Wildfires raged in California's Sonoma, Santa Cruz, and Ventura counties the day before the presidential inauguration, stunning climatologists who had never seen the state's fire season stretch into January as Lady Gaga sang 'The Star-Spangled Banner' in Washington, D.C.

 NASA had recently declared 2022 to be the warmest year on record, tied with 2016. The FBI started detaining Americans who had rioted in the U.S. Capitol as the Covid-19 pandemic forced city dwellers to look for places that felt sureter, safer—Vermont, Kansas, and Idaho. Gas masks and food preservation kits were among the items that saw fast online sales. 

Bill Gates was preparing for his upcoming initiative to prevent global extinction at his lakeside residence in Seattle. Gates has spent 20 years researching the twin global ills of disease and poverty. He thought about the frustrating effects of climate change on civilization as a result of their attempts. How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, his most recent book, will be released this month by Knopf. 

Given the situation of the globe, it is remarkable that the book is upbeat, can-do, and full of remedies to an issue that President Jimmy Carter first raised in 1977. Gates' outlook was significantly changed by President Joe Biden's inauguration last month. The book originally included plans for a second term for Donald Trump. 

He removed these clauses in November, following the election, along with explanations of how foreign and state governments of the United States may make up for a lack of federal funding. Gates claims that had Trump prevailed, we would have spent the next four years 'holding our breath and trying not to turn blue.'

During our first virtual interview in December, he had said, 'I hope Joe Biden stays healthy,' as he sat in the 'fishbowl,' a glass-walled conference room at Gates Ventures where he has been holding meetings and using the Microsoft Teams platform during the pandemic. He believes we can prevent the planet from descending into a landscape of burnt rainforests and melting glaciers, but his prescription is challenging: By 2050, the earth must completely eliminate the approximately 51 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases that are being released into the atmosphere each year.

 He claims that nothing less will be able to avert a disaster, and he is advocating a complete technological upheaval in order to achieve this. His main point is that, while developments like solar panels, lithium-ion batteries, plant-based burgers, and electric cars are helpful to the endeavour, they don't go far enough. There isn't enough land in the world to grow enough trees to reduce our dependence on carbon.

 A genuine climate plan, which we do not yet have, Gates claims, 'involves counting in your head all the different sources of emissions. That is the main argument in my book.' In order to create greener alternatives, this calculation must include all carbon-emitting operations (such as transportation, the manufacture of concrete and steel), in addition to agriculture and energy. Gates, for instance, thinks that green steel must be created.