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How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need Kindle Edition
Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal.
He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions—suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise.
As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage
- Publication dateFebruary 16, 2021
- File size27127 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Review
“One of the most accessible, practical, and interesting books on the topic to emerge since Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.” —Oprah Daily
“The most comprehensible explanation for what’s driving our warming planet; how to measure the impact of the myriad contributions to this staggering and seemingly incalculable problem; and ultimately how to go about finding more effective approaches to each of them. It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a how-to guide for addressing the climate crisis.” —Clinton Leaf, Fortune
“How to Avoid a Climate Disaster presents ideas with the methodical approach of a college textbook . . . Remarkably, given the state of the world, it is an optimistic, can-do sort of book, chock-full of solutions.” —Christina Binkley, The Wall Street Journal Magazine
“The most refreshing aspect of this book is its bracing mix of cold-eyed realism and number-crunched optimism . . . Ultimately his book is a primer on how to reorganise the global economy so that innovation focuses on the world’s gravest problems. It is a powerful reminder that if mankind is to get serious about tackling them, it must do more to harness the one natural resource available in infinite quantity—human ingenuity.” —The Economist
“The author’s enthusiasm and curiosity about the way things work is infectious. He walks us through not just the basic science of global warming, but all the ways that our modern lives contribute to it . . . Gates seems energized by the sheer size and complexity of the challenge. That’s one of the best things about the book—the can-do optimism and conviction that science in partnership with industry are up to the task.” —Richard Schiffman, The Christian Science Monitor
“In this wonklike and persuasive book, Gates takes his environmental activism a bridge further, laying out an ambitious plan to reduce greenhouse emissions to zero by 2050. Drawing on data from researchers, policymakers, and engineers, Gates advocates for solutions both scientific (like developing alternative fuels) and personal (like increasing civic engagement in environmental justice issues). If you feel a radical shred of hope reading these galvanizing pages, dare to let in—without hope, we’ll get nowhere.” —Esquire
“With the help of experts in fields such as physics, engineering, chemistry, finance and politics, the technologist and philanthropist offers a practical and accessible plan for getting the world to zero greenhouse gas emissions and averting climate catastrophe.” —Barbara VanDenburgh, USA Today
“How to Avoid a Climate Disaster is clear, concise on a colossal subject, and intelligently holistic in its approach to the problem. Gates may not be the perfect messenger, but he has written a fine primer on how to get ourselves out of this mess.” —Adama Vaughan, New Scientist
“Bill Gates has a plan to save the world . . . While acknowledging that the challenge is daunting, and how we make things, grow things, move around, keep cool and stay warm will all need to fundamentally change, Gates argues that wholesale transformation is possible while maintaining lifestyles in high income countries and continuing to lift billions out of poverty.” —Greg Williams, Wired
“His expertise . . . is apparent in the book’s lucid explanations of the scientific aspects of climate change. The solutions he outlines are pragmatic and grounded in forward-thinking economic reasoning. Although he does not avoid the hard truths we must face as our climate changes, Gates remains optimistic and believes that we have the ability to avoid a total climate disaster.” —Miriam R. Aczel, Science
“Concise, straightforward . . . Gates has crafted a calm, reasoned, well-sourced explanation of the greatest challenge of our time and what we must change to avoid cooking our planet.” —Jeff Rowe, Associated Press
“A persuasive, optimistic strategy for reducing greenhouse emissions to zero by midcentury . . . Though Gates doesn’t shy away from acknowledging the daunting challenges ahead, his narrative contains enough confidence—and hard science and economics—to convince many readers that his blueprint is one of the most viable yet . . . supremely authoritative and accessible.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Those looking for an accessible review of how global warming can be countered will find this a handy—and maybe even hope-inspiring—guide.” —Publishers Weekly
“Gates has put his considerable wealth behind global health, educational, and economic initiatives and now turns his laser-like attention to this most existential of issues . . . He provides illuminating contexts for [his] perspectives and offers a treatise that is imperative, approachable, and useful.” —Booklist
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Fifty-one billion is how many tons of greenhouse gases the world typically adds to the atmosphere every year. Although the figure may go up or down a bit from year to year, it’s generally increasing. This is where we are today.
