The one-sentence summary

Concentrating on surprising facts and dispelling dangerous myths offers hopeful solutions for our future on planet Earth.

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WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

  • Although we are bombarded by doomsday headlines every day, data scientist Hannah Ritchie shows us a different picture by concentrating on the real data. To start with, three common myths:
    1. Eating local is much better for the environment. In fact, it’s what we eat, not how far it has travelled, that matters most.
    2. Overpopulation will be the end of us. In fact, birth rates are falling quickly, and the global population will peak this century.
    3. We are the last generation before disaster becomes inevitable. In fact, we could be the first generation to build a truly sustainable planet.
  • The data shows that there is no better time to be alive than today: child mortality is down, mothers dying is down, life expectancy is up, hunger and malnutrition are down, access to basic resources such as clean water, energy and sanitation is up, education is up, and extreme poverty is down. All of this is the first half of the equation.
  • But all this has come at a cost, with worsening air pollution, climate change, deforestation (which is predominantly linked to food demand), biodiversity loss, ocean plastics, and overfishing. This is the second half of the equation.
  • When tackling these issues, blind optimism doesn’t work. Nor does complacent optimism, which assumes that solutions will arrive to solve everything. What we need is urgent optimism, often described as conditional optimism, effective optimism, pragmatic, realistic or impatient optimism.
  • Things to bear in mind when tackling these issues are to acknowledge that we face big and important environmental challenges; the fact that environmental issues aren’t humanity’s largest existential risk doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work on them; you have to hold multiple thoughts at the same time; nothing is inevitable, but it is possible; we cannot afford to be complacent; and you are not alone in this.
  • Interestingly, the world has never been sustainable, and all three of these statements is true: the world is awful, the world is much better, and the world can be much better.
  • Two ideas that won’t fix our problems are depopulation and degrowth. The global population growth rate peaked a long time ago, and the number of children per woman is falling rapidly across the world, so that is already happening. When it comes to growth, new technologies are allowing us to decouple a good and comfortable life from an environmentally destructive one, and redistribution of wealth is an equation that doesn’t add up: the global economy would have to be 5 times bigger than it is to lift everyone out of poverty.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

  • On air pollution: Beijing spent so long as the most polluted city in the world that it was dubbed an ‘airpocalypse.’
  • On climate change: total carbon emissions per capita passed its peak a decade ago, but economists agree that the most progressive thing to do now would be to put a price on carbon.
  • On deforestation: countries follow a predictable 4-stage process from pre-transition to early through late and post-transition, after which deforestation reaches a steady state. Many countries have already been through this. Palm oil has a bad reputation, but it is much more productive than other oil crops, so ironically it uses less land. Germany uses 41% of its palm oil imports to fuel cars, which is terrible for the environment.
  • On food: only half of the world’s cereals goes directly to human food – with poorer countries nearly all of it goes directly to human food, while richer countries divert more and more to animal feed. Ironically, for every 100 calories we feed a cow, we get just 3 calories back in return. We may also be reaching peak fertilizer as countries understand how to produce more food using less.
  • On biodiversity loss: most mammals are now humans and their livestock, with wild animals only 4% of biomass (down 85% since the rise of humans), human biomass 34%, and their livestock and pets at 62%.
  • On ocean plastics: interceptor devices now trap plastic pollution at river mouths to stop them entering the oceans in the first place.
  • And on overfishing: there are plenty of species that have lower carbon emissions than chicken, including tuna, salmon, trout, cod and haddock.
  • Things that you can stress less about because they don’t make very much difference include recycling plastic bottles, replacing old light bulbs, using a dishwasher, eating local or organic food, leaving appliances on standby or things on charge, and paper versus plastic bags. Eating tofu, soy milk and veggie burgers do not drive deforestation, and plastic straws don’t really matter much.
  • Everything is interconnected. Ecologist and economist Garrett Hardin coined the First Law of Ecology: ‘You can never just do one thing.’

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

  • This is such a complicated area and can be emotionally charged. The author keeps this on the level by sticking to the data, so stand by to have your beliefs and assumptions challenged, or even upended.