Book Review: How To Avoid A Climate Disaster, by Bill Gates
He’s crunched the numbers and he’s here to save us.
This is a book for nerds, by nerds. Which is a large part of the reason I liked it. It was the first book I read (or rather, listened to*) on the climate crisis. I’m glad it was, because if I’d started with The Uninhabitable Earth or We Are the Weather, I’m not sure I would have had the hope and will to keep reading about it.
Bill Gates is a tripartite rarity: a (reputed) genius tech pioneer; a billionaire; and a billionaire who gives a shit about people, which is presumably why he wrote this book.
In How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Gates gives us some terrify — I mean, sobering, facts about our abuse of fossil fuels like a kind-but-firm doctor telling you that you’re going to die. Not now, not ages away, but soon-ish. How -ish? That depends on us.
Saving ourselves, Gates repeats more than a few times, is going to be mega hard (as opposed to microsoft**), and we need to work together to make it happen. (NB: Bill Gates’s “hard” is probably not the same as yours, which made me think: Does he know how stupid the rest of us are?).
Throughout the book, Gates treats us to some maths he’s obviously had fun doing, and lays out numerous strategies for the survival of homo sapiens. Gates’s strong suit is the thoroughness with which he works through possible solutions, and his consideration and accounting for the many millions living in food and water insecurity, and for those with limited access to electricity and/or education. Gates gives us hope for future innovations in a way that only a technophile can.
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster is savvy and clear. It’s practical and almost entirely unemotional, whether by accident or design. That said, I couldn’t help but wonder if Gates’s views aren’t just a little…rosy?
Clare’s Climate Crisis Book Review Stats:
Book length: 272 pages; 7 hours and 11 minutes of audio.
Favourite approach to solving the crisis: Tech. Obviously.
Optimism: 9/10.
Quote: “Engaging in the political process is the most important single step that people from every walk of life can take to help avoid a climate disaster.”
*Gates only narrates the introduction. The rest is performed by Wil Wheaton (of Star Trek: The Next Generation and The Big Bang Theory fame). See, I told you it was a book for nerds, by nerds.
** I told this to my partner and I think he’s leaving me.
