Whenever I read anything optimistic about climate change or the environment, my first reaction is to be skeptical. Even though I want to believe there’s good news and real progress, there’s so much doom and gloom I’ve become wary of deluding myself with false hopes.

Well, a new book, Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet, published in January 2024, makes a strong case for optimism on sustainability and other environmental issues. It’s not gushing, pie-in-the-sky optimism. It’s an urgent optimism, tempered with a realistic assessment of our situation and the need for action on the enormous challenges we face.

The author, Hannah Ritchie, backs up her optimism with data. A whole world of data. She’s Deputy Editor and Lead Researcher at Our World in Data, a fantastic online resource for research and information about the world’s biggest problems. Ritchie is also a senior researcher at the Programme on Global Development at the University of Oxford. She says:

“Optimism is seeing challenges as opportunities to make progress; it’s having the confidence that there are things we can do to make a difference. We can shape the future, and we can build a great one if we want to.” [p. 9]

So she asks us to hold three ideas in our heads simultaneously:

• The world is awful.
• The world is much better than it was.
• The world can be better still.

As this book shows, all three can be true.

In Not the End of the World, Ritchie examines eight of our most pressing environmental problems including sustainability, biodiversity loss, deforestation and climate change. For each one, she reviews the history and background of the problem, the current state (awful but better), and potential solutions. She also lists some things we can stop stressing about so much.

Some of her conclusions and recommendations are counter-intuitive, even controversial, but it’s hard to argue with her data.

Not the End of the World:
How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet
By Hannah Ritchie
Little, Brown Spark, New York, 2024

We’ve Never Been Sustainable

Sustainability is the focal point of the book. Ritchie sets a goal that might sound insanely optimistic at first:

“We have the opportunity to be the first generation that leaves the environment in a better state than we found it. The first generation to achieve sustainability.” [p. 11]

How can this be even remotely possible?

Ritchie uses the United Nations’ two-part definition of sustainable development: “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

She argues that we have never been sustainable. There was never some idyllic past where we lived sustainably in balance with nature. That’s because we’ve never satisfied the first half of the definition, meeting the needs of the present. For the vast majority of human history, we could barely feed ourselves. Half of children died before reaching adulthood. Most people lived in miserable poverty. Only an elite few ever got any education. Ritchie walks us through data showing stunning improvements in all these areas since the Industrial Revolution. We’re doing a much better job meeting the needs of the present. But progress has come at huge cost to the environment and to the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

Until quite recently, many believed there was a tradeoff: either we looked after ourselves and jeopardized the ability of future generations to do the same, or we sacrificed our own well-being to preserve opportunities for future generations. Ritchie argues that although this trade-off might have been true in the past, it’s not true any longer. Through technological innovation, we are starting to decouple economic development from environmental impact. (A few years ago I wrote a post about decoupling.) For example, Ritchie shows how we’ve dramatically reduced air pollution, at least in rich countries, while economic growth has carried on. In a 2023 TED Talk, she says,

“My main point here is that in the past, human progress had to come at the cost of the environment. If we wanted energy, we had to burn wood or we had to burn fossil fuels. If we wanted to grow more food, we had to expand farmland, often at the cost of forests. But technology and innovation means we’re very quickly decoupling these impacts, such that this conflict is no longer true.” [1]

This is equally valid for the transition to clean energy. Ritchie provides data showing clean renewable energy is both better and cheaper than fossil fuels, particularly coal. Although total carbon emissions are still going up, Ritchie says we’ve already past the peak in per capita carbon emissions. EV’s are rapidly gaining market share. Sales of gasoline powered cars peaked back in 2017. The transition to clean energy is even starting to drive economic growth. A report from the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CELA) released after this book was published, shows that clean energy was a top driver of China’s economic growth in 2023 contributing 11.4 trillion yuan ($1.6 trillion) to its economy. [2]

Feeding the World

Another major theme in Not the End of the World is food production. Some of the data Ritchie presents here were really startling. This is also a topic where her recommendations may raise some eyebrows.

Half the world’s ice-free and desert-free land is used for agriculture. We’ve cut down about a third of the world’s forests since the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago to create more farmland.

Three-quarters of all agricultural land is used for livestock, either for grazing or for growing crops to feed them. Clearing pastureland for beef production is the largest driver of deforestation today.  

Globally we produce enough food to give everyone 5,000 calories per day, twice what the average person needs to eat. But less than half the world’s cereal crop is used to feed humans. We use 41% to feed livestock and another 11% to feed cars in the form of biofuels.

