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Comment by dakra | Hacker News Reader

I really liked Bill Gates new Book: How to Avoid a Climate Disaster[1]. I liked that it shows what we have to do to get to 0 greenhouse gas emissions. What's the current state of technology and what's still left to do to get there.

I often find suggestions like "Meatless Monday" or "Only fly when really necessary" etc, while probably good, not really useful advice. In Gates book he talks about that transportation and "building things" is good and we should not stop it, but instead find a way to make it emission free.

[1] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-new-climate-book-is-fin...

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What I also like about the book is that it speaks very practically: Gates doesn't put the onus on developing countries to reduce emissions. Instead, he shows how the developed nations need to allow people in developing nations to reach the status of developed nations while reducing their own emissions.

I very much agree, and as a bonus, these more optimistic solutions – solutions where we do something instead of (just) stopping doing something – seem easier for people to swallow too.

We have the means to stop the catastrophe. We don't need more solutions, just to comprehend that our behavior is destroying our ecosystems and pick the right solutions for the right behavior. We just need to act on it.

Also, no one pretended that violence can be annihilated when we collectively decided to swallow that killing one another is not a right and we outlaw it (except in some context that is defined by laws and treaties).

> We don't need more solutions

Ah, I see you have not read the book. No no my friend, we are not all there yet.

Some things are easy like energy production (mixed sources including nuclear) and transportation (batteries and electrofuels, though the latter is still too expensive for poorer countries so we'll need to improve those even if we technically could do it). But for example steel and concrete, things we need insane amounts of to house a few more billion people until 2100 and to build those nuclear/wind/etc facilities with, we don't really have solutions for those yet. I would recommend checking out the book.

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