书名：How To Avoid A Climate Disaster 如何避免气候灾害 比尔·盖茨新书

作者：Bill Gates 

出版社名称：Knopf Publishing Group 

出版时间：2021 

语种：英语 

ISBN：9780385546133 

商品尺寸：以实物为准

包装：精装页数：272（以实物为准） 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 by 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."

比尔·盖茨坦言，自己写这本书的主要目的，就是努力说服各国和民众：气候危机是人类面临的很大挑战，甚至比眼下这场百年一遇的新冠疫情更为严重。全球需要就气候危机的紧迫性达成共识，及时进行干预减少温室气体排放，共同采取行动转向绿色能源，化解一场人类共同面对的灾难。这也是盖茨在过去十年以及未来十年重要的目标。

气候变化就是盖茨必须和各国打交道才能完成的事业。2015年联合国气候变化大会在法国巴黎召开，气候变化框架公约195个缔约国达成了《巴黎协议》，同意在2021年制定计划在2050年实现净零排放目标（Zero by 2050），从而将全球气温上升幅度控制在1.5°C。亲自参加了巴黎会议的盖茨表示，自己曾经怀疑这一目标的可行性，但过去两年自己看到很多国家在这个方向上达成了共识，看到很多年轻人在这一方面展现出来的决心和承诺。盖茨决定写一本书，阐述（2050净零排放）这个目标是可以实现的，以及应该如何实现这一目标，希望给那些关心这个问题的人们带来帮助。

“写这本书，是为了鼓舞世界，我们可以制定有效计划应对气候变化。……我是个乐观主义者，因为我知道技术能做到什么，因为我知道‘人’可以做到什么。我们可以避免一场灾难。我们可以让气候变成每个人可以承受的问题，帮助数以亿计的贫困人群生活得更好，同时为子孙后代保护这个地球。”盖茨如是说。

I wrote How to Avoid a Climate Disaster because I think we’re at a crucial moment. I’ve seen exciting progress in the more than 15 years that I’ve been learning about energy and climate change. The cost of renewable energy from the sun and wind has dropped dramatically. There’s more public support for taking big steps to avoid a climate disaster than ever before. And governments and companies around the world are setting ambitious goals for reducing emissions.

我之所以写这本《如何避免一场气候灾难》，是因为我认为我们正处于一个关键时刻。在我学习能源和气候变化的这15多年中，我看到了令人兴奋的进步。由太阳和风产生的可再生能源的成本已大大降低，公众比以往更加支持迈大步来避免气候灾难，世界各地的和公司也都在制定宏伟的减排目标。

What we need now is a plan that turns all this momentum into practical steps to achieve our big goals. That’s what How to Avoid a Climate Disaster is: a plan for eliminating greenhouse gas emissions.

我们现在需要的是一个计划，一个将所有这些势头转化为实际步骤从而实现大目标的计划。这便是《如何避免一场气候灾难》——一个消除温室气体排放的计划。

BILL GATES is a technologist, business leader, and philanthropist. In 1975, he cofounded Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen; today he and his wife, Melinda, are cochairs 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.

Two decades ago, I would never have predicted that one day I would be talking in public about climate change, much less writing a book about it. My background is in software, not climate science, and these days my full-time job is working with my wife, Melinda, at the Gates Foundation, where we are super-focused on global health, development, and U.S. education.

二十年前，我不会料到有我会公开谈论气候变化，更不用说写关于气候变化的书了。我的专业背景是软件，不是气候科学。而我近的全职工作，是与我的妻子梅琳达一起在盖茨基金会工作，在那里我们格外关注的是全球健康、全球发展和美国教育。

I came to focus on climate change in an indirect way—through the problem of energy poverty.

我关注气候变化是通过一种间接的方式——通过研究能源贫困的问题。

In the early 2000s, when our foundation was just starting out, I began traveling to low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia so I could learn more about child mortality, HIV, and the other big problems we were working on. But my mind was not always on diseases. I would fly into major cities, look out the win­dow, and think, Why is it so dark out there? Where are all the lights I’d see if this were New York, Paris, or Beijing?

在2000年代初期，当我们的基金会刚刚成立时，我开始前往位于撒哈拉以南非洲和南亚的低收入国家，从而可以更多地了解儿童死亡、艾滋病病毒及其他我们当时正致力解决的重大问题。但是我的思绪并不总是在疾病上。我会飞到这些地方的大城市，从机舱窗户望出去，然后思考：这里为什么这么黑？那些我能在纽约、巴黎或北京看到的灯火都去哪儿了？

I learned that about a billion people didn’t have reliable access to electricity and that half of them lived in sub-Saharan Africa. (The picture has improved a bit since then; today roughly 860 million people don’t have electricity.) I began to think about how the world could make energy affordable and reliable for the poor. It didn’t make sense for our foundation to take on this huge problem—we needed it to stay focused on its core mission—but I started kick­ing around ideas with some inventor friends of mine.

我了解到约十亿人没有可靠的电力供应，他们中的一半生活在撒哈拉以南非洲。（情况从那时起得到了改善，如今约有8.6亿人用不上电。）我开始思考世界怎样才能让能源对穷人来说变得可负担且可靠。让我们的基金会去解决这个巨大问题是不现实的——我们需要它专注于自己的核心使命——但是我开始与一些发明家朋友交换意见。

Within a few years, I had become convinced of three things:

在几年之内，我已经确信了三件事：

1. To avoid a climate disaster, we have to get to zero greenhouse gas emissions.

1. 为了避免一场气候灾难，我们必须将温室气体排放量降至零。

2. We need to deploy the tools we already have, like solar and wind, faster and smarter.

2. 我们需要以更快、更聪明的方式部署我们已有的工具，例如太阳能和风能。

3. And we need to create and roll out breakthrough technologies that can take us the rest of the way.

3. 我们需要创造并推广可以使我们走完剩余征程的突破性技术。

The case for zero was, and is, rock solid. Setting a goal to only reduce our emissions—but not eliminate them—won’t do it. The only sensible goal is zero.

主张零排放在过去和现在看来都*对可靠。将目标设定为只是减少排放而非消除是无济于事的。明智的目标是零排放。