“Not the End of the World” by Hannah Ritchie

I was intrigued to see that this book received a lot of media coverage (I saw Hannah Ritchie on Sky News) and a lot of comments here on LinkedIn as well. A big reason for the exposure was, I think, that the title and narrative of the book runs counter to the dominant message that our environment is a mess and getting worse. With that in mind, I thought I should read it and post my own review so that other folks may be encouraged to form their own opinion.

In short, I think that, for the reasons I will set out below, this book is a must read.

This book falls into the category of popular climate non-fiction. There are loads of these books around, indeed I just reviewed a couple of others recently: Assaad Razzouk’s “Saving the Planet without the Bulls*t” and James Atkin’s “Climate Change for Football Fans”. I am planning to write some more reviews of books in this category.

So, let’s get one aspect of the discussion out of the way right at the start. This book falls squarely into the techno-optimist category, where there is a belief that many of our problems can be solved by the selection and deployment of technologies. At the other extreme we have the techno-pessimists (which I have seen referred to variously as eco-realists or climate-doomers, for example), who believe that while technology is part of the solution it won’t fix climate change - either because we have run out of time and physical feedbacks will cause irreversible change, or that any fix requires a very deep reconfiguration of the current system and its reliance on growth and unsustainable expropriation of natural resources.

For the sake of balance I would recommend Jem Bendell 's review, which takes a much more critical viewpoint of techno-optimism. At some point I may get a chance to review his own book - the list gets longer not shorter!

It seems to be that these two world views are quite polarized, indeed politicised. Folks in one or other camp, driven by the same passion to fix a problem that they fully acknowledge is grave, are arguing about the root causes and the means of changing our current path.

Hanna Ritchie recognises that there are bound to be lots of differences of viewpoint and makes a plea, in the concluding pages of the book, for folks “to stick with others pushing in the same direction”. We are all essentially trying to solve the problem and our real enemies are the folks who are actively working against solutions, like climate change deniers or fossil fuels and meat lobbyist or advertising agencies spreading deliberate misinformation. The good folks, whether optimist or doomers, are on the right of the diagram and we need to work together.

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As with all these things, the deeper one gets into the data and the evidence, the more nuanced things become. Actions which feel instinctively right may actually be inconsequential in the bigger picture, such as eliminating plastic drinking straws. Things which on the surface appear benign, like using hydrogen as a fuel are actually harmful, a minor point which Hannah misses, I must add.

And this is where the book excels. For each of the major themes - air pollution, climate change, deforestation, food, biodiversity, ocean plastics and overfishing - there is an immensely rich and detailed evidence base for a set of broad conclusions, all of which reinforce the theme that its “not the end of the world”.

Hannah is a data scientist and lead researcher for Our World in Data which collates trend data on all sorts of interesting indicators of planetary and social well-being, and she has brought that immense resource to bear. Indeed the quantity of data she has mustered in these 300+ pages is breathtaking and she is to be hugely congratulated for the work that has gone into this book

I have been a great fan the Our World In Data website, which was established by the fabulous Hans Rosling, ever since it first blew away one of my own misconceptions about population – when I learned we reached “peak baby” in 2017. Although the population will rise further as those babies have their own children, the declining birth rate means we will never have more babies and population is inevitably set to fall. Well, I certainly didn’t know that at the time and fell in love with the site! ?Coincidentally, the book also gives 2017 as the year of "peak sales of petrol cars" – who would have thought that! ?

It’s the power of surprise that kept me reading what, I must admit, was at times quite a dense set of values and numbers. In an effort to be authoritative, there is also a risk that the reader gets bogged down in detail. Thankfully the structure of the book and the use of headlines to emphasise the actions/topics under discussion minimise this, and the copious references are kept to the back to the book. I’m not sure that this is a cover-to-cover read, as I did, but probably more of a dip into key sections book to be kept in reserve when one’s thoughts turn to a specific topic or returned to after a break to recharge.

Going back to the data, some folks have been critical at times of the specific metrics used or the assumptions drawn. For example, the extensive use of per-capita measures on things like emissions may not tell the whole story. In particular Hannah’s claim

“my carbon footprint is less than half that of my grandparents”

(they were born in 1938) has been questioned on two counts: first that some of the decline may be due to offshoring emissions as we now import far more finished goods that we have in the past and secondly that an average per-capita emissions level could hide lots of variance in the population – we shouldn’t feel smug as individuals because we may actually be amongst the higher-emitting sector of the population. Slightly later in the book, Hanna does point out that “consumption adjusted emissions”, which take into account the emissions embodied in our goods, have fallen by a third since 1990 so she recognises the first point and the overall message that things are getting better remains valid.

