How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need is a book published on February 16, 2021 which was written by software entrepreneur, billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gates.

The book is organized into five parts. In part one (chapter 1), Gates explains why the world must completely eliminate greenhouse gas emissions ("getting to zero"), rather than simply reducing them. In part two (chapter 2) he discusses the challenges that will make achieving this goal very difficult. In part three (chapter 3) he outlines five pragmatic questions a reader can ask to evaluate any conversation they have about climate change. Part four (the longest part of the book, or chapters 4 through 9) analyzes currently-available technologies that can be utilized now to adapt to and mitigate climate change ("the solutions we have") and those areas where innovation is needed to make climate-friendly technologies cost competitive with their fossil fuel counterparts ("the breakthroughs we need"). In the final part (chapters 10 through 12) Gates suggests specific steps that can be taken by government leaders, market participants and individuals to collectively avoid a climate disaster.

Introduction: 51 Billion to Zero

There are two numbers you need to know about climate change. The first is 51 billion. The other is zero. 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 [by the year 2050 to] stop the warming and avoid the worst effects of climate change . . . .
- Page 3

I [have become] convinced of three things: 1. To avoid a climate disaster, we have to get to zero {net emissions by the year 2050}. 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.
- Page 8

When it comes to climate change, I know innovation isn’t the only thing we need. But we cannot keep the earth livable without it. Techno-fixes are not sufficient, but they are necessary.
- Page 14

Some companies may go under in the coming years; that comes with the territory when you’re doing cutting-edge work . . . .
- Page 16

Chapter 1: Why Zero?

The reason we need to get to zero is simple. Greenhouse gases trap heat, causing the average surface temperature of the earth to go up. . . . [O]nce greenhouse gases are in the atmosphere, they stay there for a very long time . . . . There’s no scenario in which we keep adding carbon to the atmosphere and the world stops getting hotter, and the hotter it gets, the harder it will be for humans to survive, much less thrive.
- Page 18

Chapter 2: This Will Be Hard

We need to accomplish something gigantic we have never done before, much faster than we have ever done anything similar. To do it, we need lots of breakthroughs in science and engineering. We need to build a consensus that doesn’t exist and create public policies to push a transition that would not happen otherwise. . . . But don’t despair. We can do this.
- Page 51

Chapter 3: Five Questions to Ask in Every Climate Conversation

[Question] 1. How Much of the 51 Billion Tons Are We Talking About? . . . Tip: Whenever you see some number of tons of greenhouse gases, convert it to a percentage of 51 billion, which is the world’s current yearly total emissions (in carbon dioxide equivalents).
- Pages 53 and 54

[Question] 2. What’s Your Plan for Cement? . . . [This question] is just a shorthand reminder that if you're trying to come up with a comprehensive plan for climate change, you have to account for much more than electricity and cars.

How much greenhouse gas is emitted by the things we do?

Making things (cement, steel, plastic) . . . . .	31%
Plugging in (electricity) . . . . .	27%
Growing things (plants, animals) . . . . .	19%
Getting around (planes, trucks, cargo ships) . . . . .	16%
Keeping warm and cool (heating, cooling, refrigeration) . . . . .	7%

Pages 54 and 55

[Question] 3: How Much Power Are We Talking About? . . . [A] watt is a bit of energy per second [like] measuring the flow of water out of your kitchen faucet . . . . Watts are equivalent to "cups per second." A watt is pretty small. A small incandescent bulb might use 40 of them. A hair dryer uses 1,500. A power plant might generate hundreds of millions of watts. . . . Because these numbers get big fast, it's convenient to use some shorthand. A kilowatt is 1,000 watts, a megawatt is a million, and a gigawatt . . . is a billion.

How much power does it take?

