Bill Gates published a book in 2021 titled How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (Subtitle: The solutions we have and the breakthroughs we need) and I would like to comment on it. This is a bit of a delayed reaction but it’s still timely for me as I’m writing a book on how ethical consumption addresses social and environmental issues such as climate change.

It’s also timely to look at Gates’s book because his proposed solutions and breakthroughs were brought up again in last week’s controversial blog post on rethinking climate change. I’ve already expressed my thoughts on the problematic aspect of that blog post (pitting climate change against health/poverty) but I didn’t comment on his solutions.

Bill Gates’s climate solutions: strengths and weaknesses

A large amount of Gates’s book is geared towards influencing policy in areas like energy generation. He goes over ideas that have been discussed for a few decades, such as a carbon tax of some kind. As a scientist who worked in one field that he discusses quite a bit – advanced biofuels – his commentary is generally fine. At the same time, he didn’t say anything that surprised me or took me in a new direction.

I’ve read the book twice now – once in 2021 and again this week – and honestly I found it to be a bit of a slog and often overwhelming, like having a conversation with a micromanager. The first area that he tackles is electricity generation – the adoption of renewables as well as other options such as nuclear. I wish that he had put some of his details on electricity transmission and storage into footnotes rather than overwhelming readers with a data dump from the get go.

But it’s a useful book. Just unfortunate that some of the positives – for example that offshore wind in a few US locations could provide twice the country’s power needs – seem almost out of place after a lot of hand wringing about how hard all this will be. That’s a core message of the book – that tackling climate change won’t be easy. That’s quite a large contrast to his “we’ve got this” vibe in his blog post on rethinking climate change, last week.

Gates on climate change: 2021 versus 2025

In the introduction to How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Gates states that he’s a software guy, not a climate expert. He admits that he actually didn’t really grasp the concept and gravity of climate change until late 2006. That’s bizarrely late to me, considering it was a central topic of the 2000 US election (Gore vs. Bush) and that Bill Gates is a well-informed guy and was chairman of one of the largest corporations on the planet at the time. It makes me wonder why he thinks he’s qualified to influence climate change policy and why we should weigh his ideas any more than the thousands of experts around the world that have dedicated their careers to the topic.

Having said that, he’s on a journey of discovery with the book and that’s valid. He has invested in many companies working on different aspects of climate mitigation, so he does have life experience informing an instinct on what’s more likely to work. But some of his differences between his thoughts published in 2021 and 2025 are worth noting.

There are actually too many differences to get into – for example, his call (in the book) for quintupling investment in clean energy R&D or on how much more is spent on fossil fuel subsidies ($400 billion) versus global investment in clean energy ($22 billion). I’ll just briefly cover two topics here:

A little is a lot – an extra 0.5°C of global warming is a big deal

In his 2021 book, Gates emphasizes how every increment in global warming is a big deal. In one section titled, A little is a lot, Gates talk about how a small increase in the global temperature (1-2°C, 1.8-3.6°F) could cause a lot of trouble.

In many ways, a 2-degree rise wouldn’t simply be 33 percent worse than 1.5; it could be 100 percent worse. – How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.

Contrast that with his 2025 blog post where he suggests that a change of 2.9°C (5.5°F) is not a terrible outcome.

The importance of policy – wind energy

Let’s go back again to Gates’s statement that offshore wind in the US could generate twice the US electricity needs (2,000 gigawatts of power, while the US requires 1,000 gigawatts). Since then, a report titled 2035 and Beyond from researchers at UC Berkeley and two other organizations (GridLab and Energy Innovations) mapped out a plan for offshore wind providing 25% of US electricity by 2050.

This report shows that over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential is available along the U.S. coastline, including the Great Lakes, which could greatly complement our onshore resources such as solar and wind to help us achieve a 95% clean electricity grid by 2050 without substantially impacting wholesale electricity costs. – 2035 Report

This is all good news. Gates takes Denmark as an example of a country that embraced offshore wind (policy, R&D, markets) and benefited in multiple ways (energy independence, climate targets, becoming a world leader in the industry). In the US, he says, the expansion of offshore wind is hampered by policy and bureaucracy around permitting. Well if he thought things were difficult for wind projects in 2021…

The current administration’s abrupt cancellation of offshore wind projects has been one of its most vindictive acts. Without any benefit to anyone (other than fossil fuel dealmakers) one of the most critical steps to reducing GHGs in the US is being blocked. Ignoring that offshore wind would be good for the economy, just as it was for Denmark.

