A review by emmaemmaemmaemma
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates

5.0

What I loved most about this book was how quickly it turned anxiety into action. Usually, I pick up a new book on climate change when I’m feeling anxious about how helpless everything feels. Usually, I proceed to feel both inspired, and worse about the situation than I did when I began the book.

This one is different though. What begins as the standard array of ways we have, and continue to kill the planet, quickly morphs into what feels like a game plan.

This book gave me hope. Which is something that I can’t say about very many books. My notes from it are…extensive, but I’m actually excited to return to them because I feel like maybe this isn’t all destined to spiral out of control infinitely. Maybe there’s a long, slow way back, but still a way back. I’m choosing to stick to that optimism and not overthink it.

Yes. Bill Gates is filthy rich white man which automatically makes me skeptical of his writing, but the truth is, I think he does a good enough job of addressing the filthy rich elephant in the room, and an even better job of clarifying consistently how climate change can’t be solved at the detriment of people living in poverty. Human rights and the protection of the planet have to go hand in hand, or not at all.

The title isn’t just bait, he backs it up to an extent that I didn’t expect. This is in fact, how to avoid a climate disaster, in the most comprehensive way that it can be laid out, while still being easy to understand. I’d recommend this one without hesitation.