The world . . . . .	5,000 gigawatts
The United States . . . . .	1,000 gigawatts
Mid-size city . . . . .	1 gigawatt
Small town . . . . .	1 megawatt
Average American house . . . . .	1 kilowatt

Pages 56 and 57

[Question] 5: How Much Is This Going to Cost? . . . Most . . . zero-carbon solutions are more expensive than their fossil-fuel counterparts. . . . These additional costs are what I call Green Premiums. . . . Green Premiums [can help us] decide which zero-carbon solutions we should deploy now [those with low or negative premiums] and where we should pursue breakthroughs because the clean alternatives aren't cheap enough.
- Pages 59 to 61

Chapter 4: How We Plug In

27 percent of 51 billion tons per year

[W]e’re going to need much more clean electricity in the coming years. . . . [B]y 2050 . . . the world will need much more than three times the electricity we generate now.
- Page 79

Deploying today’s renewables and improving transmission couldn’t be more important. . . . Unless we use large amounts of nuclear energy . . . every path to zero in the United States will require us to install as much wind and solar power as we can build and find room for. . . . [M]ost countries aren’t as lucky as the United States when it comes to solar and wind resources. . . . That’s why, even as we deploy, deploy, deploy solar and wind, the world is going to need some new clean electricity inventions too.
- Pages 83 and 84

Offshore wind holds a lot of promise . . . .
- Page 90

Chapter 5: How We Make Things

31 percent of 51 billion tons per year

[W]e don’t have a practical way to make [the cement in concrete] without producing carbon.
- Page 102

[C]ement . . . steel [and] plastics are cheap because fossil fuels are cheap.
- Page 105

[In discussing solely cement, steel and plastics in this chapter] I'm leaving out fertilizer, glass, paper, aluminum, and many others. . . . We manufacture enormous amounts of materials, resulting in copious amounts of greenhouse gases, nearly a third of the 51 billion tons per year.
- Page 106

[T]he path to zero emissions in manufacturing looks like this: (1) Electrify every process possible. This is going to take a lot of innovation. (2) Get that electricity from a power grid that’s been decarbonized. This also will take a lot of innovation. (3) Use carbon capture to absorb the remaining emissions. And so will this. (4) Use materials more efficiently. Same.
- Page 111

Chapter 6: How We Grow Things

19 percent of 51 billion tons a year

With agriculture . . . each year’s emissions of methane and nitrous oxide are the equivalent of more than 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
- Page 113

There’s so much animal poop that it’s actually the second-biggest cause of emissions in agriculture, behind enteric fermentation.
- Pages 117 and 118

[W]orldwide, crops take up less than half the nitrogen applied to farm fields. The rest runs off into ground or surface waters, causing pollution, or escapes into the air in the form of nitrous oxide . . . .
- Page 124

The most effective tree-related strategy for climate change is to stop cutting down so many of the trees we already have.
- Page 129

Chapter 7: How We Get Around

16 percent of 51 billion tons a year

{W}ith transportation, the zero-carbon future is basically this: Use electricity to run all the vehicles we can, and get cheap alternative fuels for the rest. In the first group are passenger cars and trucks, light and medium trucks, and buses. In the second group are long-distance trucks, trains, airplanes, and container ships.
- Page 147

Chapter 8: How We Keep Cool and Stay Warm

7 percent of 51 billion tons a year

The path to zero carbon for heating actually looks a lot like the path for passenger cars: (1) electrify what we can, getting rid of natural gas water heaters and furnaces, and (2) develop clean fuels to do everything else.
- Page 153

In most locations, your overall costs will go down if you get rid of an electric air conditioner and gas (or oil) furnace and replace both with an electric heat pump.
- Page 153

You already have a heat pump in your home . . . . It's called a refrigerator.
- Page 154

Chapter 9: Adapting to a Warmer World

Just about everyone who’s alive now will have to adapt to a warmer world. As sea levels and floodplains change, we’ll need to rethink where we put homes and businesses. We’ll need to shore up power grids, seaports, and bridges. We’ll need to plant more mangrove forests . . . and improve our early-warning systems for storms.
- Page 160

As the climate gets warmer, droughts and floods will become more frequent, wiping out harvests more often.
- Page 163

Rich and middle-income people are causing the vast majority of climate change. The poorest people are doing less than anyone else to cause the problem, but they stand to suffer the most from it. They deserve the world’s help, and they need more of it than they’re getting.
- Page 169

By the middle of this century, the cost of climate change to all coastal cities could exceed $1 trillion . . . each year.
- Page 171

