Allen Lane snaps up Bill Gates book on climate change

Bill Gates is writing a book on energy and climate change, called How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need. 

Stuart Proffitt, publishing director at Penguin Press, bought UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) from PRH US. Allen Lane will publish the title in the UK in June 2020. 

Gates seeks to share what he has learned in over a decade of studying climate change and investing in innovations to address the problems. He will set out a vision for how the world can work to build the tools it needs to get to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, said Allen Lane. 

In his book, 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. “Climate change is a unique global problem,” said Gates. “I am writing this book to help identify how 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.”

Gates’s 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.

He said: “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.”