REVIEW OF BILL GATES’S BOOK
Peace Magazine (JulySeptember issue, 2021) did well to publish William Fletcher and Craig Smith’s review of Bill Gates’s book,
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. The reviewers’ many positive comments may lead many people to face the daunting struggle to address climate change. It needs to be pointed out, however, that Gates deals with less than a third of the problems facing humanity, since he pays attention only to the technical aspects of a solution, and as such is in good company with notables such as Cambridge University’s Sir David King.
The problem is deeper. We have not only to halt climate change, but to reach a sustainable form of living. This double challenge requires a major change of mentality, whereby the health of the entire ecosphere becomes a central objective in people’s minds. This idea is completely absent from Gates’s book. Neither ecological footprint nor biocapacity are mentioned, yet the world’s ecological footprint has exceeded its biocapacity since 1970 and the ratio of footprint to biocapacity continues to increase annually! The United States and the United Kingdom each have footprints that exceed their biocapacities by about 170 percent!
Also omitted is any mention of increasing natural wealth, an essential investment for increasing biocapacity. Nor is there any mention of Jem Bendell’s call for “deep adaptation,” which I will now attempt to explain. The human race has left it so late to deal with the elimination of greenhouse gas emissions, that it is very unlikely there will be enough green energy by 2050 to supply everyone with what, today, they see as their needs. Should there be such a shortage of green energy, as is predicted by major energy agencies, then the human race must face up to living with that shortage for a time, while the excess CO in the 2 atmosphere is being sequestered and further green energy supplies are being developed. Bendell is not alone in crying for deep adaptation.
Lastly, Gates omits mention of population. While many optimists believe that the world can feed 10 billion people at some estimated future date, it is easy to forget that there have been famines in recent years, and each year’s growing population makes famines more likely. Furthermore, each additional 100 million mouths to feed (roughly the annual population increase) makes getting to zero emissions harder. And we shouldn’t forget that the growing human population is crowding out most of the wild animals and reducing the numbers of most species at an alarming rate.
To summarise, the change of mindset, mustering the will to begin natural wealth creation, deep adaptation, and achieving a deliberate, slow population reduction are all more difficult than the technical problems of providing green energy.
Derek Paul, Montreal