Hannah Ritchie
IS THE world doomed? If you have read much of the news in recent years, you would be forgiven for thinking the planet is rushing headlong into environmental catastrophe, dragging humankind to almost certain annihilation. Reports will tell you that 2023 is set to have been the hottest year on record by a huge margin, and that the poles are melting, forests are disappearing and corals are bleaching.
But we shouldn鈥檛 be consumed by despair, insists data scientist Hannah Ritchie in her first book, Not the End of the World: How we can be the first generation to build a sustainable planet.
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Ritchie, a researcher for the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford, has long been a go-to expert for those looking for a clear-eyed assessment of global environmental trends. In her book, she finds inspiration in the work of the late Hans Rosling, the statistician famous for TED talks highlighting progress in global development.
Like Rosling, Ritchie uses datasets spanning decades, even centuries, to communicate the truth of the world鈥檚 environmental problems, how bad they are and the prospects for solving them. And she, too, argues that the situation is actually brighter than it might appear.
Not the End of the World takes seven environmental issues in turn, ranging from air pollution and climate change to overfishing and deforestation. For each, she assesses the scale of the problem and what chance we stand of fixing it. The truth, she argues, is that we are far from doomed. In fact, we know how to solve almost all of the world鈥檚 most pressing environmental challenges. What鈥檚 more, in many cases, change is already well under way.
Take climate change. Global greenhouse gas emissions may still be rising, but, for the first time in history, the world has a pathway out of its reliance on fossil fuels, thanks to huge advances in clean energy and storage technologies, Ritchie writes. Similarly, air pollution could soon be a problem of the past if the world pushes forward with rolling out green electricity networks and clean cooking equipment.
With the right combination of technologies, progressive policies and behaviour change, a truly sustainable future for the planet is possible, Ritchie insists.
It is rare to find a book covering climate change with such an optimistic message, packed with feel-good nuggets of information. For example, did you know that, in the UK, per capita emissions have fallen so much that the average British citizen now has a carbon footprint equivalent to that of someone alive in the 1850s? Or that despite the media outrage surrounding ocean plastics, in fact just 0.3 per cent of global plastic waste enters the ocean each year?
The book is at its most compelling, however, when Ritchie uses her research to debunk alarmist news stories. The world鈥檚 oceans won鈥檛 be empty of fish by 2048, despite what headlines suggest. Nor will the planet suffocate without the 鈥渓ungs鈥� of the Amazon rainforest providing oxygen. Lazy reporting and poor science is to blame for much of the climate 鈥渄oomerism鈥� that dominates today鈥檚 society, she believes.
Not the End of the World is an admirable feat, managing to transform reams of data and dense research projects into a highly readable guide to fixing the planet. Yet despite the book鈥檚 optimism, there is no getting around the fact that the world still has a huge mountain to climb to avert environmental catastrophe.
Some of the power to secure a safe future lies in the hands of the average reader. In richer parts of the world, for example, most people should be eating less meat and switching to electric cars.
But eating habits aside, most of the solutions that Ritchie highlights 鈥� such as implementing a global carbon price or investing in public transport systems 鈥� rely on appropriate action from policy-makers and businesses. Given their sluggish response to date, I am not sure that I find this particularly reassuring.
In Not the End of the World, Ritchie has created a smart crash course on the world鈥檚 environmental challenges that won鈥檛 leave readers consumed by climate despair. Has it left me thinking the planet can be saved? Maybe, just maybe.
