Bill Gates - How To Avoid A Climate Disaster

Bill Gates - How To Avoid A Climate Disaster 

4⭐

Genre: Environmental Studies, Non-Fiction, Geography, Climate Change, Academia, Education

Pages: 272

Format: Paperback 

Publisher: Penguin Press UK, Allen Lane Books

Date Published: 16th February 2021

Huge thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Press UK for an e-copy to read and review. 

Book Blurb: 

Bill Gates shares what he's learned in more than a decade of studying climate change and investing in innovations to address the problems, and sets out a vision for how the world can build the tools it needs to get to zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Bill Gates explains why he cares so deeply about climate change and what makes him optimistic that the world can prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis. Gates says, "we can work on a local, national, and global level to build the technologies, businesses, and industries to avoid the worst impacts of climate change." His interest in climate change is a natural outgrowth of the efforts by his foundation to reduce poverty and disease. Climate change, according to Gates, will have the biggest impact on the people who have done the least to cause it. As a technologist, he has seen first-hand how innovation can change the world. By investing in research, inventing new technologies, and deploying them quickly at large scale, Gates believes climate change can be addressed in meaningful ways. According to Gates, "to prevent the worst effects of climate change, we have to get to net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases. This problem is urgent, and the debate is complex, but I believe we can come together to invent new carbon-zero technologies, deploy the ones we have, and ultimately avoid a climate catastrophe."

My 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!

This review was first published on NetGalley: 

https://www.netgalley.co.uk/book/208120/review/959200

About the Author:

Bill Gates is a technologist, business leader, and philanthropist. In 1975, he co-founded Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen; today he and his wife, Melinda, are co-chairs of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He also launched Breakthrough Energy, an effort to commercialize clean energy and other climate-related technologies. He and Melinda have three children and live in Medina, Washington.

https://www.gatesnotes.com/

Joe Cawley & Nicola Quinn - Moving to Tenerife: All You Need To Know

Joe Cawley with Nicola Quinn - Moving to Tenerife: All You Need To Know  

2⭐

Genre: Travel,  Non-Fiction, Canary Islands 

Pages:  74

Format: Kindle 

Publisher: Self Published 

Date Published: 7th January 2013 

Book Blurb: 

Hands up if you’ve ever been to Tenerife on holiday and toyed with the idea of making your stay a more permanent one.
No surprise, really – grey skies versus blue, roads clogged with stressed commuters versus a walk to work in the sunshine, wet weekends indoors versus days on the beach or round the pool.
In fact, it’s quite a wonder why more people don’t bite the bullet and head for sunnier climes.
However, relocating can seem daunting – especially if you don’t know much about the place. Hopefully with the help of this book, deciding if a move to Tenerife is right for you, actually taking the plunge, and doing all the stuff that follows a move, should become a lot clearer.
Moving to Tenerife is a useful guide that will show you the easiest path so you can begin enjoying your brand new life in the sun as soon as possible.

My Review: 

I decided to read this book as I am fascinated by Tenerife and Canary Islands, as well as read a few others Joe Cawley books about Tenerife. I also read this book for research, whilst completing my dissertation on Tenerife. However, I was disappointed.

From a blurb it states that this book is a manual to help someone get all the information they need if they want to move to Tenerife, and different chapters include all the practical information that you need once you move there, to navigate the quite complicated bureaucracy of the island.

This book felt very biased and seems to be based on the experiences of a few people, rather than be written as a researched informational book about what to expect when you move to Tenerife. It also lacked basic information about the island, its weather, geography, population, and infrastructure, which I would consider very important points to know before moving your livelihood somewhere new. There are not many facts and references that would back up the author’s opinions and statements, in the book either, which was quite disappointing. I also felt that this book is way too short to put all the information that people need to know about Tenerife and what to expect when moving there. It just felt that so much important information was missing from these pages.

Overall: I definitely felt that there are better and more detailed manuals on Moving to Tenerife and Canary Islands, that I have read in the past, that are much more comprehensive with much more research and facts, as well as information and references. 

About the Author:

Joe Cawley is a travel writer and award-winning author published in many international newspapers and magazines such as The Times, New York Post and Taipei Times.

His first book, More Ketchup than Salsa was voted 'Best Travel Narrative' by the British Guild of Travel Writers and follows the disasters of a young couple seeking greener pastures abroad.

Joe currently lives in the hills of Tenerife with his family and an assortment of other wildlife. Although he loves his family dearly, he admits he gets the most sense out of the guinea pigs.

https://www.joecawley.co.uk/

Eric Archambeau - Costing the Earth

Eric Archambeau - Costing the Earth (How to Fix Finance to Save the Planet) 

5⭐

Genre: Non-Fiction, Climate Change, Environmental Studies, Geography, Academia, Education, Politics, STEM, Society

Pages:  224

Format: Paperback 

Publisher: Whitefox Publishing

Date Published: 1st August 2022

Huge thank you to The Book Publicist for sending me a copy of this book to read and review. 

