Not the End of the World
How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet
Hannah Ritchie
Having read it
★★★★★
Brilliant, clear and honest; full of data, full of insight and full of reality.
The progress humanity has made is amazing, in the grand scheme of things, despite the masses of problems that have been faced and are being faced today. But, as this book puts forward, adaptation and change is possible and is happening despite the many bad interpretations of much of the data that seem to against that, if anything, to feed the attention economy as nothing generates focus, clicks and money like a piece of bad news.
Crops that need fewer chemical inputs, are more resistant to drought, and get higher yields – what’s not to like? It sounds like a win-win for people and planet. Strangely, many environmentalists are strongly opposed to cross-breeding and genetic modification of crops even though they have been incredibly important for protecting ecosystems and habitats across the world. We need to overcome this opposition. If we want to feed 10 billion people without cutting down more forest, the environmental movement needs to cautiously embrace rather than shun the advances that will help us grow more from less.
Never get complacent and always seek opportunities as many of these seemingly insurmountable problems are solvable, collectively and with good management of data, rules and regulations and grounded and realistic economic realities that justify and empower people so good stuff can (continue to) happen.
It was also good to read of and be much better placed now to knock some of my own fallacies out of the way so as to see the bigger picture more clearly; it’s definitely a book well worth your reading (and learning) time.
A good passage
Don’t mistake criticism for pessimism. Criticism is essential for an effective optimist. We need to work through ideas to find the most promising ones. Most innovators that have changed the world have been optimists, even if they didn’t identify as one. But they were also fiercely critical: no one picks apart the ideas of Thomas Edison, Alexander Fleming, Marie Curie or Norman Borlaug more than they did themselves.
If we want to get serious about tackling the world’s environmental problems, we need to be more optimistic. We need to believe that it is possible to tackle them.
A second good passage
Drive less; cycle, walk and take public transport. We can debate which type of car causes the least pollution, but this misses the solution that trumps them all: not driving at all. If it’s doable for you, ditching the car for a bike or a walk is one of the best ways individuals can reduce air pollution (and climate change). The congestion and pollution benefits for the city become crystal clear any time you see a line of cyclists roll past a queue of idling cars, fumes spewing out the back of the tailpipe.
This is both an individual and societal responsibility. Many of us have the option to leave the car at home when our destination is within cycling or walking distance. There are safe routes for us to use. We are healthy enough to do so. It’s personal choice that stops us. After walking and cycling, the next best thing is to go for public transport.
But some don’t have this option. Work is too far from home. There are no cycle lanes, and sometimes no pavements to walk on. Public transport systems are old. Buses and trains are late, unreliable and only come every few hours (if they come at all). The lack of infrastructure forces people into their cars.
We should be more ambitious about how we imagine our cities, towns and transport systems in 2040 or 2050. They could be built around pedestrians and cyclists, not cars. In my dream world, there would be no need to own a car, especially if it does nothing 23 hours a day. We could create networks of driverless, low-carbon Ubers that serve the city. When you do need a ride, press a button on an app, and a clean, autonomous vehicle will swing by to pick you up. If governments and planners think about this carefully, this could even be a form of public transport. The health and economic benefits would be massive.
A third good passage
Those who squabble about whether nuclear death rates are a little bit higher than solar, or a little bit lower, or whether solar is more deadly than wind are completely missing the point. Separating these is like splitting hairs. The big headline is that all of them kill far, far fewer people than any fossil fuel. Millions die from fossil fuels every year, with estimates ranging from 3.6 to 8.7 million – 1 to 2.5 million from electricity, and most of it from coal.43 Nuclear and renewables are hundreds, if not thousands, of times safer. And, importantly, they all emit very little CO2, so are much safer for our climate too.
When it comes to saving lives, it does not matter what low-carbon source we transition to. We just need to get off fossil fuels, in any way we can. We need to keep our existing nuclear plants in operation. Build some more in countries where this is affordable and they have technological expertise. Put solar panels on roofs. Put solar panels and wind turbines on deserted land.