Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet – Hannah Ritchie

Thoughts: Not the End of the World is a really good book. It’s a level-headed look at where humanity is and how far we have come in addressing the various environmental problems that beset us, based on the best data that was available when the book was written. Ritchie doesn’t minimize the challenges we face, but rather points out that most them problem are not quite as bad as many people think, that precedents exist for us fixing each of them, and what can be done to make further progress in addressing them. I think the world would be a better place if more people read it.

(The notes below are not a summary of the book, but rather raw notes - whatever I thought, at the time, might be worth remembering.)

Ritchie, Hannah. 2024. Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet. Little, Brown Spark.

Introduction

• 10: synonyms for “urgent optimism”: “conditional optimism” (which economist Paul Romer sets against “complacent optimism”), “pragmatic optimism”, “realistic optimism”, “impatient optimism”

1. Sustainability: A tale of two halves

2. Air Pollution: Breathing clean air

• 64: most of the chapters end with a call to stress a bit less about certain issues. Ritchie notes, however, that air pollution (along with biodiversity loss) is an issue she wishes people would worry more about. By taking action on air pollution, we would see the effects of our actions relatively quickly and make a meaningful difference to people’s health and quality of life. Most actions to improve air quality also have the effect of reducing the amount of CO₂ we emit.

3. Climate Change: Turning down the thermostat

• 67: “My perspective on 1.5ºC hasn’t shifted much since [COP21 in 2015]. Without a major, unexpected technological breakthrough, we will go past this target. Nearly all the climate scientists I know agree: they obviously want to cap warming at 1.5ºC, but very few think it will happen. This doesn’t stop them fighting for it, though; they know that every 0.1ºC matters, and is worth working for. But my perspective on 2ºC has changed. I’m now cautiously optimistic that we can get close to it. It’s more likely than not that we will pass 2ºC, but perhaps not by much. And there is still a reasonable chance—if we really step up to the challenge—that we can stay below it.”
• 91: to learn more about: agrovoltaics: “There is evidence that ‘agrovoltaic’ systems could be great examples of shared land. Recent studies show that, under certain conditions, the yield of agrovoltaic crops can even increase compared with conventional crops, because of better water balance and evapotranspiration, as well as reduced temperatures.”
• 92: The International Energy Agency notes that whereas the world extracts 15,000,000,000 tons of fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) each year, the world is expected to need 28,000,000 to 40,000,000 tonnes of minerals for low-carbon technologies at the peak of the energy transition (forecast around 2040). Yes, different minerals are easier or more difficult to extract, but that’s three orders of magnitude less extraction than is currently being carried out for fossil fuels.
• 104-105: With regard to carbon emissions, “when it comes to food, there are a few interventions that matter much less than we think. Eating locally produced food doesn’t make a big difference. Nor does eating organic food. In fact in both cases, these choices could actually increase our emissions if we’re growing foods that are better suited for other climates or conditions. The plastic packaging of our food also doesn’t matter much for our carbon footprint.”

4. Deforestation: Seeing the wood for the trees

• 135-136: Ritchie notes that beef consumption often comes up in this book because “impacts are [very] large and cut across… many connected problems.” In addition to having the largest CO₂ emissions among foods, it’s also the largest driver of deforestation in today’s world.
• 137: Raising beef (or any animal) takes up more land than growing plants, because the food for the cows must itself be grown. And yet, feeding cows on only grass (compared to a diet of some grass plus some feed) uses up even more land (two to three times the land) than growing crops to feed to cows.
• 143: “Around three-quarters of the world’s soy is used for animal feed: to raise chickens and pigs mostly, but also some cows and fish too.”

5. Food: How not to eat the planet

• 188: When comparing organic vs. conventional farming, by some measures of sustainability, organic comes out ahead; when looking at other measures, conventional is better.

6. Biodiversity Loss: Protecting the world’s wildlife

• 198: book mentioned: Do We Need Pandas? The Uncomfortable Truth about Biodiversity by Ken Thompson, which looks at the effects of putting a disproportionate amount of effort into attention-grabbing species.
• 208: “Studies suggest that crop production would decline by around 5% in higher income countries and 8% in low to middle incomes if pollinator insects vanished.”

7. Ocean Plastics: Drowning in waste

8. Overfishing

• 256: “collapse” means a specific thing in fisheries science (several things, actually), which is not generally what the layperson thinks when they read “collapse”. One definition: if the total catch from a population falls to 10% of its historic maximum, it is said to have collapsed.
  • this has led to disagreements and even miscommunications with ecologists, since it measures catch rather than the number of fish living in a population
• 259-260: 2009 study in Science, ‘Rebuilding Global Fisheries’, authored by scientists on both sides of the are-fisheries-collapsing debate, found that some fish stocks were increasing, some were decreasing, and on the whole, the changes were about cancelling each other out. (i.e., earlier claims that “the oceans will be empty by 2048” were undercut by the new data presented in this paper)
• 271-272: based on the maximum sustainable yield, beyond which more fish harvested would cause populations to decrease, the populations of most fish species can be as low as 50% of historic populations.
• 279: good organizations to look at for certification of caught or farmed fish:
  • Marine Stewardship Council
  • Aquaculture Stewardship Council
• 279: seafood guides that give good recommendations about specific species:
  • Good Fish Guide (Marine Conservation Society - UK)
  • Seafood Watch (Monterey Bay Aquarium - US)
  • Ritchie notes that other countries their own guides
• 285: meta-analysis published in Nature “found that most of the popular fish we eat—tuna, salmon, cod, trout, herring—were the most climate-friendly types of meat”. Most are worse than plant-based protein sources, but better than chicken