Chapter 10: Why Government Policies Matter

There are various ways, including a carbon tax or cap-and-trade program, to ensure that at least some of [the] external costs {associated with greenhouse gas emissions} are paid by whoever is responsible for them. . . . The idea isn't to punish people for their greenhouse gases; it's to create an incentive for inventors to create competitive carbon-free alternatives. By progressively increasing the price of carbon to reflect its true cost, governments can nudge producers and consumers toward more efficient decisions and encourage innovation . . . .
- Page 186

Chapter 11: A Plan for Getting to Zero

[I]f you want a measuring stick for which countries are making progress on climate change . . . don't simply look for the ones that are reducing their emissions. Look for the ones that are setting themselves up to get to zero.
- Page 197

Technologies needed [to help avoid a climate disaster]:
Hydrogen produced without emitting carbon
Grid-scale electricity storage that can last a full season
Electrofuels
Advanced biofuels
Zero-carbon cement
Zero-carbon steel
Plant- and cell-based meat and dairy
Zero-carbon fertilizer
Next-generation nuclear fission
Nuclear fusion
Carbon capture (both direct air capture and point capture)
Underground electricity transmission
Zero-carbon plastics
Geothermal energy
Pumped hydro
Thermal storage
Drought- and flood-tolerant food crops
Zero-carbon alternatives to palm oil
[and] Coolants that don’t contain F-gases.
- Page 200

To get these [breakthroughs on the "Technologies needed" list] ready soon enough to make a difference, governments need to . . . [q]uintuple clean energy and climate-related R&D over the next decade. . . .
- Page 200

It helps to set ambitious goals and commit to meeting them, the way countries around the world did with the 2015 Paris Agreement. It’s easy to mock international agreements, but they’re part of how progress happens: If you like having an ozone layer, you can thank an international agreement called the Montreal Protocol.
- Page 215

There are markets worth billions of dollars waiting for someone to invent low-cost, zero-carbon cement or steel, or a net-zero liquid fuel. As I’ve tried to show, making these breakthroughs and getting them to scale will be hard, but the opportunities are so big that it’s worth getting out in front of the rest of the world.
- Pages 216 and 217

Chapter 12: What Each of Us Can Do

As a Citizen . . . Make calls, write letters, attend town halls. . . . [M]ake clear that this is an issue that will help determine how you vote. . . . Look locally as well as nationally. . . . Run for office.
- Pages 218 to 220

As a Consumer . . . Sign up for a green pricing program with your electric utility. . . . Reduce your home's emissions. . . . Buy an electric vehicle. . . . Try a plant-based burger.
- Pages 220 to 222

As an Employee or Employer . . . Prioritize innovation in low-carbon solutions. . . . Be an early adopter. . . . Connect with government-funded research.
- Pages 222 to 224

Afterword: Climate Change and COVID-19

We should spend the next decade focusing on the technologies, [governmental] policies and market structures that will put us on the path to eliminating greenhouse gases by 2050. It's hard to think of a better response to a miserable [year of COVID-19 disruptions during] 2020 than spending the next ten years dedicating ourselves to this ambitious goal.
- Page 230

Quotes about How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

Gordon Brown

Gates is right about the scale and urgency of the problem . . . . [He has a] touching, admirable faith in science and reason, [but he also] knows that the solution he seeks is inextricably tied up in political decisions. . . . [T]o operationalise the Paris [COP21] agreement – to limit warming to 1.5 degrees – requires countries to halve their CO2 emissions by 2030. So vested interests like big oil will have to be enlisted for change. The . . . rhetoric of irresponsible demagogues will have to be taken head on. And supporters of a stronger set of commitments will have to show why sharing sovereignty is in every nation’s self-interest . . . . Success will come by demonstrating that the real power countries can wield to create a better world is not the power they can exercise over others but the power they can exercise with others.
- Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2007 to 2010, in "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates review – why science isn't enough: The co-founder of Microsoft looks to science and tech to end climate crisis ... but can nations cooperate?" The Guardian. (February 17, 2021)