Book Blurb: 

In Costing the Earth, leading impact investor Eric Archambeau argues that rather than making media-friendly pledges and grasping low-hanging fruit (such as aviation taxes), world leaders must radically overhaul finance instead.

Only by aligning investment decisions with the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and ensuring that industrial and services companies measure and incorporate in their P&L statements the full environmental and social costs of their operations - costs that are currently passed on to taxpayers or absorbed by Nature - will we stand a chance of achieving the breakthroughs we need.

Zeroing in on the agri-food sector, one of the largest contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption and biodiversity loss, Archambeau dissects the many hidden problems caused by our current financial system.

As the stakes continue to rise and the window for action narrows, Costing the Earth makes the case that the only viable and sustainable way to achieve net-zero is to adopt the model pioneered by impact investors, which takes the three Ps - profit, people and the planet - into account when valuing a company or tracking its performance. Only then will business leaders all over the world be incentivized to place sustainability and the regeneration of the planet's resources at the heart of their operations and decision-making.

My Review: 

I was so excited about this book! Mainly because I love reading about the environment, especially climate change and ways to tackle it, and the fact that as a geographer I can’t stay away from books about the environment. This book, however, met all of my expectations and more! 

In each chapter, Archambeau presented cases on what is wrong in our current ways of production, consumption and environmental degradation/protection. Then he explained how we can change that if we looked at the environment, production, economy and consumption in a more holistic way, especially how we can change business and our day-to-day economic processes, such as financial statements, cost calculations, life cycle assessments, etc, to move towards more sustainable future. He also presents tools which companies can use to calculate the true cost of our products, including the real environmental cost that is usually left out from our product cost and the company’s financial statements. Lastly, in each chapter, Archambeau presents companies or start-up initiatives that are working towards changing the status quo of how businesses operate and finance themselves, as well as displays how those companies take strong steps towards tackling issues associated with climate change, such as poverty, hunger, agricultural processes, deforestation, greenhouse gases, to name a few. 

I learned so much from this book, especially about some of the start-up companies in the environmental sector and technology that I haven’t heard about before, that are doing amazing innovative work towards sustainability and tackling climate change. I also learned so much about the financial processes of the past that we as a society are very reluctant to change to protect our environment. 

The author’s arguments are very well researched and backed up, displaying that we need a very radical change in investing, running of companies, financing and economy to be able to work towards saving our Earth. 

I liked how the author talks about the importance of technology and machine learning, especially working together and not against technology to come up with innovative ideas and projects to save our environment and its resources for future generations. 

This is one of the few books that I have read about this topic that takes this holistic view of our environment, anthropogenic processes and economy and explores how they are all interconnected. This book shows that we need to do much more to tackle climate change and that what we are doing now is not enough. It is never going to be enough unless we are changing our old ways of doing things, such as production, investing, and financing. 

Overall: This book is a must-read for everyone interested in protecting our environment, who want to make a change, who cares about sustainability and the future of our environment and of course those who are interested in finding real solutions to tackle climate change and associated issues. This book is such an important read looking at all of the issues that we as a society are facing from a very holistic viewpoint. 

About the Author:

Eric Archambeau is an engineer, former Silicon Valley entrepreneur, venture capitalist and the co-founder of Astanor Ventures, an impact-led venture capital firm focusing on technology-enabled start-up companies in the regenerative agriculture and sustainable food sectors, with investments in companies such as Apeel Sciences, Empirical Spirit, Infarm, Modern Meadow, Monarch Tractors, Plantible, Smallhold and Ynsect.

Before Astanor, Eric was a business angel, venture capital investor, member of the board of directors and mentor to many founders of disruptive technology companies across the US, the UK and the EU, including, among others, eGroups (Yahoo groups), Flutter Entertainment PLC, PriceMinister (now Rakuten), XING, Spotify, Threads Styling, Freenow, Onfido, Peakon and Pirate Studios.

Over the past two decades, he has also worked as an investor and mentor with social entrepreneurs, addressing key social and environmental challenges, including Maven Clinic, a digital health clinic for women, in New York, and DASRA-Social Impact, a social impact accelerator in Mumbai. Eric was an early supporter of the social entrepreneurship network Ashoka in Europe, and a founding member of the Ashoka Support Network. Eric has also lectured at INSEAD, where he founded the social entrepreneurship programme, and served as Global Chairman of the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation, providing food education for children across the world.