Actually, I think it is great that folks have criticisms of some of the metrics used. It shows that the book is achieving what I believe to be its core aim: to make folks think for themselves and challenge some of the widespread beliefs around the state of the world. By that measure the book is a tour-de-force. If some statement in the book don’t get you hot under the collar, you probably haven’t been paying attention!

I would question the omission of the primary energy fallacy, which would be another huge cause of optimism, making our transition to renewables much less daunting that it would otherwise seem (I blame the use of Vaclav Smil data for that omission). Hey Ho – that’s my bugbear!

On a similar vein, this book sometimes lacks detail around some of the recommendations. We are advised that “putting a price on carbon” is a key step to deal with climate change. However, this has been something that folks have struggling to implement for a couple of decades now. It would have been nice to see reference to a successful case such as the Canadian Carbon Tax, how it is revenue neutral and the factors that got it over the line there. The data-centric nature of the inputs may have led to some useful insights being missed or it may be that this simply slipped under the radar.

Where Hannah will certainly provoke, is her unremitting focus on the conventional definition of sustainability which is “meeting the needs of the current generations without compromising the needs of future generations”, often referred to as the Brundtland Commission definition. There are some folks who put environmental restoration above all else who will be upset by that.

This dichotomy is particularly evidence in the chapter on fishing but appears throughout. Here is a lengthy extract:

There are two main schools of thought when it comes to fish. One school - often adopted by environmentalists, ecologists and animal welfare advocates - views fish as animals in their own right. This is how we view most other wild animals, like elephants or monkeys. Here, our goal is to restore wild animal populations back to their pre-human levels. The same would apply to fish: we should allow populations to increase back to their historical levels, before we started fishing them. Here, sustainability would mean catching very few fish, if any.

The other school views fish as a resource. Most of us eat fish, and hundreds of millions rely on it for their income. We can't let fish return to their pre-fishing levels and catch lots of fish at the same time. So sustainability according to this view means catching as much fish as possible, year after year, without depleting fish populations any further. This meets the classic Brundtland definition of sustainability: we catch as much fish as possible to meet the needs of people alive today, but don't take so much that it would sacrifice catch for future generations.

In the case of the former approach, one would make every effort to restore fish population to their pre-human levels, whereas in the latter one would seek to maintain the fish population at its maximum sustainable yield, which is usually around 50% of the maximum. If you catch more fish, you deplete stocks for the future, but equally, if you catch fewer fish then you deny the current generation their food and income.

Hannah has a similar analysis about a popular response to address the fact we are in dangerous territory on a number of planetary boundaries, degrowth:

Degrowth argues that we can redistribute the world's wealth from the rich to the poor, giving everyone a good and high standard of living with the resources already at our disposal. But the maths doesn't check out. The world is far too poor to give everyone a high standard of living today through redistribution alone… If everyone in the world lived on $30 per day with zero inequality (so the richest and poorest both get $30), the global economy would need to more than double.

The $30 a day figure was the poverty level set in a developed country like Denmark. The point here is that a world without economic growth would be a very poor one. Now I know that there is evidence to the contrary and I don’t have the space here to get into the debate, suffice it to illustrate that this book takes the viewpoint that the human development part of sustainability is central, a viewpoint which I fully support. The subtitle of the book is “how we can be the first generation to build a sustainable planet”.

My own strapline on LinkedIn is doing more with less, which also acknowledges the need for more schools, hospitals, places of learning and work etc as we help our fellow citizens out of poverty and is making a similar point.

Another recurring theme in the book are the “three simultaneously true statements”:

1. Things are awful
2. Things are much better than they used to be
3. Things can be improved

It is important to emphasize that the techno-optimism that underpins 3, and is evidenced by 2, doesn’t mean to say 1 isn’t right. All three statement are correct at the same time.

The data on the damage we do, when Hannah looks at it, almost always follows an inverted “U”-shape. That is to say in prehistoric times we caused minimal damage, that rose in the past as our populations ballooned, but we are now somewhere on the downward slope and can see from the trajectory that we will improve further.?

