How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

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 poo

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