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Two eminent voices on the climate crisis present clear strategies for tackling emissions, deniers and doomsayers

President Joe Biden has promised a new era of American leadership on global climate action, after four years of unscientific denial and misinformation under Donald Trump. Two important new books by prominent American authors, both written before the result of the presidential election was known, should help to capitalise on the new spirit of cautious optimism by laying out bold but well-argued plans for accelerating action against climate change.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates presents a compelling explanation of how the world can stop global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions effectively to zero. Gates and his wife, Melinda, are well known for their foundation’s tremendous work on improving health and tackling disease around the world, particularly in poor countries. It is this concern for the most vulnerable people on the planet that has meant Gates has occasionally appeared equivocal about climate and energy policies that he thought could undermine the fight against poverty and illness. However, this book lays out forcefully his understanding that the impact of climate change poses a far bigger threat to lives and livelihoods in developing countries – it is thwarting efforts to raise living standards because poor people, in every country, are the most at risk from droughts, floods and heatwaves.

Mann says that, far from needing a miracle, we could achieve 100% clean electricity with current renewable technologies

Community forest projects have seen a surge in volunteers keen to reduce CO2 emissions by creating new woodlands

The UK may be in the grip of a winter lockdown but in one village on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales the local climate-change group has been busy.

Plans are afoot to plant hundreds of trees on land surrounding Newton-le-Willows, in lower Wensleydale, in an effort to tackle the climate crisis. According to scientists, planting billions of trees across the world is one of the biggest and cheapest ways of taking CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Related: Grow your own forest: how to plant trees to help save the planet

Lazer Sandford says subterranean tactics are likely to feature in new wave of climate emergency protests

An environmental activist who spent 12 days in a tunnel network underneath Euston Square Gardens in central London says the protest is likely to be the first of a new wave against the climate emergency using subterranean tactics.

Speaking exclusively to the Guardian in his first interview since leaving the tunnel network on 6 February, Lachlan Sandford, 20, known as Lazer, said the protest to raise awareness about the environmental destruction that activists believe the high-speed rail link HS2 will cause would not be a one-off.

Experts say it is not just the pandemic that makes these feel like unusually significant times

It was in the first few weeks of 2020, when early reports began filtering through of a mystery virus threatening to spread across the world, that Rob Perks decided to begin collecting.

As lead curator for oral history at the British Library, Perks’s team routinely gather testimony to be archived for future research. But a comment by a historian who advises the institution stopped him in his tracks.