Consider our use of forests. In the Middle Ages we cut a lot down for wood and farming, but since the advent of fossil fuels and artificial fertilisers and higher-yielding crop varieties, we haven’t needed as much land, and we are seeing the area of forests increase in much of the world. The basic driver of this improvement, the economic empowerment of people and urbanisation will lead to further growth in forests. Three true statements.

Indeed, controversially, but well supported by evidence, is the conclusion that Palm Oil, the bête-noire of many, ?is not necessarily a bad thing because it’s oil yield per hectare is up to 10 time higher than the alternative sources of vegetable oil. If we boycotted Palm Oil then we could inadvertently end up needing more land. Now that doesn’t mean to say that we shouldn’t look at reducing our demand for Palm Oil and making sure that the plantations where it is grown do not contribute to further deforestation, that is clear. But Palm Oil is not the villain its made out to be, unlike beef which is a real villain where forest clearances for cattle grazing contribute to 40% of global deforestation.

So we are seeing a lot of surprising conclusions emerging from Hannah’s careful analysis. She is determined to slay the false dichotomy of well-being versus survival which is put about by some ecologists and also by fossil fuel companies wanting to scare us into inaction.

Hannah is encouraging the reader not to be blindly optimistic but to be urgently optimistic:

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. The economist Paul Romer makes this distinction nicely.[1] He separates 'complacent optimism' from 'conditional optimism':

‘Complacent optimism is the feeling of a child waiting for presents. Conditional optimism is the feeling of a child who is thinking about building a treehouse. 'If I get some wood and nails and persuade some other kids to help do the work, we can end up with something really cool.'

I've heard various other terms for this ‘conditional’ or effective optimism: ‘urgent optimism’, ‘pragmatic optimism’, ‘realistic optimism’, ‘impatient optimism’. All these terms are grounded in inspiration and action.

But I can almost hear some readers crying out now. What about the unprecedented ocean temperatures we are seeing now, the reduction in sea-ice, the positive feedback from methane leaking from previously frozen permafrost areas, the worrying analysis that shows the AMOC (the ocean currents that warms much of Europe) may collapse quicker than thought? These are, indeed, very concerning. But the solutions to these problems lie in the data presented in the book and that data suggests pretty definitively that we have virtually all the technologies we need, that things have improved and can improve further, but we need to accelerate out actions and focus our efforts. There will be some sacrifices, but not nearly as many as one would assume. We can lift 1-2 billion people out of poverty and repair our environment. It won’t be easy, but being human is never easy.

With the benefits of 30-years working on energy efficiency and decarbonisation, I must say I share this optimism. We are seeing fossil fuels at their peak and with renewables growing exponentially and I anticipate a rapid decline. Most importantly if we each individually think through for ourselves where we can have the most impact, if we adopt some of Hannah’s suggestions, if we put urgency into what we have decided to do, if we focus less on disagreeing with each other and more on working on areas we have in common, then yes, we can probably be “the first generation to build a sustainable planet”.

This book is a powerful call to action, with some clear suggestions as to where we can have the biggest influence, and never admonished folks for doing stuff which may be ineffective, but which nevertheless feels right. You are not a villain if you want to ban plastic straws, its simply that if you used the same amount of energy on another change you may have a bigger impact. Nor is the book a book that focuses on individual behaviours, it rightly raises system changes as the key actions where needed - though not nearly as acutely as some folks who believe that we need to challenge the power structures, imperialism, capitalism etc that got us into this place in the first place.

I must emphasize that I don’t agree with every point in this book, but that is a good thing, because it made me think and I hope it will also make you think. It offers us all hope, particularly younger folks who are bombarded with negative messages about their futures. It also affirms that it is not too late to act but that we must now act with urgency. It give people agency and encouragement which we desperately need in this space.

As you will have seen from the extracts, it is a very beautifully written book which offers lots of ideas and novel insights and will leave most readers inspired.

My conclusion? Read it if you can and form your own opinion.

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[1] P Romer, 2018, “Conditional Optimism” https://paulromer.net/conditional-optimism-technology-and-climate/

Folks - if you have read this book please leave your own thoughts in the comments below - you may have picked out different aspects which others would find useful!

You may also find my own textbook on energy and resource efficiency helpful - it's free to download :-)

Found this interesting/helpful? This is a link to all the book reviews so far with a brief summary and evaluation.