How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates – The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need – was a paperbook I was given in Ukraine, when my laptop broke and I couldn’t read my ebooks. While I was very happy to have a book to read, which meant I was less on social media, in those unusual circumstances, the book is incredibly bad, hence the 2 stars. The friend who gave me this book agreed with the issues I raised, but he rated the book higher than I did.

The premises of the book is that Bill Gates has studied climate change for a decade and that innovations will solve the issues. The blurb mentions “the world can build the tools it needs to get to zero greenhouse gas emissions”, while Gates talks about “net zero”, which is very different. One assumes we don’t release any more emissions, while the other assumes that we release some and that things like carbon capture would take out a similar amount, hence the net zero. It’s rather strange that the blurb is significantly different than the book, showing poor editing.

The book is incredibly poorly written. I have no idea who the target reader is. It explains how concrete and steel are made, really?!?! Those details might only be interesting for a 10-year-old. Those were intertwined with complex ideas and information that are not easy to understand unless the reader is used to this kind of arguments and details, like people with tertiary education. So, at points it was boring and seemed condencending, or, for younger readers it would be beyond their knowledge.

Besides this, there’s little to no responsibility put on people, but a let-the-government-invest-in-tech list of solutions. In his view Americans can be asked to pay a bit more for what they are using, to reflect the real cost of the thing they are using – electricity, transport, food, products. Not only that they shouldn’t be asked, but that they shouldn’t pay more.

For example, his comments on how meat is a part of culture and can’t be significantly reduced because of that are just stupid. Wife beating, bear baiting, and child labour were all a part of western culture, even longer than the alternative we enjoy today. Western societies were able to let go to hitting the women and torturing the bears and working the children. These societies also let go of the ideas that executions should be public. I think getting from meat twice a day to meat every other day is not as Earth shattering and there are plenty of meat alternatives, besides the real need for almost all in western societies to eat more veggies.

His ideas are that the government should just give money to some tech bros who will “surely” find out some solutions while having very little oversight, to save the Americans from eating healthier and paying a few $s more on their electricity bills. Overall, good if your laptop broke, but I would not recommend it otherwise.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates

Details about the picture: –
My rating: 2/5 Stars
Would I recommend it: no
Published by: Knopf Publishing Group
Year it was published: 2021
Format: Hardcover
Genre(s): Politics & Economics
Pages: 288

About the author: William Henry Gates III is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen.
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