Member Review

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster reads very quickly and well, as well as covers a lot of basics of Climate Change, greenhouse gases, causes of greenhouse gases/ Climate Change, production and consumption, so it is a great book if you are a newbie and don’t know much about ins and outs of Climate Change, but want to learn more or just want a quick yet reliable summary.

The book is basically divided into two parts. The first part is all about setting the scene and explaining what is Climate Change, why it is a problem, how this all came about and summarising all the facts and figures about the problem we as a society currently face. The second part is all about solutions to Climate Change, including innovations, changes in policies, governments' attitudes, as well as binding agreements between the countries. Gates in the second part of the book doesn’t shy away from portraying future possibilities if we don’t do anything about Climate Change, but he also discusses and displays what changes need to be made in different parts of our economies, industries and societies to achieve zero carbon and to reduce Climate Change impacts on communities and humans significantly.

This book was very interesting and covered quite a lot of solutions to fight climate change that isn’t usually covered by mainstream media and news. Also, Gates talks about different start-up companies, highlighting their innovations in tackling climate change, which gives a glimpse of hope that not everything is lost and we can make changes needed to restore our environment. He also makes a strong point that we need to move towards cleaner energy as soon as possible, but in order to do that we need to invest more in those industries and change our opinions on low-carbon and renewable energy into more positive ones.

Unlike in many other Climate Change books, Gates only slightly touches on individual action regarding Climate Change issues. He mainly concentrates on what different industries and governments can do to reduce their reliance on fossils, reduce consumption, change materials into more sustainable ones, etc. I really enjoyed this take on Climate Change, as there aren’t a lot of books that look at the issues regarding Climate Change from this particular viewpoint.

I also liked that Gates displayed how much Climate Change is affecting and will affect more of our everyday life and how it, directly and indirectly, links to nearly every challenge societies across the world currently face.

Overall: Verry well written, easily understood, with complex processes explained in great depth and ease. The perfect book for someone who wants to learn more about Climate Change, but doesn’t know where to start, as this book summarises everything you need to know about it in one place and without complex scientific language, which is at times hard to grasp. Additionally, relevant and simple graphs, pictures and diagrams allow information to be better digested, especially as the complex numbers and graphs that are usually associated with production and consumption are very well explained to the reader. This book also offers a glimpse of hope by diving into new innovations and technologies in tackling different issues that are arising due to Climate Change. I honestly didn’t think I will enjoy this book as much as I did!