Zero is what we need to aim for. To stop the warming and avoid the worst effects of climate change—and these effects will be very bad—humans need to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
This sounds difficult, because it will be. The world has never done anything quite this big. Every country will need to change its ways. Virtually every activity in modern life—growing things, making things, getting around from place to place—involves releasing greenhouse gases, and as time goes on, more people will be living this modern lifestyle. That’s good, because it means their lives are getting better. Yet if nothing else changes, the world will keep producing greenhouse gases, climate change will keep getting worse, and the impact on humans will in all likelihood be catastrophic.
But “if nothing else changes” is a big If. I believe that things can change. We already have some of the tools we need, and as for those we don’t yet have, everything I’ve learned about climate and technology makes me optimistic that we can invent them, deploy them, and, if we act fast enough, avoid a climate catastrophe.
This book is about what it will take and why I think we can do it.
Two decades ago, I would never have predicted that one day I would be talking in public about climate change, much less writing a book about it. My background is in software, not climate science, and these days my full-time job is working with my wife, Melinda, at the Gates Foundation, where we are super-focused on global health, development, and U.S. education.
I came to focus on climate change in an indirect way—through the problem of energy poverty.
In the early 2000s, when our foundation was just starting out, I began traveling to low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia so I could learn more about child mortality, HIV, and the other big problems we were working on. But my mind was not always on diseases. I would fly into major cities, look out the window, and think, Why is it so dark out there? Where are all the lights I’d see if this were New York, Paris, or Beijing?
In Lagos, Nigeria, I traveled down unlit streets where people were huddling around fires they had built in old oil barrels. In remote villages, Melinda and I met women and girls who spent hours every day collecting firewood so they could cook over an open flame in their homes. We met kids who did their homework by candlelight because their homes didn’t have electricity.
I learned that about a billion people didn’t have reliable access to electricity and that half of them lived in sub-Saharan Africa. (The picture has improved a bit since then; today roughly 860 million people don’t have electricity.) I thought about our foundation’s motto—“Everyone deserves the chance to live a healthy and productive life”—and how it’s hard to stay healthy if your local medical clinic can’t keep vaccines cold because the refrigerators don’t work. It’s hard to be productive if you don’t have lights to read by. And it’s impossible to build an economy where everyone has job opportunities if you don’t have massive amounts of reliable, affordable electricity for offices, factories, and call centers.
As all this information sank in, I began to think about how the world could make energy affordable and reliable for the poor. It didn’t make sense for our foundation to take on this huge problem— we needed it to stay focused on its core mission—but I started kicking around ideas with some inventor friends of mine. I read more deeply on the subject, including several eye-opening books by the scientist and historian Vaclav Smil, who helped me understand just how critical energy is to modern civilization.
At the time, I didn’t understand that we needed to get to zero. The rich countries that are responsible for most emissions were starting to pay attention to climate change, and I thought that would be enough. My contribution, I believed, would be to advocate for making reliable energy affordable for the poor.
For one thing, they have the most to gain from it. Cheaper energy would mean not only lights at night but also cheaper fertilizer for their fields and cement for their homes. And when it comes to climate change, the poor have the most to lose. The majority of them are farmers who already live on the edge and can’t withstand more droughts and floods.
Things changed for me in late 2006 when I met with two former Microsoft colleagues who were starting nonprofits focused on energy and climate. They brought along two climate scientists who were well versed in the issues, and the four of them showed me the data connecting greenhouse gas emissions to climate change.
I knew that greenhouse gases were making the temperature rise, but I had assumed that there were cyclical variations or other fac- tors that would naturally prevent a true climate disaster. And it was hard to accept that as long as humans kept emitting any amount of greenhouse gases, temperatures would keep going up.
I went back to the group several times with follow-up questions. Eventually it sank in. The world needs to provide more energy so the poorest can thrive, but we need to provide that energy without releasing any more greenhouse gases.
Now the problem seemed even harder. It wasn’t enough to deliver cheap, reliable energy for the poor. It also had to be clean.
I kept learning everything I could about climate change. I met with experts on climate and energy, agriculture, oceans, sea levels, glaciers, power lines, and more. I read the reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN panel that establishes the scientific consensus on this subject. I watched Earth’s Changing Climate, a series of fantastic video lectures by Professor Richard Wolfson available through the Great Courses series. I read Weather for Dummies, still one of the best books on weather that I’ve found.
