How to avoid a climate disaster

How to avoid a climate disaster – the book

Bill Gates just published his new book which presents an argument for urgent action on climate change. He aptly uses the term “climate disaster,” which is what many social movements have started to do and is a practice I support – “change” sounds to gradual, too controlled. What we’re experiencing in terms of climate is indeed a looming disaster.

Now, to be sure, Gates’s solutions are not revolutionary, but this is not superficial billionaire-vanity-read either. The contents themselves are what we have already seen previously in other, arguably higher quality texts. I’m thinking Designing Climate Solutions, Our Renewable Future, Drawdown, Energy Transition: a Primer for the 21st Century, as well as some excellent research papers such as this one.

Let’s look at some of the key takeaways.

The role for governments in averting climate disaster

The word “government” is prominent throughout Gates’s book, perhaps more so than in any comparable text I’ve seen. For a wealthy entrepreneur often accused of running his philanthropy with merry disregard of government and policy, this is sobering. It is also an indication of the maturity of the climate debate – we have a widespread realization by now that technological breakthroughs and bold individual initiatives alone won’t solve the problem. Nor has any one government the power to avert the disaster without international cooperation.

Now, Gates isn’t proposing pie-in-the-sky regulation like the Green New Deal. He points to similarly rash initiatives in the past (a proposed widespread ban on GM foods a comes to mind) to note that policy is better when it is science-based, targeted, both technologically and socially sound.

The author sees carbon pricing as the fundamental initiative government-side. This would put a tangible cost on pollution for the polluters themselves and at last fix the broken incentive loop. The book then goes on to propose a few more speculative pathways: for example, a huge (at times fivefold) increase in government spending on climate research and betting on advanced nuclear power. Less controversial are calls for putting in place green government procurement processes (electric cars, solar panels, etc.).

Decarbonizing the grid

Unsurprisingly, and in unison with many other authors, Gates points to the decarbonizing of electricity as the single most important thing we can do to avert climate disaster. This is not only comparatively easier than greening industry, but can, as an externality, lead to decarbonizing transport, via electric cars and other means, as well as improving the energy efficiency of buildings.

Here, of course, the obstacles are well known. A switch to renewables (solar, wind) is becoming increasingly realistic given the plummeting levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) compared to dirty sources, but the problem of intermittency remains, leading to needs for new types of energy storage, as many of the current ones are deficient.

A final problem is ethical, and Gates devotes time to it: Western countries have profited from the growth and development that dirty energy sources have provided. Now they are trying to impose restrictions on other countries doing likewise. The books stops short of proposing a solution.

Avoiding climate disaster: targeting 2050, not 2030

The most important, and the most far-reaching, point of the book is the idea that the technologies that might lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 are not the same ones that would lead us to net zero emissions by 2050. This is an important point that is often missing in literature and debate – we too often see the trajectory of decarbonization as a straight one, calling at all stations until a carbon free world. 

Gates correctly recognizes that this is not the case. A patent example he cites is natural gas. It is extremely tempting to see natural gas as a quick and direct substitute for coal-fired power plants. The gas is abundant, the technology available, the unknowns reduced to a minimum. But this would be the wrong way to proceed, the author warns, because natural gas, far from carbon-free, would become the backbone of global electricity generation. Decarbonizing from there would be equally hard (harder) than it is from the present point.

Assessment: the missing piece is politics

The main impression after reading “How to Avoid Climate Disaster” is that I have read it all before, in a largely positive way. This means that the consensus on what is to be done is emerging, and that a clear road map is not far off, even if some of the technological solutions are not yet available. These are the kinds of preconditions that, coupled with sound government policy, might spur an unprecedented innovation in the sector and indeed lead to a decarbonized economy well before 2050.

What the book doesn’t quite tackle, and what future texts will have to do, are the political practicalities. We have more or less known what needs to be done for a while now. Doing it practically has proven hard. We need to overcome opportunistic climate denialism and inaction in the highest instances of power, the US Congress being the most prominent but far from the only. We need to have a deal to present to the short-term losers of the transition. We need to stop the dynamic whereby the future of the planet is being compromised for a fistful of votes in a handful of regions. It’s time for a book entirely devoted to tactics.