Increasing ambition for offshore wind development could inject up to $1.8 trillion of investment into the U.S. economy and employ up to 390,000 workers in the sector in 2050. – 2035 Report

The current administration’s policies in areas like wind and solar put climate change in jeopardy – that’s obvious.

What’s not so obvious is why would Gates add fuel to this fire with a blog post downplaying climate?

He specifically does the opposite of what he advocates in the book: try to influence policy to support the development of renewable energy and materials. 

What’s wrong with How to Avert a Climate Disaster?

My original idea for writing this blog post has given way to more analysis of Gates’s recent blog post on climate. Let me finish by explaining my original issue with the book. Although it’s full of useful information and may inspire changes in policy, I find that it’s not all that useful as a guide for individuals and consumers.

I wasn’t expecting the book to be particularly strong in this area – especially after Gates explains that it’s heavy on technology-based solutions. He admits that he’s a technophile, joking that “the world is not exactly lacking in rich men with big ideas about what other people should do, or who think technology can fix any problem.”

The problem is that, in a book about averting climate change, Gates downplays the importance of a key solution: individual action. With such an emphasis on tech development, readers who are not experts in areas like energy storage and transmission might get the impression that the problem is largely out of their hands.

Personally, I did work in one of those areas (advanced biofuels) and believe that, although that work is very important, there’s also an unfilled need for objective science-based guidance on consumer action. That’s why I decided to focus on my book and the Green Stars Project for a while (or forever!).

Gates goes back and forth in the book on whether individual action matters. Here’s one example:

…it’s natural to think of actions like driving an electric car or eating less meat. This sort of personal action is important for the signals it sends to the marketplace, but the bulk of our emissions comes from the large systems in which we live our daily lives. – How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.

It’s not fair to just quote that in isolation because in other parts of the book he discusses the importance of electric cars and alternatives to meat! So I guess you could say that my problem is that the book is inconsistent. It was written with a “writing partner,” acknowledged at the end, which may explain why two messages come through. The danger there is that readers will often only hear the message they want to hear – the easier path. 

Of course we need renewable power, a sustainable liquid fuel, lower footprint building materials, and the electrification of transport and home heating. But consumer demand drives everything. Of course we all deserve a decent quality of life but the fact is that you can live a pretty good life with either a small or large carbon footprint. Making conscious choices is critical at this juncture – especially when our government isn’t on the same page.

Right after the US election result, last year, I examined data showing that climate change is largely driven by individuals.

On the global level, 72% of greenhouse gas emissions are related to household consumption, 10% to government consumption, and 18% to investments. – The Carbon Footprint of Nations.

Significant greenhouse gases (GHGs) result from the construction of buildings and infrastructure, which the scientists categorize as “investments.” These investments in infrastructure take up 18% of a country’s GHG emissions, on average because concrete and steel have very large carbon footprints. – The US election result and climate change.

Another opportunity missed in the book, especially for someone invested in the Global South, is that Gates never mentions concepts like fair trade that support a better standard of living, alleviating poverty and reducing population growth. Climate change, like most environmental problems, is strongly tied to population growth, which is largely driven by poverty. A key solution to poverty is consumers choosing products that support rather than exploit suppliers in the Global South.

I can see some reasons why ethical consumption isn’t tackled. For one thing, it might seem incongruous getting advice on how to keep our footprint low from one of the richest guys in the world. It also doesn’t win a lot of fans to point the finger at readers and say, OK, your portion of global GHG emissions is this amount. The feedback I got on Reddit to my post on individual responsibility for climate change was good evidence of this.

Another thing is that ethical consumption, researched using an objective science-based approach, is a lot of work! I’ve spent a good chunk of this year researching third-party certifications like fair trade, and that’s just one chapter of Climactic.

As I’m conscious of over-long blog posts, I’m going to wrap this up but my next post will explain the biggest opportunity missed in How to Avert a Climate Disaster: a clear comparison of steel, cement, and beef.