One thing that became clear to me was that our current sources of renewable energy—wind and solar, mostly—could make a big dent in the problem, but we weren’t doing enough to deploy them.
It also became clear why, on their own, they aren’t enough to get us all the way to zero. The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine, and we don’t have affordable batteries that can store city-sized amounts of energy for long enough. Besides, making electricity accounts for only 27 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Even if we had a huge breakthrough in batteries, we would still need to get rid of the other 73 percent.
Within a few years, I had become convinced of three things:
1. To avoid a climate disaster, we have to get to zero.
2. We need to deploy the tools we already have, like solar and wind, faster and smarter.
3. And we need to create and roll out breakthrough technologies that can take us the rest of the way.
The case for zero was, and is, rock solid. Unless we stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, the temperature will keep going up. Here’s an analogy that’s especially helpful: The climate is like a bathtub that’s slowly filling up with water. Even if we slow the flow of water to a trickle, the tub will eventually fill up and water will come spilling out onto the floor. That’s the disaster we have to prevent. Setting a goal to only reduce our emissions—but not eliminate them—won’t do it. The only sensible goal is zero
Product details
- ASIN : B07YRY461Y
- Publisher : Vintage (February 16, 2021)
- Publication date : February 16, 2021
- Language : English
- File size : 27127 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 260 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 0385546130
- Best Sellers Rank: #92,424 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Bill Gates is a technologist, business leader, and philanthropist. In 1975, he cofounded Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen; today he is cochair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He also launched Breakthrough Energy, an effort to commercialize clean energy and other climate-related technologies.
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In a perfect world, one could speculate that the book should have been written by John Kerry, the new Climate czar but it still could be used as a road map for aggressive coordinated actions to be taken to control man-made climate change. Short of that, the book provides great technical detail and insight into a balanced approach to moving forward with both policy and technical actions.
The main theme of the book is: “Fifty-one billion is how many tons of greenhouse gases the world typically adds to the atmosphere every year. … Zero is what we need to aim for.” The author states: “It’s hard to say exactly how much of America’s electricity will come from renewables in the end, but what we do know is that between now and 2050 we have to build them much faster—on the order of 5 to 10 times faster—than we’re doing right now.” The book also has a rational balanced approach stating for example: “In other words, fossil fuels are everywhere. Take oil as just one example: The world uses more than 4 billion gallons every day. When you’re using any product at that kind of volume, you can’t simply stop overnight.” Gates goes on to state: “Eventually it sank in. The world needs to provide more energy so the poorest can thrive, but we need to provide that energy without releasing any more greenhouse gases.” This book contains endorsements for several highly recommended readings that this reviewer has not yet read but suspects that the interested individual may wish to pursue reading them.
The reader of Gate’s most comprehensive excellent book is forewarned and should be wary of several potentially misleading points or subtleties. Often the author himself points these out. Perhaps because he sees climate change as such a critical world issue, he has invested his own resources in not only writing this book but also investing in companies to contribute to solving the climate change problems; one therefore might be suspect of the potential for conflict of interest. Another more nuanced observation is that the book often slips from facts based upon past data to predictions about what the future holds. And while the book includes extensive notes at the end, the book does not make it apparent to the casual reader in the main text what is true and what is predicted, leaving the reader to trust the excellent salesmanship of the author to believe the points that he is making or sometimes trying to make.
Gates writes a little about the Covid-19 pandemic (including our failure to prepare for it despite warnings) and how, while it did reduce greenhouse gases, it was not as much as one might have expected. To provide historical context, Gates states: “During the last ice age, the average temperature was just 6 degrees Celsius lower than it is today. During the age of the dinosaurs, when the average temperature was perhaps 4 degrees Celsius higher than today, there were crocodiles living above the Arctic Circle.” In terms of climate change challenges, the author goes on to remind us that: “Carbon dioxide is the most common greenhouse gas, but there are a handful of others, such as nitrous oxide and methane.”
