#50: How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates

I <3 Earth

Published 2021 | 272 pages
Tags: Non-fiction, Science, Environment

The cruel injustice is that even though the world’s poor are doing essentially nothing to cause climate change, they’re going to suffer the most from it.

Why did this rich guy write a book?

Here’s how I see it: Bill Gates is the fourth richest man in the world, worth over $100 billion. He needs royalties from book sales about as much as my junior prom date needed me: Which is to say, not at all. Then why write it?

What’s it about?

Mr. Gates believes the world is in trouble. Rather than wearing a cardboard “The End is Near” sign, he’s doing something about it. Solving climate change will require the world’s brilliant scientists and inventors to come up with technological breakthroughs. Those innovators will need money and policies that enable their work to come to fruition.

Here is the break down of the top contributors to greenhouse gases, which are all essential for human survival. A chapter is dedicated to each one:

• Making things (cement, steel, plastic): 31%.

• Plugging in (electricity): 27%

• Growing things (plants, animals): 19%

• Getting around (planes, trucks, cargo ships): 16%

• Keeping warm and cool (heating, cooling, refrigeration): 7%

How did it impact me?

Reading this was discouraging and promising simultaneously. There are obvious reasons we use fossil fuels: They are cheap, we have them in abundance, they work great, etc. Moving away from them will be expensive, won’t work as well at first, will likely create new problems and challenges, etc. I’m encouraged by the people working on the problem and investing large sums of money in solutions. Many investors will lose money because a green solution won’t work or can’t compete with fossil fuels.

I’m also discouraged at how polarized taking care of the earth is. It has to be political - we need the weight of governments behind this. But it doesn’t have to be polarizing. If anything it should be a great, unifying cause.

What opened my eyes is that this problem will impact different parts of the world in different ways and it hits the poor the hardest. As a wealthy nation, it would be great if we could extend a helping hand to other countries by investing what we can to bring emissions to zero. It also never occurred to me before reading this that as people move out of poverty into more financial stability, they produce more greenhouse gases. Thus ending poverty and reducing emissions are at odds unless we come up with technological breakthroughs.

Who would I recommend it to?

This is a great starting point for people curious about climate change. Many more and much longer books could be written on any single chapter. We all have a small part to play and sometimes it feels impossible to move the needle as one tiny individual on this huge planet. But billions of people doing small things could make a big difference.

Any other books on climate change out there that you’d recommend?

Thanks for reading,

Kyle