How To Avoid A Climate Disaster ★★★★★

How To Avoid A Climate Disaster (Click Here To Buy)

★★★★★ (4.5 Stars)

How To Avoid A Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and The Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates is a non-fiction book about climate change.

I checked this audiobook out from the library and while I was listening to it, I realized it was also a book I needed to own to underline and highlight to revisit statistics and information, so I went and found a copy at Goodwill. It's large print, which is hilarious and weird to read but it works!

We produce 51 billion greenhouse gasses per year and if we want to avoid a climate disaster, we need to bring this number to zero by 2050. This book shows where we're at now - those emissions come from five different properties - and how we need to find solutions for all of them. For example, only 27% of the problem is electricity, which we need both renewable and clean alternatives for, and 31% stems from things we build such as concrete and steel. 19% comes from how we grow things, which includes animal consumption and 16% is how we get around (of which personal transportation is half of this). Finally, how we keep warm and stay cool is the last 7%. These are a lot of problems, and we don't have viable solutions for all of them, so we need to change what we can now and fund innovation (research and development) to create the rest. Also, a carbon tax would offset the misperceived cheapness of fossil fuels.

This book really opened my eyes to the issue at hand. There was so much I didn't know, and still don't know, about how we are basically destroying the planet as well as what we can do about it both on micro and macro levels. I am a vegetarian, and I don't own a car, so I already have a lower carbon footprint, but this book still showed me how I can continue to lower the number of emissions I personally am a part of. I was so inspired that I went and read The Climate Diet: 50 Simple Ways to Trim Your Carbon Footprint by Paul Greenberg to further explore ways to go greener.

If you liked How To Avoid A Climate Disaster, I also recommend Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Trauma Stewardship by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, and Breath by James Nestor. This book was an introduction to the climate change issue for me and I have added several books to my TBR to continue to learn about this issue and what I can do about it.

Happy green reading; let's get out there and save the planet.

Ms.Bjork