Note that if you purchase something via one of our links, including Amazon, we may earn a small commission.
A Scottish data scientist dispenses with the myth that we’re doomed and prescribes the most-effective actions we can take.
There are two problems that plague environmental discourse: “Doomism” and misinformation. Dr. Hannah Ritchie, a data scientist at Oxford University and lead researcher at the online science journal Our World in Data, has had it with both of them. Her new book, Not the End of the World (on Amazon), is clear-eyed, hopeful, and absolutely abounds with hard data.
“Doomism,” the idea that the environment of our planet is screwed up beyond repair, leads to hopelessness and robs people of their will to take urgently needed action. Dr. Ritchie begins the book with data showing just how pervasive this thinking is, especially among the young, with 56% of global respondents age 16 to 25 agreeing with the statement “the world is doomed,” and 75% agreeing that “the future is frightening.” She herself admits to having held similar views, and then proceeds to destroy them with a barrage of data that she makes easy to understand.
Dr. Ritchie shows how misinformation feeds doomism, with the media cherry-picking alarming headlines and misinterpreting data. She details how headlines like those claiming the world’s oceans will be out of fish by 2048 are the result of journalists lacking understanding and seeking to shock rather than educate.
This data scientist is no blind optimist. She sees the stark eco-problems we’re facing and shows them in a larger context, demonstrating time and again how the solutions are available if we’re willing to put them in place.
Sustainability
One of her favorite targets is the idea that the world was more “sustainable” in the past. Using the widely accepted UN definition of “sustainable” – “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” – she goes on to show that the world has never been sustainable, in that the needs of people in the present have never been met. In fact, and she is hardly the first to make this point, the majority of people globally are better off now than at any point in history. Health, nutrition, education, life-expectancy, and many other indicators of human well-being continue to rise. We’re not there yet, but we’re getting closer.
If we take several steps back, we can see something truly radical, game-changing and life-giving: humanity is in a truly unique position to build a sustainable world.
– Dr. Hannah Ritchie
That progress has come with a cost to the environment. But again, looking at the broad picture, Dr. Ritchie has surprising (even to her) news: Things generally aren’t as bad as they used to be. And even on the subject of global warming, significant progress is being made. Her book breaks down seven environmental issues, including climate change, and is heartened to find that fixing one often helps fix the others.
Takeaways
The big takeaways of the book are: 1) We need to stop burning stuff for energy, and 2) We need to rethink our diet, specifically beef. We do these things, and the rest gets much easier.
Her take on energy shows that the energy transition to low-carbon can and is happening, but should happen quicker.
The more startling theme Dr. Ritchie consistently tackles is the carbon footprint of meat (especially beef) and dairy. The world produces about twice as many calories as we’d need to meet the global population’s nutritional needs, but the problem is we feed a massive chunk of those calories to cows (and even to cars in the form of ethanol fuel). It’s a huge waste of land, water, and energy and adds up to a shocking contribution to climate change and a host of other problems (deforestation, water use and pollution, land use, and biodiversity loss). She’s not demanding we all go vegan (she’s a realist), but the data shows that we can’t consume beef and dairy at the levels we do and still fix the problems we must fix.
The book is delightfully filled with stuff to worry less about: overpopulation, organic and local food, plastic straws, palm oil. But also a few to worry about more, particularly the living standards of the poor (also air pollution, biodiversity). Poverty exacerbates environmental problems, while higher living standards motivate people to clean up, as much of the rich world has.
This is not just a favorite book, but also an essential book for anyone who really wants to understand our environment and our future. If a podcast is more in your wheelhouse, you can listen to Dr. Ritchie on the Ezra Klein Show: Cows Are Just an Environmental Disaster.