Gates goes on to state: “The 51 billion tons I keep mentioning is the world’s annual emissions in carbon dioxide equivalents. You may see numbers like 37 billion elsewhere—that’s just carbon dioxide, without the other greenhouse gases—or 10 billion, which is just the carbon itself. … Greenhouse gas emissions have increased dramatically since the 1850s due to human activity, such as burning fossil fuels. … So that’s the first part of the answer to the question “Why do we have to get to zero?”—because every bit of carbon we put into the atmosphere adds to the greenhouse effect. … There’s no getting around physics. Carbon dioxide emissions are on the rise, and so is the global temperature.”
As illustrative of what is fact and what Gates predicts based upon the available scientific knowledge, Gates states: “What We Do and Don’t Know … One problem is that computer models are far from perfect. … The earth is warming, it’s warming because of human activity, and the impact is bad and will get much worse. … We’ve already raised the temperature at least 1 degree Celsius since preindustrial times, and if we don’t reduce emissions, we’ll probably have between 1.5 and 3 degrees Celsius of warming by mid-century, and between 4 and 8 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. … A hotter climate means there will be more frequent and destructive wildfires. … California is a dramatic example of what’s going on. Wildfires now occur there five times more often than in the 1970s, largely because the fire season is getting longer and the forests there now contain much more dry wood that’s likely to burn.”
The author goes on to state: “If the temperature rises by 2 degrees Celsius, coral reefs could vanish completely, destroying a major source of seafood for more than a billion people. … In the worst drought ever recorded in Syria—which lasted from 2007 to 2010—some 1.5 million people left farming areas for the cities, helping to set the stage for the armed conflict that started in 2011. That drought was made three times more likely by climate change. By 2018, roughly 13 million Syrians had been displaced. … In the next decade or two, the economic damage caused by climate change will likely be as bad as having a COVID-sized pandemic every 10 years. And by the end of the 21st century, it will be much worse if the world remains on its current emissions path.”
Gates, in a chapter entitled: “THIS WILL BE HARD” states “… fossil fuels are everywhere. Take oil as just one example: The world uses more than 4 billion gallons every day. When you’re using any product at that kind of volume, you can’t simply stop overnight. … the amount of energy used per person will go up, and so will the amount of greenhouse gases emitted per person. … The global population is headed toward 10 billion by the end of the century, … We need to get to zero—producing even more energy than we do today, but without adding any carbon to the atmosphere—.”
The author explains: “Another argument you often hear goes like this: Yes, climate change is real, and its effects will be bad, and we have everything we need to stop it. Between solar power, wind power, hydropower, and a few other tools, we’re good. It’s simply a matter of having the will to deploy them. Chapters 4 through 8 explain why I don’t buy that notion. We have some of what we need, but far from all of it.
No single country wants to pay to mitigate its emissions unless everyone else will too. That’s why the Paris Agreement, in which more than 190 countries signed up to eventually limit their emissions, was such an achievement. Not because the current commitments will make a huge dent in emissions— but because it was a starting point that proved global cooperation is possible.”
In order to separate the forest from the trees and focus on important issues, Gates goes on to articulate “Five Questions to Ask in Every Climate Conversation” and goes on to introduce the concept of “These additional costs are what I call Green Premiums.” as a method of identifying the short term costs of “going green” and goes on to state “You can imagine Green Premiums high enough that the United States is willing and able to pay them but India, China, Nigeria, and Mexico are not. We need the premiums to be so low that everyone will be able to decarbonize.” Writing in 2021 illustrative of the challenge, Gates states: “All told, fossil fuels provide two-thirds of the world’s electricity. Solar and wind, meanwhile, account for 7 percent.”
In terms of options, the author writes that: “Small-scale solar can be an option for people in poor, rural areas who need to charge their cell phones and run lights at night. But that kind of solution is never going to deliver the massive amounts of cheap, always-available electricity these countries need to jump-start their economies. They’re looking to do what China did: grow their economies by attracting industries like manufacturing and call centers—the types of businesses that demand far more (and far more reliable) power than small-scale renewables can provide today. … If these countries opt for coal plants, as China and every rich country did, it’ll be a disaster for the climate. But right now, that’s their most economical option.”
