How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates

We all know who Bill Gates is. He made billions from founding and running Microsoft. So why is he writing about a climate disaster?

The experts in this field are climate scientists like Michael Mann and Katherine Heyhoe. There are many, many more but Mann and Heyhoe are amongst the most vocal. They haven’t restricted themselves to publishing academic articles, they have become public spokespersons for the science around climate change.

It’s easy to see why. Climate change is a story unlike any other. Science has put forward a clear path to the collapse of human civilisation. Wouldn’t you speak up if you discovered something like this? Wouldn’t you be aware of your responsibility to the rest of humanity?

The absurd thing about the response to climate change is that it has become territory in the culture wars. Fossil fuel companies have been pursuing their own interests by sowing doubt about the science for 50 years and lobbying to prevent action that might mitigate the predicted disaster. They have been successful. Climate change has become a politically polarised issue. People don’t talk about climate change, it’s rarely in the news and governments drag their feet on legislation. This means that change has to be fought for, it’s no good relying on government and business to do the right thing.

Bill Gates’s entry into this arena is to be welcomed. He is a successful businessman and speaks the language of the corporate world. He knows how money and the markets work. He is a big business insider but dares to think independently of the corporate normal. He accepts that there is a crisis and wants to avoid it. This book is his thoughts on how we might do this.

The “how” is critically important. We know “how” we can avert the climate crisis: stop electricity production from fossil fuels, stop heavy industry operating and making things, stop all travel, stop deforestation and have a massive programme to plant billions of trees. It would be a global economic lockdown and it would work. We also know it’s not going to happen.

So we enter into a negotiation. On one side of the table are the advocates of some degree of economic lockdown. On the other side, the business-as-usual team saying there isn’t really a crisis and if there is, we can fix it with cleverness.

Gates is more nuanced and that’s what makes him interesting. He knows that if we do nothing, the human race will be in deep, deep trouble. He isn’t a doomist, but he obviously understands the danger. So he is applying the thinking skills that made Microsoft the world’s dominant software company to the “how” of avoiding a climate disaster.

Anyone who has read anything about the climate crisis will know that it is going to be hard. The people of the world are not going to give up their hard-won lifestyles easily. Advertising and PR will continually remind them of the joy of stuff. Gates’ premise is that people around the world are not going to give up two hundred years of economic advancement in the next thirty years. They will want a version of the modern world that keeps them reasonably comfortable, mobile and affluent. So the question is, how do you deliver electricity, cars, food, homes, offices and entertainment in a way that doesn’t carry on destroying the Earth?

This premise is not the only one on offer. Other commentators, Charles Eisenstein comes to mind, would say that we need to slow down, consume less, be more mindful and love nature more. I agree with him, but we have only 30 years to put in place the changes we need. Gates’ Post Fossil Fuel Industrialism does look the more realistic option because it utilises the rapid pace of change which is a feature of contemporary capitalism. Innovation is a key part of Gates’ strategy.

But this approach places us all in a paradox which Gates himself clearly identifies. We should not do things to achieve short term gains that get in the way of the long term goal.

Gas-fired power stations produce less CO2 than their coal-fired equivalent. If your target is net-zero in thirty years, introducing gas-fired power stations now will provide a short term drop in emissions now, but because the power station has a life of sixty years, it will still be emitting when you should be hitting net zero emissions.

Industrial capitalism is the driving force behind the current crisis. It may be able to improve its practices to drastically reduce emissions, but the goal of capitalism is to build value and turn a profit. Will we get to a point where capitalism’s ability to absorb change is exhausted and it has to reassert its aims. Those aims are not net-zero. Given the gravity of the situation, should we not start retiring capitalism now and start work on the replacement, so that when we get to 2050 we actually have an economic system in place to deliver the net-zero economy that will assure us a future?

What would that system look like? I would suggest that it should include drastic restrictions on corporate power, the end of industrial practices that allow the destruction of ecosystems in the pursuit of profit, the “rights” of the planet elevated to those of human beings, increased international cooperation, greater democracy and a greater emphasis on the natural world.

Please read How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. It’s an important book, well written, impeccably researched and lucidly argued by someone who clearly cares deeply about the climate crisis. Then read Climate: A New Story by Charles Eisenstein and immerse yourself in this debate.

Everyone needs to get involved in the response to the climate crisis and to do so, we need to understand the breadth of the debate. Creating a better world begins with understanding the choices on offer.