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954 reviews for:
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need
Bill Gates
3.97 AVERAGE
954 reviews for:
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need
Bill Gates
3.97 AVERAGE
informative
medium-paced
informative
slow-paced
Who is the audience for this book? I kept feeling frustrated, being like, "But Bill, I don't have millions to throw around at cool tech stuff. I don't have a personal assistant who organizes travel totes for me, filled with the books I told her to buy from Bookshop.org." I mean, I *wish*.
Then I realized, I guess the audience is the wannabe technocrats, such as myself. The early adopter, Mann-esque wizards who watch Kurzgesagt videos about geoengineering and decide they want to shoot their OWN sulfur particles into the sky maybe using an Arduino/Raspberry Pi-powered space balloon. Just me?
Once I accepted that there was not much in this book that I - a normal person in my normal life - could do TODAY - that there was, indeed, no solar panel Raspberry Pi project that I could make a meaningful dent with, I relaxed and enjoyed it more. This is more like Bill Gates's billionaire god's eye view of all the technologies we COULD (and SHOULD) be using/investing in to get from 51 billion tons of emissions to zero (zero!!!). There's certainly some discussion of the politics of things - and how we plebes should beg our politicians to please avert this climate disaster. There's also some very sensible stuff about daily/annual choices we could make - like buying an EV or eating less meat. But the REALLY cool stuff just felt, sigh, so out of reach. Nonetheless, I love engineering, logistics, economics, physics, and so on, and so I mostly salivated at these things. Don't even get me started on the toilet! THE TOILET. I had a major nirvana moment about water and sanitation infrastructure when I was in Accra, Ghana, for a summer. The city kept rationing the water. Whenever it came on, everyone would use generators to fill up their water tanks. I was like, THE TOILET IS THE PROBLEM, PEOPLE. Also, we need to use graywater in the toilet!
Pardon. I am ranting. I get excited about these things.
Anyway, I lean much more heavily wizard than prophet - as Charles Mann would say - and so I am relatively techno-optimistic. I am, also, moderately pessimistic and so I will be climate adapting the HELL out of my home and life.
Nonetheless: a wonderful wonderful book. I want more like these! What else can I read to get excited about nuclear energy!?
Then I realized, I guess the audience is the wannabe technocrats, such as myself. The early adopter, Mann-esque wizards who watch Kurzgesagt videos about geoengineering and decide they want to shoot their OWN sulfur particles into the sky maybe using an Arduino/Raspberry Pi-powered space balloon. Just me?
Once I accepted that there was not much in this book that I - a normal person in my normal life - could do TODAY - that there was, indeed, no solar panel Raspberry Pi project that I could make a meaningful dent with, I relaxed and enjoyed it more. This is more like Bill Gates's billionaire god's eye view of all the technologies we COULD (and SHOULD) be using/investing in to get from 51 billion tons of emissions to zero (zero!!!). There's certainly some discussion of the politics of things - and how we plebes should beg our politicians to please avert this climate disaster. There's also some very sensible stuff about daily/annual choices we could make - like buying an EV or eating less meat. But the REALLY cool stuff just felt, sigh, so out of reach. Nonetheless, I love engineering, logistics, economics, physics, and so on, and so I mostly salivated at these things. Don't even get me started on the toilet! THE TOILET. I had a major nirvana moment about water and sanitation infrastructure when I was in Accra, Ghana, for a summer. The city kept rationing the water. Whenever it came on, everyone would use generators to fill up their water tanks. I was like, THE TOILET IS THE PROBLEM, PEOPLE. Also, we need to use graywater in the toilet!
Pardon. I am ranting. I get excited about these things.
Anyway, I lean much more heavily wizard than prophet - as Charles Mann would say - and so I am relatively techno-optimistic. I am, also, moderately pessimistic and so I will be climate adapting the HELL out of my home and life.
Nonetheless: a wonderful wonderful book. I want more like these! What else can I read to get excited about nuclear energy!?
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
One most important part that Bill missed is that we need to incorporate this in to our kids' education. In getting to net zero by 2050, that is 30 years from now, most people in their 30s will be in their 60s and our politicians, whom we elect for presidents and prime ministers, already in their 80s and will be dead by then. How can those old folks understand the problems faced by younger people when they don't even encourage them to vote.
It's our kids who are in their teens or younger or even unborn who will be suffering the most from climate change . Shouldn't they be given education on this on a daily basis in their schools and colleges? Wouldn't that help them come up with more ideas and solutions for the problems they will be facing that we are going to create for them?
Over all this book has tons of repeats mainly due to the nature of the topic.
Bill has encouraged use of lot of products without naming them directly, example plant based meat. We must also understand that this is for his own benefit too cause of his heavy investment in such products.
Overall a good book to start to think about what we can do at individual, corporate, government, country and several other levels to prevent or mitigate climate change.
Bill could have covered a lot of details on the severity and effects of climate change rather than repeat a ton of information.
It's our kids who are in their teens or younger or even unborn who will be suffering the most from climate change . Shouldn't they be given education on this on a daily basis in their schools and colleges? Wouldn't that help them come up with more ideas and solutions for the problems they will be facing that we are going to create for them?
Over all this book has tons of repeats mainly due to the nature of the topic.
Bill has encouraged use of lot of products without naming them directly, example plant based meat. We must also understand that this is for his own benefit too cause of his heavy investment in such products.
Overall a good book to start to think about what we can do at individual, corporate, government, country and several other levels to prevent or mitigate climate change.
Bill could have covered a lot of details on the severity and effects of climate change rather than repeat a ton of information.
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
This book was just okay. It had a couple of interesting things to share and has made me marginally more hopeful in the face of climate change.
Fear I’m a Bill Gates fan - also thought Will Wheaton was made up for the Big Bang theory
Quite timely considering Sydney is experiencing it's 5th "1 in 100 year flood" since 2020.
This was also the first text to make me think more about/accept the role Nuclear Energy will need to play in a Net Zero future.
This was also the first text to make me think more about/accept the role Nuclear Energy will need to play in a Net Zero future.