Gates states: “Germany produced about 10 times more solar in June 2018 than it did in December 2018. In fact, at times during the summer, Germany’s solar and wind plants generate so much electricity that the country can’t use it all. When that happens, it ends up transmitting some of the excess to neighboring Poland and the Czech Republic, whose leaders have complained that it’s straining their own power grids and causing unpredictable swings in the cost of electricity. ... completely decarbonizing America’s power grid by 2050 will require adding around 75 gigawatts of capacity every year for the next 30 years. … But more efficient panels and turbines aren’t enough …”
In terms of “Making Carbon-Free Electricity and Nuclear fission” Gates writes,
The United States gets around 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear plants; France has the highest share in the world, getting 70 percent of its electricity from nuclear. … In 2018, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology analyzed nearly 1,000 scenarios for getting to zero in the United States; all the cheapest paths involved using a power source that’s clean and always available—that is, one like nuclear power. … High-profile accidents at Three Mile Island in the United States, Chernobyl in the former U.S.S.R., and Fukushima in Japan put a spotlight on all these risks.” But goes on to state: “Nuclear power kills far, far fewer people than cars do. For that matter, it kills far fewer people than any fossil fuel. … Nevertheless, we should improve it, just as we did with cars, by analyzing the problems one by one and setting out to solve them with innovation.”
The author explains in considerable detail that materials like steel and concrete generate greenhouse gases and how getting to zero requires attention to these processes. Gates explains: “In short, we make materials that have become just as essential to modern life as electricity is. We’re not going to give them up. … how we can keep producing these materials without making the climate unlivable. For the sake of brevity, we’ll focus on three of the most important materials: steel, concrete, and plastic.” Going on to provide some technical details, Gates states: “To make steel, you need to separate the oxygen from the iron and add a tiny bit of carbon. You can accomplish both at the same time by melting iron ore at very high temperatures … A bit of the carbon bonds with the iron, forming the steel we want, and the rest of the carbon grabs onto the oxygen, forming a by-product we don’t want: carbon dioxide. Quite a bit of carbon dioxide, in fact. Making 1 ton of steel produces about 1.8 tons of carbon dioxide. … To make cement, you need calcium. To get calcium, you start with limestone—which contains calcium plus carbon and oxygen—and burn it in a furnace along with some other materials. … Make a ton of cement, and you’ll get a ton of carbon dioxide.”
Gates then moves on to discuss the significant tons of carbon equivalent gases created by agriculture, having earlier in the book explained some of the nuances of methane versus carbon dioxide gases. Consistent with part of this theme to tap into innovation, Gates points out: “In 1968, an American biologist named Paul Ehrlich published a best-selling book called The Population Bomb, … Ehrlich wrote. “In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death … None of this came to pass. In the time since The Population Bomb came out, India’s population has grown by more than 800 million people—it’s now more than double what it was in 1968—but India produces more than three times as much wheat and rice as it did back then, and its economy has grown by a factor of 50. Why? What did Ehrlich and other doomsayers miss? They didn’t factor in the power of innovation. They didn’t account for people like Norman Borlaug, the brilliant plant scientist … Starvation plummeted, and today Borlaug is widely credited with saving a billion lives. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970,”
Illustrative of the incredible technical detail that Gates pulls together in this book: “All told, fertilizers were responsible for roughly 1.3 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2010, and the number will probably rise to 1.7 billion tons by mid-century...
the American-style diet is responsible for almost as many emissions as all the energy Americans use in generating electricity, manufacturing, transportation, and buildings.”
In terms of another important area of focus for reducing carbon, Gates writes: in “CHAPTER 7 HOW WE GET AROUND” 16 percent of 51 billion tons a year (total emissions to be eliminated) “Gas contains an amazing amount of energy—In the United States, gasoline is also remarkably cheap, right—gallon for gallon, gasoline is cheaper than Two Buck Chuck (Wine). … keep these two facts about gasoline in mind: It packs a punch, and it’s cheap. … The twin concepts of energy delivered per unit of fuel and per dollar spent are going to matter a lot as we look for ways to decarbonize our transportation system.” The author discusses at length electric vehicles, batteries and the success (or lack) in investing in battery technology.” He goes on to report: “The city of Shenzhen, China—home to 12 million people—has electrified its entire fleet of more than 16,000 buses and nearly two-thirds of its taxis.” And from a systems point of view, Gates states: “a typical truck running on diesel can go more than 1,000 miles without refueling. … Although electricity is a good option when you need to cover short distances, it’s not a practical solution for heavy, long-haul trucks.”
