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Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet
by Hannah Ritchie · 2024
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Feeling anxious, powerless or confused about the future of our planet? This book will transform how you see our biggest environmental problems – and how we can solve them. It’s become common to tell kids that they’re going to die from climate change. We are constantly bombarded by doomsday headlines that tell us the soil won’t be able to support crops, fish will vanish from our oceans, and that we should reconsider having children. But in this bold, radically hopeful book, data scientist Hannah Ritchie argues that if we zoom out, a very different picture emerges. In fact, the data shows we’ve made so much progress on these problems that we could be on track to achieve true sustainability for the first time in human history.…
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"For those concerned about what’s happening on Earth, data scientist Hannah Ritchie, head of research at Our World in Data , has a book out on climate change entitled Not the End of the World . Ritchie says she’s inspired by the late Swedish epidemiologist Hans Rosling (author of Factfulness ) and the book is very much in the vein of ‘we’ve achieved a lot, let’s not despair.’ It’s a climate-change pep talk, I suppose, but based on facts and data."
"Not the End of the World sifts through the evidence on pollution, extinction threats and deforestation. Once the numbers are clinically separated from emotion, a surprising guidebook to an eco-friendly life emerges. Food miles: not likely to affect climate change much. Meatless Mondays: helpful, especially if eschewing beef. Not everyone will interpret the world’s chances of staying within 2 degrees Celsius of warming with the same cautious optimism as Hannah Ritchie (“I’m confident we can keep moving closer”). But Ritchie’s data-first perspective makes this book an invaluable chaser to climate doomscrolling."