Doom and gloom. That’s the story told by nearly every book on the climate crisis. I was pretty tired of hearing about the fact that we are doomed and there is nothing we can do about it. I refuse to believe that.
Enter Hannah Richie. She’s the lead researcher at Our World in Data and a treasure trove of well researched and actionable information around the state of the climate crisis. I’d compare Ritchie to Steven Pinker - incredibly optimistic and willing to use data to back up their optimism. She’s also very inspiring in her writing. Ritchie lays out a well researched argument on why things are bad, how they could be better, and why things are already trending in the right direction. She also provides very actionable and attainable steps every person can take to make an impact.
Anybody who wants to know better understand the current state of our climate crisis and how they can participate in the solution should read this book.
The world has never been sustainable because we’ve never achieved both halves [human well-being and environmental proctection] at the same time. If we only focus on the second half, it might seem like the world has become unsustainable in the very recent past, when carbon emissions, energy use and overfishing accelerated. We think that the world used to be sustainable but our environmental damage has kicked things out of balance. That’s the wrong conclusion. For thousands of years - more so since the agricultural revolution, but also before then - humans haven’t been environmentally sustainable. Our ancestors hot hundreds of the largest animals to extinction, polluted the air from burning wood, crop wastes and charcoal, and cut do huge amounts of forest for energy and farmland.
- Page 18
The World Health Organization estimates that air pollution kills 7 million people every year: 4.2 million from outdoor air pollution, and 3.8 million from indoor air pollution from burning wood and charcoal. […] To put these numbers into context, this is similar to the death toll from smoking: around 8 million. It’s six or seven times higher than the number of people that die in road accidents: 1.3 million. Hundreds of times more than the number that die from terrorism or war each year. Air pollution is the silent killer that doesn’t get enough headlines.
- Page 52
This means eating locally can actually be worse for the environment, especially when we opt to grow food where it’s not supposed to be grown. The UK is never going to be the place to grow cocoa beans or bananas. We could create a tropical environment in a greenhouse, but that would need lots of energy - far more than is needed to ship these foods from Africa or South America where they grow brilliantly.
- Page 187
What makes us different from our ancestors is that economic and technological changes mean we have options. We’re not stuck with the default of whale oil, coal, or cutting down trees. […] A sustainable future is not guaranteed - if we want it, we need to create it. Being the first generation is an opportunity, but it’s not inevitable. […] Ignore those who say that we are doomed. We are not doomed. We can build a better future for everyone. Let’s turn that opportunity into reality.
- Page 299
First, this book was such a breath of fresh air and was really insiring to me that there is hope amongst a crowd of doomsdayers. I was reminded about the John Stuart Mill quote: “I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage.” I think this is exactly the case in the climate crisis and Ritchie has decided to be a voice of hope.
This perspective shift is crucial because it empowers readers to take action rather than succumbing to eco-anxiety or climate despair. Ritchie’s approach aligns with the growing field of solution-focused climate communication, which research suggests is more effective in motivating behavior change.
Second, I’ve taken away a lot of actionable behavior changes I can do to lessen my impact on the environment in a meaningful way, and not in ways that simply make life inconvenient. The inconvenience of climate-neutrality was something Ritchie had a strong opinion on that I agreed with as well. She mentioned multiple times in this book that in order for carbon-neutral products and lifestyles to take hold, they need to be better than the alternative. This is why electric cars are starting to take hold… they are actually better than their gas-powered counterparts: faster acceleration, no gas stops, quieter, and (my favorite) you can leave them running anywhere to cool off the car in the summer.
Third, I really appreciated Ritchie’s data on growing the GDP of the world and the impact that has not only on climate but also on pulling people out of poverty. When a country begins to grow their GDP, they start producing more and more carbon emissions because growing the GDP of the country and lifting people out of poverty is front and center, as it should be in my opinion. However, as a country hits a tipping point, they then start to invest in better, and cleaner sources of energy and their climate impact decreases, even as their GDP continues to rise. This is something we need to account for as we try to balance the climate crisis and the crisis of global poverty. Thus, making carbon-neutral energy sources cheaper and better than the alternative will accelerate the switch as countries mature.
There are two categories of applications for me in this book. The first is simple: Be more optimistic in achieving unlikely feats. Being a naysayer brings everyone else down and fills people with despair, furthering the unlikeliness of achieving the thing you’d like to.
The second category of applications is in my behaviors.
Last updated: 2024-07-29