before it hits the atmosphere. That’s called carbon capture and storage, and it involves installing special devices at fossil-fuel plants to absorb emissions.”
12. The biggest culprit of greenhouse gases. “We manufacture an enormous amount of materials, resulting in copious amounts of greenhouse gases, nearly a third of the 51 billion tons per year.”
13. The path to zero emissions in manufacturing. “Electrify every process possible. This is going to take a lot of innovation. Get that electricity from a power grid that’s been decarbonized. This also will take a lot of innovation. Use carbon capture to absorb the remaining emissions. And so will this. Use materials more efficiently.”
14. Borlaug’s impact to the globe. “As Borlaug’s semi-dwarf wheat spread around the world, and as other breeders did similar work on corn and rice, yields tripled in most areas. Starvation plummeted, and today Borlaug is widely credited with saving a billion lives. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, and we’re still feeling the impact of his work: Virtually all the wheat grown on earth is descended from the plants he bred.”
15. Hard challenges and facts to overcome. “Pound for pound, the best lithium-ion battery available today packs 35 times less energy than gasoline.”
16. The path to zero carbon for heating. “(1) Electrify what we can, getting rid of natural gas water heaters and furnaces, and (2) develop clean fuels to do everything else.”
17. The best way to lower the globe’s temperature without crippling the economy, find out.
18. The impact of government policies. Provides seven high-level goals. “In general, the government’s role is to invest in R&D when the private sector won’t because it can’t see how it will make a profit.”
19. Provides a plan for getting to zero. “When it comes to scaling up new technologies, the federal government plays the largest role of anyone.”
20. Steps on what each one of us can do.
21. Notes and links provided.
Negatives:
1. The book is meant to be accessible for the masses so as a result it lacks depth.
2. If you are looking to know what causes climate change, there are far better books out there. This is a big picture look at what technical challenges we face.
3. No bibliography.
In summary, I really like this book because the focus is on the big picture technical solutions for climate change. Many books of this ilk focus on trying to compel the reader that climate change is real while Gates that is a given and focuses on the possible and most likely technical solutions. As a recently retired engineer, I prefer this type of focus. The book is brief and gets to the main points but it comes at the price of depth. Overall, this is a very practical and useful book that will provide readers with hope. I recommend it.
Further recommendations: “An Inconvenient Sequel” by Al Gore, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate” by Naomi Klein, “Changing Planet, Changing Health” by Paul R. Epstein, MD, and Dan Feber, “The Crash Course” by Chris Marteson, “Storms of My Grandchildren” by James Hansen, “Warnings” by Mike Smith, “The Weather of the New Future” by Heidi Cullen, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars” by Michael E. Mann, “Clean Break” by Osha Gray Davidson, “Fool Me Twice” by Lawrence Otto, “Lies, Damned Lies, and Science” by Sherry Seethaler, “Reality Check” by Donald R. Prothero, and “Merchants od Doubt” by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway.
“How to Avoid a Climate Disaster” is a practical approach to climate change. Bill Gates, yes that Bill Gates provides readers with a useful approach to the technical challenges we face in dealing with climate change. This beneficial 256-page book includes the following twelve chapters: 1. Why Zero?, 2. This will be hard, 3. Five Questions to Ask in Every Climate Conversation, 4. How We Plug In, 5. How We Make Things, 6. How We Grow Things, 7. How We Get Around, 8. How We Keep Cool and Stay Warm, 9. Adapting to a Warmer World, 10. Why Government Policies Matter, and 11. A Plan For Getting to Zero, and 12. What Each of Us Can Do.
Positives:
1. Accessible, practical and succinct book.
2. The fascinating topic of climate change from an engineering solution approach.
3. An easy book to follow. Gates does a great job of simplifying terms and focusing on the world of the possible. The tone is hopeful and positive. “This book is about what it will take and why I think we can do it.”
4. A good use of charts and photos to complement the narrative.
5. Provides an early on summary of what it will take to avoid a climate disaster. “To avoid a climate disaster, we have to get to zero. We need to deploy the tools we already have, like solar and wind, faster and smarter. And we need to create and roll out breakthrough technologies that can take us the rest of the way.”
