46 pages • 1 hour read
Bill GatesHow to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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The Urgency of Climate Change
The book’s main theme is just how urgent a crisis climate change poses. We must act—and fast. Gates makes this clear from the start as he tells how he came to be so passionate about the subject. When he first started paying attention to climate change in the early 2000s, he writes, he thought that we could mitigate and manage it by getting serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, the more he learned and talked with experts, the more he realized that what climate scientists were predicting was correct: that we will never stop increasing the Earth’s temperature without cutting emissions to zero. Given that the world emits 51 billion tons of greenhouse gases every year, that’s a tall order.
Moreover, most experts think we need to get to zero by the year 2050 to avert a major climate disaster. In Chapter 2, Gates frankly discusses why this will be so difficult: because of our dependence on fossil fuels and the processes that emit greenhouse gases. The word “fuels” can be misleading, as it evokes only of transportation—but we use fossil fuels for much more. From the concrete in apartment buildings, to plastic bags at the supermarket, to the electricity that powers our appliances and computers, the products of fossil fuels surround us.
In Chapters 4 through 8, Gates examines the five main sources of emissions and the alternatives available or in development to replace the fossil fuels in each. He looks at how close we are to fully substituting methods or goods, and he reviews the current extra costs. All this points to the fact that getting to zero in 30 years will entail a lot of work. Always the optimist, Gates champions the ability of emerging technology to meet our needs and the will of the people in devising it. At the same time, he’s realistic about the difficulty of reaching zero emissions.
Finally, in Chapter 9, Gates details some of the effects of climate change when he discusses adaptation strategies. The list is lengthy: flooding and droughts, food insecurity, increased disease and death rates, and ecological collapse, among other effects. Thus, the theme of urgency runs throughout the book.
The Benefits of Energy Use
Another recurring theme in Gates’s book is that using energy is beneficial to people’s lives and necessary for progress. This may surprise readers because many books on climate change pointedly address the need to reduce our consumption of energy. While Gates agrees that reduction can (and should) come about through greater efficiency, he’s resolute in supporting two ideas simultaneously: first, that access to and use of energy improves people’s lives, and second, that we must substitute clean energy for fossil fuels.
The way Gates came to focus on the issue of climate change is instructive in understanding why he holds these beliefs. As he explains in the Introduction, his work with his foundation led him to visit many developing countries where he saw the degree to which lack of access to an ample, stable energy supply limited people’s opportunity for growth. Later in the book, he discusses the growth that access to energy provided in China and extols the benefits, writing that people “are earning more money, are getting a better education, and are less likely to die young. Anyone who cares about fighting poverty should see it as good news” (102). In short, using energy supports progress, as it’s necessary for lighting homes and powering computers for study, for running factories, and for transporting goods to market. His goal is thus not to curtail energy use but to ensure that what we use comes from carbon-free sources.
The Role of Technology
As the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates personifies technology, so it’s unsurprising that his book highlights it as central in the fight against climate change. In the Introduction, he refers to himself as a “technophile” and writes, “Show me a problem, and I’ll look for technology to fix it” (14). Technological innovation, he argues, will be essential in dealing successfully with climate change. It’s not the only requirement but is a necessary part of the solution.
The book brims with technological ideas. In every section that covers ways to replace fossil fuels with carbon-free alternatives, Gates reviews the technological innovations necessary to produce goods and enable new processes. Some, like solar panels and wind turbines, are already in use. Others—like injecting carbon dioxide into cement so that when it sets it traps the carbon—are in development. All these solutions need more work to reduce their Green Premiums, and we must perfect many of them before we can implement them widely. Gates, however, is adamant that we can find a solution in each case and that we can reach the goal of zero emissions by 2050.
The Role of Governments
Although much of the focus on battling climate change is on finding breakthrough technologies to solve problems, Gates gives special emphasis to the role that governments can—and must—play if we are to reach zero emissions by 2050. He devotes Chapters 10 and 11 to government policy, placing it in a symbiotic relationship with technology and the market as three necessary entities that must collaborate to reach zero emissions. On a basic level, governments pass laws and set policies that can make all the difference in solving a problem, as the Clean Air Act did in reducing air pollution in the US.
R&D funding must often come from governments early on—when private funding is scarce—because of risks and the uncertainty of making a profit. When a technology is new, it can be prohibitively expensive without government policies such as tax benefits or direct subsidies to create incentives. Governments can also create demand when others take a wait-and-see approach. Their operations require large purchases of goods and services, and they can prioritize innovative technologies, helping them get off the ground. In all phases, governments play a vital role.