Ritchie is skeptical about the value of organic food. In the first place, about half the world’s population would not be alive today without food grown using synthetic fertilizer. (Vaclav Smil makes the same point in How the World Really Works.) We simply cannot feed everyone with organically grown food. In addition, organic food requires more land than conventionally grown food, potentially leading to more deforestation. And if you live in a place with good food standards and good enforcement, organic food isn’t necessary higher quality either.

To feed everyone in a hotter, more drought-prone environment, we must increase crop yields, especially in the global South. That means, Ritchie argues, we need to create more heat-resistant and drought-resistant crop varieties. Yes, we need more GMO’s. I agree with this.

If you want to eat locally grown food, that’s fine, but Ritchie suggests it won’t have much impact on your carbon footprint. Transportation accounts for less than 5% of the carbon emissions from food production, and most of that is for local and regional road transportation rather than international shipping. What you eat matters more than where it’s grown. This chart from Our World in Data shows the amount of greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of various foods. [3]

Lastly, Ritchie says not to worry too much about plastic packaging of foods. Packaging accounts for less than 4% of carbon emissions from food production. Sure, it would be great to reduce the amount of plastic but eliminating it entirely would increase food waste and that would have a much bigger carbon impact. And if you live in a place with good waste management, that plastic will most likely end up in landfill and not the ocean.

Solutions

Like other authors, Ritchie says the solutions to our environmental problems fall into three main categories.

First, we need new, cleaner technologies. Without affordable cleaner alternatives there’s nothing to transition to.

Second, our individual actions matter. This is mainly about how we spend our money, our time and our votes. We can choose low carbon alternatives like EVs and heat pump furnaces if we can afford them. Eating less meat is another good step, particularly beef and lamb. Try some of the plant-based alternatives from companies like Impossible or Beyond. Voting for pro-environment, pro-renewable candidates in your area is also critically important.

Finally, we need systemic change. We need massive investment over decades to change how we generate electricity, heat office buildings and factories, run industrial processes and produce food. Individuals have little direct impact here. We need to change laws and regulations. That’s why voting is so important.

If we do all these things, Ritchie says, achieving sustainability for both present and future generations will not be inevitable, but it will become possible.

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Not the End of the World is a powerful antidote to climate doom-ism. Ritchie shows how our situation today, awful as it is, is still far better than the past. And she points to solutions that could make the future even better.

She’s clearly passionate about data, about the stories it can tell and about the need to collect it and analyze it carefully. Not the End of the World shows how data is essential for understanding our current situation, making sound policy choices and monitoring our progress. That makes Ritchie a a worthy successor to Hans Rosling whom she names as one of her most important inspirations. (If you’ve never heard of Hans Rosling, I highly recommend watching his TED Talk “Let my dataset change your mindet.” His 2018 book Factfulness is also wonderful. )

One last thing that really struck me about this book is how Ritchie shows that our problems and their solutions are closely interrelated. To limit climate change, we must stop burning fossil fuels. That will also reduce air pollution and improve public health. Reducing our consumption of meat, especially beef and lamb, is the biggest thing we can do to reduce carbon emissions from food production. But it also reduces the need to cut down forests for grazing land. Some of the farmland used to grow food for livestock could be repurposed for human food. Likewise improved crop yields would allow us to grow more food on less land. Some farmland could even be returned to nature, letting forests regrow and improving biodiversity.

There could be positive feedback loops from all these steps that help us make faster progress than we ever thought possible.

Hmm, I’m starting to feel like a little optimism might be OK now and then. I hope you do too.

Thanks for reading.

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References

[1] Ritchie, Hannah. “Are we the last generation — or the first sustainable one?” TED, Apr. 2023, https://www.ted.com/talks/hannah_ritchie_are_we_the_last_generation_or_the_first_sustainable_one (08:29).

[2] Myllyvirta, Lauri, et al. “Analysis: Clean energy was top driver of China’s economic growth in 2023.” Carbon Brief, 25 Jan. 2024, https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-clean-energy-was-top-driver-of-chinas-economic-growth-in-2023/.

[3] Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. “Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers.” Science, vol. 360, no. 6392, 2018, pp. 987-992,  DOI:10.1126/science.aaq0216. – processed by Our World in Data.

Related Links

Sustainability by Numbers.
Hannah Ritchie’s substack.

Klein, Ezra. “Transcript: Ezra Klein Interviews Hannah Ritchie.” The Ezra Klein Show, 30 Apr. 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-hannah-ritchie.html.

Gates, Bill. “A surprising (and surprisingly optimistic) book on climate change.” GatesNotes, 20 Nov. 2023, https://www.gatesnotes.com/Not-the-End-of-the-World.

Rosling, Hans. “Let my dataset change your mindet.” TED, Jun. 2009, https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_let_my_dataset_change_your_mindset.