Do you think that climate change is a hoax created by billionaires to control developing countries? How can a person with a high carbon footprint like Bill Gates, who took his own private jet ironically for the Paris Summit, talk about climate change? Bill Gates tries to answer many controversial questions like these and tries to give us solutions for avoiding a climate disaster through this book.
Here are some common complaints about Gates that try to convince people not to read a book they themselves haven't read - and the reasons they're full of crap.
1. Claim: He uses private jets and travels internationally.
Fact: Bill Gates has begun using sustainable jet fuel that is made from renewable and alternative raw materials in replacement of petroleum-based fuels. It is a clean substitute for fossil fuels. Extremely expensive, but the guy's a billionaire and can afford it.
2. Claim: He eats meat.
Fact: Yes, he still does. Occasionally. Mostly he eats plant-based meats. Is it bad for the environment? Yes, which is why he's mostly cut out meat, which is more than a lot of people have done. Give him a break.
3. Claim: He invests in the fossil fuel industry.
Fact: He had a small fraction of investments in fossil-fuel companies (the majority in renewables). He realized the reasons he shouldn't own stock in fossil fuel companies and in 2019 divested all of his direct holdings in oil and gas companies (he hadn't invested in coal in several years).
To avoid a climate disaster, we have to get to zero.
The case for zero was, and is, rock solid. Unless we stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, the temperature will keep going up. Here's an analogy that's especially helpful: The climate is like a bathtub that's slowly filling up with water. Even if we slow the flow of water to a trickle, the tub will eventually fill up and water will come spilling out onto the floor. That's the disaster we have to pre-vent. Setting a goal to only reduce our emissions but not eliminate them--won't do it. The only sensible goal is zero.
I like that he simplified things down to the CO2 budget of Earth (his 51 billion tons per year number), and breaks it out into its constituent parts by segment: manufacturing things: think steel, concrete, plastic; producing electricity; agriculture; transportation; and heating/cooling. And then he talks about how to address each sector. He takes a logical engineer's approach to the issue, mostly. He introduced me to an interesting concept while explaining energy production; the idea of the density of power production. He points out that it takes a lot more space to produce energy from solar or wind than it does from a natural gas-powered or nuclear-powered electric plant. It's a good point, but he doesn't consider the counterargument, which is that all that space on the roofs of all those big box stores, or for that matter, residential rooftops, is not exactly in high demand for other uses. And he doesn't spend nearly enough time on jobs, which could be a huge win-win for green energy.
Then he talks about "making things", mainly concrete, steel, and plastic, and I was surprised to learn how much CO2 this produces. He spends a lot of time on "green premiums", i.e., the cost to make carbon-neutral materials, which are interesting, because you learn how relatively cheap it is to do this with steel and plastic, less so with concrete. And much of the improvement in this area will stem from using carbon-neutral electricity, of course.
He talks next about agriculture and the need to reduce red meat intake, which in turn reduces cattle populations, which in turn reduces methane production. And methane is 28 times more potent as a warming gas compared to CO2. He makes a strong case for reducing red meat intake, which would be good for us anyway, and cutting meat intake in half could reduce global greenhouse emissions by about 2.5%, maybe more. He also shows how fertilizer causes problems, but he does not highlight the amazing progress made, and jobs created by large organic farms like White Oak Pastures in Georgia. A huge amount of food could be produced organically which would both reduce emissions from fertilizers and create jobs. He makes a pitch to stop deforestation and plant trees wherever possible, and I agree 100%. What needs more emphasis, in my opinion, is creating incentives for people to consume less, and to consume more wisely, because the traditional US consumption model for food cannot be sustained on a global level. Also, let's stop cutting the trees we have, especially in the Amazon and Congo.
He gave a classic example of Fossil fuel correlating it with water using David Foster Wallace's famous commencement speech.
When Wallace gave a now-famous commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005, he started with this story: There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"
Wallace explained, "The immediate point of the fish story is that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about." Fossil fuels are like that. They're so pervasive that it can be hard to grasp all the ways in which they and other sources of greenhouse gases touch our lives. I find it helpful to start with everyday objects and go from there.
Did you brush your teeth this morning? The toothbrush probably contains plastic, which is made from petroleum, a fossil fuel. If you ate breakfast, the grains in your toast and cereal were grown with fertilizer, which releases greenhouse gases when it's made. They were harvested by a tractor that was made of steel which is made with fossil fuels in a process that releases carbon and ran on gasoline. If you had a burger for lunch, as I do occasionally, raising the beef caused greenhouse gas emissions cows burp and fart methane and so did growing and harvesting the wheat that went into the bun. If you got dressed, your clothes might contain cotton also fertilized and harvested or polyester, made from ethylene, which is derived from petroleum. If you've used toilet paper, that's more trees cut down and carbon emitted.
Then transportation is addressed, which turns out to be one of the easier areas to fix, though it depends on solving the energy production problem mentioned above. Fundamentally, all transportation except long-haul air transport and sea shipment needs to be electrified, and fossil fuel consumption for sea shipments can be greatly reduced.Of course, we need to convert to electric vehicles immediately, and that covers a huge chunk of what needs to be done. I wish he had talked about shifting more freight from trucks to trains, but I'm nit-picking.
So, to sum up, I'm glad Bill Gates wrote this book. If nothing else, it brings renewed attention to the subject. It is a readable, only occasionally boring, book; all in all, not bad. I do wish he had made bold, precisely calculated proposals to solve the issues ahead of us, and I wish he had avoided self-promotion entirely because that's a bad look for billionaires. He makes an excellent point about investment to get to carbon neutral by 2050, i.e., 2050 is tomorrow in infrastructure terms. The big things we build today will still be in use in 2050, so we need to choose wisely now, not in ten years.
When we have a fact-based worldview, we can see that the world is not as bad as it seems and we can see what we have to do to keep making it better. When we have a fact-based view of climate change, we can see that we have some of the things we need to avoid a climate disaster, but not all of them. We can see what stands in the way of deploying the solutions we have and developing the breakthroughs we need. And we can see all the work we must do to overcome those hurdles.
My favourite three lines from this book
“There are two numbers you need to know about climate change. The first is 51 billion. The other is zero. Fifty-one billion is how many tons of greenhouse gases the world typically adds to the atmosphere every year.”
"Remember that we need to find solutions for all five activities that emissions come from: making things, plugging in, growing things, getting around, and keeping cool and warm."
“The countries that build great zero-carbon companies and industries will be the ones that lead the global economy in the coming decades.”