6. The book provides a way forward to avoiding a climate disaster. Gates breaks the book down in a logical manner, which makes it easier to reference at any given time.
7. Provides a brief explanation of why global temperatures are rising. “The reason we need to get to zero is simple. Greenhouse gases trap heat, causing the average surface temperature of the earth to go up. The more gases there are, the more the temperature rises.”
8. Provides a brief history of why energy transitions take a long time and the enormous challenges ahead of us. “To sum up: We need to accomplish something gigantic we have never done before, much faster than we have ever done anything similar. To do it, we need lots of breakthroughs in science and engineering. We need to build a consensus that doesn’t exist and create public policies to push a transition that would not happen otherwise. We need the energy system to stop doing all the things we don’t like and keep doing all the things we do like—in other words, to change completely and also stay the same.”
9. An excellent discussion on how much greenhouse gas is emitted by the things we do.
10. Explains what it will take to keep getting all the things we like from electricity and deliver it to even more people, but without the carbon emissions. “Nuclear fission. Here’s the one-sentence case for nuclear power: It’s the only carbon-free energy source that can reliably deliver power day and night, through every season, almost anywhere on earth, that has been proven to work on a large scale.”
11. Discusses storing electricity and other innovations. “Capturing carbon. We could keep making electricity as we do now, with natural gas and coal, but suck up the carbon dioxide before it hits the atmosphere. That’s called carbon capture and storage, and it involves installing special devices at fossil-fuel plants to absorb emissions.”
12. The biggest culprit of greenhouse gases. “We manufacture an enormous amount of materials, resulting in copious amounts of greenhouse gases, nearly a third of the 51 billion tons per year.”
13. The path to zero emissions in manufacturing. “Electrify every process possible. This is going to take a lot of innovation. Get that electricity from a power grid that’s been decarbonized. This also will take a lot of innovation. Use carbon capture to absorb the remaining emissions. And so will this. Use materials more efficiently.”
14. Borlaug’s impact to the globe. “As Borlaug’s semi-dwarf wheat spread around the world, and as other breeders did similar work on corn and rice, yields tripled in most areas. Starvation plummeted, and today Borlaug is widely credited with saving a billion lives. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, and we’re still feeling the impact of his work: Virtually all the wheat grown on earth is descended from the plants he bred.”
15. Hard challenges and facts to overcome. “Pound for pound, the best lithium-ion battery available today packs 35 times less energy than gasoline.”
16. The path to zero carbon for heating. “(1) Electrify what we can, getting rid of natural gas water heaters and furnaces, and (2) develop clean fuels to do everything else.”
17. The best way to lower the globe’s temperature without crippling the economy, find out.
18. The impact of government policies. Provides seven high-level goals. “In general, the government’s role is to invest in R&D when the private sector won’t because it can’t see how it will make a profit.”
19. Provides a plan for getting to zero. “When it comes to scaling up new technologies, the federal government plays the largest role of anyone.”
20. Steps on what each one of us can do.
21. Notes and links provided.
Negatives:
1. The book is meant to be accessible for the masses so as a result it lacks depth.
2. If you are looking to know what causes climate change, there are far better books out there. This is a big picture look at what technical challenges we face.
3. No bibliography.
In summary, I really like this book because the focus is on the big picture technical solutions for climate change. Many books of this ilk focus on trying to compel the reader that climate change is real while Gates that is a given and focuses on the possible and most likely technical solutions. As a recently retired engineer, I prefer this type of focus. The book is brief and gets to the main points but it comes at the price of depth. Overall, this is a very practical and useful book that will provide readers with hope. I recommend it.
Further recommendations: “An Inconvenient Sequel” by Al Gore, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate” by Naomi Klein, “Changing Planet, Changing Health” by Paul R. Epstein, MD, and Dan Feber, “The Crash Course” by Chris Marteson, “Storms of My Grandchildren” by James Hansen, “Warnings” by Mike Smith, “The Weather of the New Future” by Heidi Cullen, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars” by Michael E. Mann, “Clean Break” by Osha Gray Davidson, “Fool Me Twice” by Lawrence Otto, “Lies, Damned Lies, and Science” by Sherry Seethaler, “Reality Check” by Donald R. Prothero, and “Merchants od Doubt” by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway.