Not the End of the World, by Hannah Ritchie

One evening, I was listening to an episode of The Ezra Klein show, called Is Green Growth Possible?, and I was so impressed by the interviewee, Hannah Ritchie, that I didn't even wait until the end of the episode to order her book. I NEVER do that. But the subject matter is so right up my alley and the girl was so articulate and full of common sense that I knew in advance I was going to love this book. And I was right.

Summary

On the whole, people tend to think the world is in a bad way. Many even consider not having children, so as not to force them to live in such a broken world. (This is something I had to think about myself before deciding to have a baby, hence my reading of The Precipice.) Air pollution, climate change, loss of biodiversity, plastic in the oceans, deforestation; it's true that the world has a lot of problems, and over time, it doesn't seem to be getting any better.

But what's really going on? Moving away from the alarmist headlines, what does the data say about the state of the world on a global scale and over time? Is it true that things are getting worse and worse?

Hannah Ritchie, deputy editor of the website Our World in Data, looks at it in detail. And concludes three things: 1) it's going badly in many respects, but 2) it's going better than before (yes, yes!), and 3) we have everything we need to do much better.

We have everything we need to create a sustainable world. We "just" have to look at the numbers, figure out where to put our energy, roll up our sleeves, and do it.

Impressions

People can be skeptical when they hear about an optimistic book about the state of the world. That's the first reaction of those around me, and the one I read in the Gardian, for example. Yes, but what about our cognitive biases that prevent us from taking action? Yes, but what about the oil lobbies that fiercely protect their interests? Yes, but the sudden and unpredictable effects of climate change? As if Ritchie hadn't thought of them, or didn't know their importance.

These are indeed major barriers, to which the author has no solution to propose. But what she does make us realize is that it's wrong to think that people are doing nothing. A few examples: deforestation has probably reached its peak; the air we breathe is the best it's been in decades, if not centuries; ocean stocks are probably stabilizing; and plastic pollution can be summed up as a waste management problem, an issue we can easily overcome. As for climate change, she shows us that our carbon footprint is much smaller than that of our ancestors, and above all, that renewable energies have only been economically advantageous for a few years. It's really only now that countries have an economic incentive to go green. To say that the solutions have been available for decades, but that nobody wanted to use them, is quite wrong.

What I loved about it was that it showed us that our pessimism isn't useful. We're not all going to die in 100 years, not for environmental reasons anyway. In terms of quality of life, we're living in the best period in our history. Believing that the world is almost dead doesn't encourage us to act, or to get the information we need to do so.

The Precipice made me optimistic by showing me that what was stressing me the most - climate change - was very probably not what was going to cause the extinction of the human race. Not the End of the World has shown me that it's also possible to create a sustainable world in my lifetime. I don't feel bad about bringing my daughter into the world.