Ezra's Bookshelf

Not the End of the World

by Hannah Ritchie · 328 pages · ~6 hrs

Climate & EnvironmentScience & Technology

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Hannah Ritchie, a data scientist at the University of Oxford and lead researcher at Our World in Data, argues that environmental doom is both empirically mistaken and practically counterproductive, and that humanity has a real chance to become the first generation to achieve sustainability, meaning both meeting the needs of everyone alive and leaving the planet in a better state for those who follow. Ritchie describes how, as a young environmental science student in Scotland, she was steeped in apocalyptic narratives until long-run data changed her mind. The book is organized around seven major problems: air pollution, climate change, deforestation, food, biodiversity loss, ocean plastics and overfishing. For each she lays out where we stand, how we got here and what actually works. She shows that air pollution in rich countries has fallen dramatically, that per capita carbon emissions have declined in many nations, that global deforestation likely peaked decades ago, and that the cost of solar power and batteries has collapsed. She is equally direct about the scale of what remains and about popular measures that matter less than people think, such as plastic straws or eating local food, compared with high-impact changes like eating less beef, improving crop yields to spare land, and rapidly decarbonizing electricity. Ritchie is careful to distinguish her position from complacency; she calls it effective environmentalism, an approach that uses evidence to set priorities. Dense with charts yet accessible, it is a useful corrective for readers who feel paralyzed by climate anxiety and want a clear map of where effort pays off.

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