Bill McKibben

[How to Avoid a Climate Disaster] could not be more timely . . . . [W]e are in dire need of solutions to the greatest crisis our species has yet faced. . . . It is a disappointment, then, to report that this book turns out to be a little underwhelming. . . . [The price of] solar power has dropped astonishingly in the last decade [and] storage batteries are now dropping in price on a similar curve . . . . [Bill Gates is] absolutely right that we should be investing in research across a wide list of technologies because we may need them down the line to help scrub the last increments of fossil fuel from the system, but the key work will be done (or not) over the next decade, and it will be done by sun and wind. . . . Most people, Gates included, have not caught on yet to just how fast [the price decline for solar and wind power] is happening. So why aren’t we moving much faster than we are? That’s because of politics, and this is where Gates really wears blinders. "I think more like an engineer than a political scientist," he says proudly — but that means he can write an entire book about the "climate disaster" without discussing the role that the fossil fuel industry played, and continues to play, in preventing action. . . . Power comes in many forms, from geothermal and nuclear to congressional and economic; it’s wonderful that Gates has decided to work hard on climate questions, but to be truly helpful he needs to resolve to be a better geek — he needs to really get down on his hands and knees and examine how that power works in all its messiness. Politics very much included.
- Bill McKibben, climate change author, journalist and activist, in "How Does Bill Gates Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis? / Review of 'How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.'" The New York Times. (February 15, 2021)

The Economist

Bill Gates [in his] new book, "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster" [asserts that if] humanity is to win the great race between development and degradation . . . green innovation must accelerate. . . . [G]iven the pressing need to decarbonise the global economy, says Mr Gates, "we have to force an unnaturally speedy transition" [to carbon-free energy, and the] linchpin of his argument is the introduction of a meaningful carbon price to account for the externalities involved in using dirty energy. . . . [Some will consider Gates' views on several issues to be] an outmoded mindset. He is an unabashed defender of carbon-free nuclear power, despite the industry's failure to solve serious problems surrounding waste and proliferation. He chastises those who make a fetish out of wind and solar technologies, emphasising the constraints of the intermittent generation they involve. . . . Mr Gates . . . acknowledges the power of the state and a need for intergovernmental co-operation, something not often heard from techno-libertarians; but he also calls for more green ambition and risk-taking by short-termist investors and company bosses. 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 (to cause the newspaper to speak with one voice, The Economist does not list author bylines for individual articles), from "Bill Gates has a plan to save the world: Tackling climate change, he says, requires governments and business to work together." (February 18, 2021)

Leah Stokes

In his new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates takes a technology-centered approach to understanding the climate crisis. . . . [I]n 2015, Gates and several dozen other wealthy people launched Breakthrough Energy, an interlinked venture capital fund, lobbying group, and research effort [that invests] in energy innovation. . . . A parallel effort, an international pact called Mission Innovation [persuades governments to fund] clean-energy research and development. These various endeavors are the through line for [the] book . . . As many others have pointed out, a lot of the necessary technology already exists; much can be done now. Though Gates doesn’t dispute this, his book focuses on the technological challenges that he believes must still be overcome to achieve greater decarbonization. He spends less time on the political obstacles . . . . Yet politics, in all its messiness, is the key barrier to progress on climate change.
- Leah C. Stokes, political scientist and environmental policy writer, in "Bill Gates and the problem with climate solutionism: Focusing on technological solutions to climate change feels like an attempt to dodge the harder political obstacles." MIT Technology Review. (February 16, 2021)

Paul Hockenos

Few climate crisis books give cause for hope. But Bill Gates’s new title does just that as [he] charts a way for private enterprises and governments to stave off the worst of global warming. . . . [He] is convinced that fossil fuels have to be replaced with renewable energy – and as soon as possible. Factories, vehicles and heating systems must all become electrified, and then run on green power. . . . So far, so good! [He also] says nuclear plants will stabilise the smart grids that link our energy systems of the future. . . . Here, however, he’s wrong. . . . [H]e underestimates the expert opinion that better storage – batteries and beyond – together with demand management and smart networks can balance the grid. One cornerstone to this way forward: natural gas would have to be on standby. But why not? This is already the case in Germany. . . . The other bone I have to pick with Gates lies in his contention that our market economies and extravagant lifestyles don’t have to change. . . . [C]riticism aside, this readable and jargon-free book offers valuable nuggets and advice for investors and politicos.
- Paul Hockenos, Berlin–based journalist and author, in "Bill Gates gets a lot right in his new book 'How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need'. Nuclear power, however, doesn’t need to be part of the solution." Energy Transition / energytransition.org. (March 9, 2021)

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How to Avoid a Climate Disaster