Review — How To Avoid A Climate Disaster

Sure, Bill Gates may not be the best messenger for climate change but we also live in a world where people didn’t think that the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is someone to listen to when it comes to COVID-19. In any event, Gates new book ‘How To Avoid A Climate Disaster’ is probably the most honest and logical book you are going to find on the subject of climate change and he provides solutions on what we can do to defeat climate change.

Gates doesn’t sugar coat things. He immediately points out that this is going to be hard. Very hard. From the changes we need to make in cement to pretty much redoing the entire utility industry to the really discouraging conclusion that lithium batteries are really the only game in town.

But we can’t just go after this low-hanging fruit. Now that the movement to address climate change is getting serious, we’ll need to focus on the hard parts too: electricity storage, clean fuels, cement, steel, fertilizer and so on.

pg. 189

Now the good part is two fold. First, Gates doesn’t try to fool you into believing that there is a single solution to say generating power or that a coal miner isn’t going to lose his job. Second, the solutions he presents seem feasible, logical and doable but obviously difficult. Let’s face it, getting the US Congress to agree on what to order for dinner is difficult and climate change is something that they need to come together on and come together on now.

What I really did appreciate about this book is that Gates goes into detail but he doesn’t overwhelm the reader with charts and graphs. For example how that buying an electronic vehicle (EV) is a good thing but the steel, aluminum and plastic they are made with contribute more to climate change (ie putting carbon into the atmosphere) than the EV is helping turn the tied. It’s still good to have an EV but having everyone switch to them around the world is not feasible and there are still massive challenges such as charging stations and creating fast charging batteries.

This is interesting stuff and hopefully helps drive more and bigger action on climate change. I recommend it because it’s interesting and yeah, I’m already on board with making big changes. You may not be and may just not like this. You may also believe that Bill Gates is somehow behind the COVID-19 vaccine and putting microchip’s into people’s arms. In that case…well let’s focus on the positive here and be happy you can read.