Providing examples of government policies that worked, Gates reminds the reader that: “What’s now known as the Great Smog of London killed at least 4,000 people. …the 1950s and 1960s marked the arrival of air pollution as a major cause of public concern in the United States and Europe, and policy makers responded quickly.
The next year, the British government enacted the Clean Air Act, which created smoke-control zones throughout the country where only cleaner-burning fuels could be used. Seven years later, America’s Clean Air Act established the modern regulatory system for controlling air pollution in the United States; … The U.S. Clean Air Act did what it was supposed to do—get poisonous gases out of the air—and since 1990 the level of nitrogen dioxide in American emissions has dropped by 56 percent, carbon monoxide by 77 percent, and sulfur dioxide by 88 percent.” And goes on to state: “we need the government to play a huge role in creating the right incentives and making sure the overall system will work for everyone.”
The author summarizes: “Science tells us that in order to avoid a climate catastrophe, rich countries should reach net-zero emissions by 2050. … 2030 is not realistic. … there’s simply no way we’ll using them widely within a decade. … What we can do—and need to do—in the next 10 years is adopt the policies that will put us on a path to deep decarbonization by 2050.”
Although Bill Gates is surely a Democrat, it’s unlikely progressives will welcome his contribution. He dismisses Democrat orthodoxy by showing that the energy transition will be very expensive. He feels we should be motivated by the moral obligation to counter planetary warming because it will harm poorer countries the most. Rich countries can afford to manage rising sea levels (see Netherlands).
Since the Gates Foundation is focused on disease and malnutrition in the developing world, his altruistic view isn’t surprising. And the moral argument is a respectable one. But it exposes the enormous political challenge in gaining popular support for higher domestic energy prices to stop, say, Bangladesh flooding. Last week Joe Biden rejected a French proposal to redirect 5% of our Covid vaccines to poorer countries until all Americans have been vaccinated. It was a minor acknowledgment of political reality. Few have the means or inclination to dedicate themselves to solving poor countries’ problems before their own.
How To Avert A Climate Disaster reaches positive conclusions because it argues that current technology and innovation make solutions within reach. It provides policy prescriptions but deliberately avoids the politics. In many cases Gates calculates a “green premium”, reflecting the cost of converting transport, power generation, cement or steel production to be emission-free. Not surprisingly he favors a carbon tax to create price signals that fully reflect the externalities of burning fossil fuels.
Renewables figure far less prominently than in the Green New Deal (see The Bovine Green Dream), a document Gates would likely view as fantasy if he didn’t studiously avoid such engagement. He illustrates the fundamental problem of solar and wind intermittency by considering the battery back-up a Tokyo 100% reliant on windmills would require to maintain power during a not-uncommon three-day typhoon. Even with optimistic assumptions about improved technology, the cost would be prohibitive. Gates concedes to have, “…lost more money on start-up battery companies than I ever imagined.” He knows a bit about the subject.
Although efforts to curb emissions around the world generate enormous energy and press coverage, any actual improvements to date have come mostly from coal-to-gas switching for power generation (i.e. the U.S.) or last year’s drop in global economic activity due to Covid. U.S. energy costs haven’t risen noticeably, although California’s energy policies have managed to combine high costs with unreliability (see California Dreamin’ of Reliable Power).
Gates believes poor countries should be allowed to increase emissions, since energy consumption is inextricably linked to improved economic well-being. “We can’t expect poor people to stay poor because too many rich countries emitted too many greenhouse gases” he argues from the lonely moral high ground.
Reaching zero emissions by 2050 requires western democracies imposing substantial new regulation and costs on economic activity for decades. Meanwhile, the world’s building stock will grow mostly in poorer countries, requiring cement, steel and all the other emission-producing byproducts of human advancement. This construction will add the equivalent of another New York City every month for decades.
Gates asserts that climate change will inevitably cost – inaction will lower GDP, and action will take lots of money. It’s well he doesn’t consider how governments will sell this to voters if an honest discussion ever occurs, because by comparison the technical challenges are more easily solved.
Recognizing the political impracticality, Joe Biden instead disingenuously talks about “…tackling climate change and creating good union jobs here” (his emphasis).
