What bothers Bill Gates – or how to save the world from a climate disaster?

For more than a year now, governments and organisations across the world have been grappling with the pandemic. Its effects are felt both professionally and privately – often staying home and limiting many of our activities. But we must not forget that despite this, the world does not stand still. It rushes. And it’s in a direction that we don’t necessarily like. But if Bill Gates remains optimistic, then we too should look to the future with confidence, but also prepare for change.

How To Avoid A Climate Disaster..., Bill Gates’ latest book surprises – above all by the scale of optimism manifested by the founder of the world’s largest philanthropic organisation.

“Everything must change for everything to remain the same”... a quote from Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard could be the motto of Gates’ book. The latter single-handedly draws visions of a climate disaster facing the world around 2050. The other creates visions of a future that is surprisingly ordinary and very American. One where you can still enjoy the taste of a well-done hamburger, a fast car ride, or a big house filled with electronic gadgets. Moreover, a model of behaviour reserved for years for the rich West is about to become more widely available, living standards in the developing world higher, and global energy consumption greater than ever before.

 Is the described future world just a “bigger and better” version of the current one? Not quite, because beneath the superficial similarities there are differences: a hamburger in 2050 will have to be vegan, or prepared from cultured meat, rather than from animals grazing in the meadows. Gas stations will disappear, replaced by charging points for ubiquitous electric vehicles, and structural steel will be made in electric-powered steel mills.

 The Excel man

While Gates doesn’t shy away from round sentences, he constantly returns to the concrete: numbers. The most important of these is 51,000,000,000, fifty-one billion. According to a recent study, this is how many tons of greenhouse gases the world emits into the atmosphere each year, with an upward trend. The second recurring number is 0. This is the emission level humanity needs to reach in 2050 to avoid the worst effects of climate change, turning a large part of the planet into an uninhabitable place. It seems difficult – and it will be (...) The good news is: we can do it.  

Subsequent chapters argue that much of the necessary tools to achieve the goal are already available, they just require more widespread use. Other essential solutions, such as next-generation nuclear reactors and low-cost energy storage, are already expected to be at hand. 

Construction: concrete and steel

China alone used more concrete in the first 16 years of the 21st century than the U.S. did in the entire 20th century, and the construction boom also requires gigantic amounts of steel and glass. It is reasonable to assume that demand for these materials will further increase; meanwhile, their production is associated with the release of greenhouse gases – at least a ton of carbon dioxide for every ton of cement. How do we reconcile the need to raise living standards with climate concerns? Once again, new technologies are invoked to help: making cement from seawater and carbon dioxide captured in power plants, or treating greenhouse gases as a raw material for plastics. The carbon compounds would thus be bound in plastic (not decaying for thousands of years) fetters. Whether this solution would delight environmentalists fighting straws and PET bottles is doubtful, but net greenhouse gas emissions would turn out to be negative. As a complement, Gates proposes, among other things, installations that absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide. It is worth returning to the first figure cited at this point: 51 billion tons. How many new plants does it take for their effect to show?

The key to success is scale of operations. Many of the technologies mentioned in the book remain mere concepts; others have not progressed beyond lab-scale testing. In fact, the author admits to having missed investments in initially promising ideas. But even if all the tools were already at hand, the question of how to use them will remain, because global cooperation is required to reduce emissions to zero. How difficult it is to reach such an agreement is reminded by the vacillating attitude of the United States itself, which in 2019 withdrew from the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

One may complain that the author is not down to earth – but he definitely focuses his attention on it. He writes with conviction – and it’s easy to believe his sincere interest in the subject by looking at pictures of a smiling American touring fertilizer factories and geothermal power plants on the other side of the world. Nor can be denied his power to influence; with his position, he has the potential to reach multitudes of Americans as well as political decision-makers. The visions outlined in How To Avoid A Climate Disaster could seriously affect preparations for the coming climate crisis, and thus outline a future for the world that must change to survive.  

Bill Gates. How To Avoid A Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have And The Breakthroughs We Need. 2021.