If you are versed in the technologies available to address sectoral emissions, conscious of the socio-economic challenges attached to the transition agenda or familiar with the mind-numbing politics of climate change, then the book will offer you more of a refresh than anything new. It can only be a good thing for someone of Gates’ global profile to be firmly in the climate action camp.Īgainst this backdrop, it’s not surprising that Gates’ book is more of a solid plain-English 101 on the climate challenge than any new profound series of insights. Until the globe’s emissions’ pathway not just peaks but shows signs of decline, it is hard to argue that meaningful progress is being made in addressing the climate challenge.

Indeed, emissions are 65% greater today than they were in 1990. His contribution is especially significant given that today, six years since the much-heralded Paris Climate Conference and 30 years since the first climate-change negotiations started, global emissions continue to climb. So it can only be a good thing for someone of Gates’ global profile to be firmly in the climate action camp – as his book amply demonstrates. He was, therefore, curiously late to the party. It was only recently, in 2015, that Gates decided he needed to do and say more on climate change. Not surprisingly, therefore, he was sceptical about regulation and government action in the climate space, a trait that mirrors his past aversion during early Microsoft days to engaging policymakers, whom he saw more as potential blockers than enablers (a tactic he acknowledges backfired as the Clinton administration pursued its antitrust lawsuit). After all, amid all of the significant work done by the Gates Foundation, it is hard not to feel that the software billionaire has had something of a blind spot when it comes to climate change.īy his own admission, 15 years ago Gates assumed that nature would, in effect, prevent a true climate disaster. One of the more significant aspects of Bill Gates’ How to Avoid a Climate Disaster is the simple fact that he wrote it. Book review: Bill Gates How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (Penguin 2021)

Bill gates how to avoid