The technology already exists to capture the carbon dioxide emitted by burning fossil fuels, whether to generate electricity (27% of global GHGs) or produce steel (manufactures also including cement and plastics in total are 31% of GHGs).
Gates estimates that emission-free power in the U.S., to include gas and coal with carbon capture, would raise prices by 15%. The green premium to make ethylene (plastic), steel and cement without CO2 emissions would raise prices by around 12%, 23% and 110% respectively. We could already start implementing such policies if the support was there. But political leaders avoid such talk, recognizing that voters’ concern about climate change doesn’t include much tolerance for higher prices.
An energy investor today has to assess plausible outcomes, ignoring the shrill rhetoric of climate extremists unburdened by the costs, facts and technological challenges Gates lays out.
Emerging economies will continue to grow, feeding all the increase in global energy demand as they seek OECD living standards. Their GHG emissions will rise. How tolerant will western democracies be of rising costs for virtually everything while we save the planet and allow poorer countries to catch up?
Bill Gates is an unfailing optimist – invariably the most pleasant posture for living. But your blogger found the comprehensive list of what needs to be done dauntingly improbable. Mitigants of the results of global warming are probably a better investment than betting on decades of extended selflessness by 1.3 billion OECD citizens, the rich world whose collective actions Gates believes will save all 7.6 billion of us.
There are already bold options available. We could phase out coal. We could require carbon capture on industrial use of fossil fuels. We could use more nuclear, whose safety record per unit of power generated is unmatched. Instead, more solar and wind is the climate extremists’ mantra in spite of intermittency and the NIMBY challenges of building transmission lines to move power from sparsely populated solar and wind farms to population centers (see Review Of Russell Gold’s Superpower for an example of how hard this is).
Burning less coal, carbon capture and compensating for renewables’ unreliability all support growth in natural gas demand. Gates argues against a shift to natural gas for power generation. He fears the 30-year life of a typical combined cycle power plant would embed its CO2 emissions for too long. It would show progress to 2030, while putting zero by 2050 out of reach. But if tangible results within the timeframe of election cycles are needed, it’s hard to see a better way.
If in a decade that’s how things have turned out, Gates the pragmatic optimist will hail it as success. We should too.
Top reviews from other countries
Read this book can represent your first step to achieve the big global goal.
Have a happy reading!
The book is very clear for people that are not experts in most of the topics in need to address, like myself. I feel enlightened and motivated to do more, the most I can to do my part. People that don’t know how to help should read, but most of all business leaders and politicians should stop what they are doing and pick this book up.
An advantage of being so rich is that he can hire anybody: scientists, editors, etc. to provide facts and clear, brief expression of facts. I’ve read many books on Climate Change, and this was the easiest to understand. Some of this book reads like a Dummies book, but there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, he seems to be aiming at readers who have never read a Climate Change book. That’s very useful when millions are ready to march, but don’t know exactly what they’re marching for. This book gives them clear answers, and therefore, reasons to hope realistically.
Not that Gates has all the answers. The subtitle: “The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need” is slightly misleading. “Solutions” are often controversial and “Breakthroughs” are often yet-to-be-imagined. But Gates, and his teachers, are very good at breaking down big problems, describing why they are difficult, and focusing on the active business model for innovation to solve those problems.
In spite of the humanizing anecdotes, Gates is a nerd, and proud of it. He has learned to absorb and test a vast amount of knowledge, not only from studies and colleagues, but also from experience. He is convincing about the need for lots of venture capital to be invested right now, in lots and lots of crazy ideas.
But he is also convincing that we have no choice, civilization hangs in the balance. Without major breakthroughs in safe nuclear energy, for example, we could crash. He’s heavily invested in a particular nuclear innovation so his bias is clear, and he doesn’t pretend to be the objective outsider. He can afford to gamble. As an investor, he knows that high risk / high gain innovations must be funded by somebody.
He has almost nothing to say about sacrifice. To Gates, the middle class white American life-style should be available to everyone in the world. He’s a business man, but politically he appears to be a Biden style Democrat. He is an engineer, and he thinks of himself as moral. He may disagree with Bernie Sanders, but he and Melinda have done more to reduce AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in Africa, than anyone.
I didn’t agree with everything, but I enjoyed reading this very well informed attack on the biggest problem of our times.