18 Sep 2022
Speed & Scale
The world is awash in books on the environment. Many of them give invaluable information about how the environment works and how we humans are destroying its workings as we go about digging stuff up, cutting things down, plowing or paving the land, wiping out other species and pumping out billions of tonnes of pollution. Much has been written about what we need to do to live within our environmental envelope, but one book stands out for its clarity. Speed & Scale zeroes in on the climate crisis and how it might be solved. While many such books are written by scientists this one is authored by John Doerr an engineer and venture capitalist who has supported zero emissions technologies for decades. He wrote this in collaboration with Ryan Panchadsaram an engineer and investor working on systemic societal challenges. The book gets some of its heft from stories by such prominent business and political leaders as Christiana Figueres, Al Gore, Bill Gates, Mary Barra and Jeff Bezos. What makes this book most interesting and important is its pragmatic approach. It shows what can be done now, what new technologies and approaches are needed and the barriers that need to be overcome. It should be a must-read for politicians and business leaders who have to muster the courage and willpower to make big and difficult changes fast before we enter an epoch of climate disaster for humanity.