How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need
by Bill Gates
February 28, 2021 — March 1, 2021
Los Angeles, CA
I’ve been wanting to read this book the day Bill Gates announced it, when this pre-ordered book arrived, I slightly pushed back my reading queue and finished it in two sittings. It was due to the book’s subject which I’m interested in and the book’s author, whom I admire (a lot of the books you see on here are Bill Gate’s recommendations); that being said, I had a cocktail of reactions and feelings while reading this book. When it comes to the actual book: Gates definitely did his research on the issue(s) and writes pretty well, so it’s a great book that’s informative and straight to the point. As for the approach, this is where my criticism and skepticism arise; while he touches on the international community, his approach is very narrow to American governance and written in a way that would be adhering to American mentality (roughly 4% of the global population). I love the solutions he’s provided and they’re realistic to solving the challenge of fighting climate change, while Gates is known for being ultimately optimistic, I personally think he’s being overly optimistic here due to the solutions being very specific and set (which he acknowledges it will be very hard) and requiring everyone to be on board (very unlikely); go on youtube and you’ll already see the amount of negative feedback in the comments. Especially since he wants governments to step in and reform policies, unless every nation in the world is run by benevolent dictators or absolute monarchs who will all agree with each other on his proposed plans together, and reform every policy in their countries overnight with a simple signature and enforce them without any backlash; I don’t think Gates’s desires for us to reach zero emissions are going to manifest. Furthermore, I feel that Gates isn’t incorporating one of the most substantial themes of humanity that will be a colossal obstacle to overcome: culture. While I enjoyed the book and learned a lot, it left me worried about the future, cause if these types of plans are the bare minimum and there’s no alternative, we are ...definitely screwed and going to face a climate disaster. I still highly recommend this book, it covers a lot, you’ll learn a lot and will get you thinking more.
Before I dive deeper into what I learned, I want to emphasize the point of culture that Gates didn’t take account of when forming his plan. Humans, for the most part, will think short-term, especially if you take into account that a majority of the world isn’t privileged enough to think long-term. I went and tried an impossible burger from Burger King and Fatburger, I noticed the difference and it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. Then I thought about having BBQ in Texas, experiencing ceremonial sacrifices during Eid Al-Adha in Egypt, and that’s just regarding meat, there are several other issues that relate to a culture that will stand as an obstacle when fighting climate change; it’s going to be very very tough to convince different cultures to comprise their cultural traditions and religious beliefs. While cars could be replaced by electric vehicles (like Tesla) we need to realize there was an incentive to change, I find it very hard to incentivize changes to culture. Furthermore, I’d like to touch upon the other obstacle we’re going to face, individualistic mentalities, especially those that are unfortunately poor (cannot afford to sacrifice anything for the sake of sustainability) and those that are hardcore commercialists (let’s be real, these guys aren’t going to consider green premiums). I’m going to leave it off there instead of getting into how we’re in an ongoing global socio-economic civil war.
According to Gates, to avoid a climate disaster, we have to get to zero greenhouse gas emissions. 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. We emit greenhouse gases by every action we have and it accounts for these categories: making things (31%), plugging in (27%), growing things (19%), getting around (16%), and keeping warm and cool (7%). To power up an average American house, it takes 1 kilowatt (a watt is a bit of energy per second), to power up the world it takes 5,000 gigawatts, which is why fossil fuels are so popular, they take the least space and are the cheapest to generating the most amount of energy (500-10,000 watt per square meter). While providing these additional costs for sustainability, green premiums, we have to take into account that it still needs to be affordable enough for low-income families. That’s going to be extremely hard considering 860 million people still don’t have reliable access to electricity, a majority (almost 70%) being based in Sub-saharan Africa. The problem in finding sustainable solutions is that fossil fuels are cheap, some regions of the world simply don’t have decent renewable resources, furthermore, if we’re paying for electricity we’ll demand reliability while renewable energy is cursed with intermittency. So a lot of LDCs are going for what China did for economic growth, if more LDCs did what MDCs did and are doing, a climate disaster is guaranteed.
The future is nuclear, I support this statement. We need more nuclear power to foresee a future where we decarbonize our power grid affordably, they’re number one when it comes to efficiency. When it comes to manufacturing, we have to electrify every process possible, get that electricity from a power grid that’s been decarbonized, use carbon capture to absorb the remaining emissions, and use materials more efficiently. In agriculture, we have to stop deforestation (also outside of this book, I learned that we need to stop hardcore commercial fishing).
In Gates’s plan, we need to quintuple clean energy and climate-related R&D over the next decade, mating R&D with our greatest needs, working with industries from the beginning. The technologies and innovations needed are producing hydrogen without emitting carbon, grid-scale electricity storage that can last a full season, electro-fuels, advanced biofuels, zero-carbon cement and steel and fertilizer and plastics and alternatives to palm oil, plant-and-cell-based meat and dairy, next-generation nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, carbon capture (both direct air caput and point capture), underground electricity transmission, geothermal energy, pumped hydro, thermal storage, drought and flood-tolerant food crops, and coolants that don’t contain F-gases. We need to create incentives that lower costs and reduce risks while building the infrastructure that will get new technologies to market, and changing the rules so new technologies can compete. We have to put a price on carbon and set standards for clean electricity, fuel, and products while getting rid of the existing old technology we have that’s negatively impacting our climate. Who needs to do this first, rich countries and their governments need to lead it.