A Closer Look At The Climate Change Statistics - Hannah Ritchie

1. 0:00 – 5:12

   Do People Think the World is Doomed?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Why do you think that there's so many people who believe the world's doomed?

   2. HRHannah Ritchie0:06

      I think because we're facing a pretty broad range of what are potentially existential or very catastrophic problems. So, like from my domain, the big one is, is climate change, and that's what I write about most of all. But there's also other ones. There's nuclear war. There's the rise of AI. I think there's now a host of problems that in the past might not have seemed existential, but to many people today seem very existential.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:31

      If you are knee-deep in the data, why aren't you in agreement?

   4. HRHannah Ritchie0:37

      So I can't speak on AI or, or nuclear war, but my background's environment and, and climate change. Um, and I think actually probably I was in the similar position, you know, a decade ago, or so ago, um, where I did really feel like in the depths of there's no way that we're gonna solve this problem. This is an existential problem. We are all kind of doomed. Um, and I think that was a lot of the, the message that was coming through. My perspective on that has changed. Not that climate change isn't a big problem. It is. That's why I study it. But th- there's a really broad spectrum between climate change is not a problem and we're all doomed and there's nothing we can do about it.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:15

      (laughs)

   6. HRHannah Ritchie1:15

      I think there's a big space in the middle, and that big space in the middle is determined by what we do about it. So I think, like my stance on it is it's a big problem and it's an urgent problem, but there actually are things that we can do about it, and there are ways that we can adapt to a changing climate.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:31

      When it comes to climate change in particular, why are more people pessimistic about the world than the data suggests that they maybe should be?

   8. HRHannah Ritchie1:43

      I think one of the key unders- misunderstandings on climate is that, you know, we've kind of set these climate targets that we want to keep temperature rise below 1.5 degrees if we can, and especially below two degrees. And I think some of the message that's come out of that is that, you know, 1.5 degrees is this tipping point where once we're past 1.5 degrees, there's this kind of the point of no return and we're doomed. And that's, that's definitely not the case. Climate change is more of a spectrum than an immediate tipping point. So 1.5 degrees, the impacts are worse, and at 1.6 they're worse again, and 1.7. And you can get escalating risks where the, the change is not necessarily linear with every 0.1% degree, but there's nothing particularly special about 1.5 degrees. So I think, I think it's very clear that we probably, we are gonna pass 1.5 degrees, but if your mindset is that once we're past 1.5 degrees, there's nothing we can do and it's kind of eternal tipping point, then I think that breeds a lot of this kind of apocalyptic thinking.

   9. CWChris Williamson2:44

      What is the, what's legit and what's bullshit about tipping points and stuff?

   10. HRHannah Ritchie2:51

       So there are big tipping points. Uh, where in the kind of climate system there are, we don't know. Um, there are like a lot of unknowns about when we might hit a tipping point and what that tipping point would be. There are some potential, like quite near term tipping points where you're in the kind of between 1.5 degrees and two degrees range. There are a couple of tipping points that, that could be breached.

   11. CWChris Williamson3:16

       Uh, what, what happens? What, what do people mean when they talk about tipping points from a, like functional, climate functional perspective?

   12. HRHannah Ritchie3:22

       So I think the, the, the kind of definition of a tipping point is that you kind of change a system from one state into another. And it's very hard, if not impossible to take it back from that. Now, I think one of the misunderstandings of tipping points is that people think that it's kind of abrupt and immediate, that, you know, it's almost like a, a domino effect, whereas as, once it's set off, it's like within a year the whole thing kind of blows up. And I think some tipping points can be fast, but often they're quite slow on kind of human timescales. So some of these tipping points will evolve over, you know, centuries or, or thousands of years. It's not just like the entire ice sheet just immediately melts in the space of a, a year. Um, so I think that's one of the, the key differences there. Um, but there are some near, near term potential tipping points where you will shift the system into a different state and that will contribute to more warming. Um, but it won't necessarily set this like, this full chain where, you know, it's kind of unstoppable and there's nothing we can do about it.

   13. CWChris Williamson4:23

       Well, this is one of the common talking points around, uh, coastal cities. Miami, Miami is gonna be underwater, uh, if we go over this. It, I'm gonna guess that Miami may be underwater, but in 1,200 years, not like 2030.

   14. HRHannah Ritchie4:39

       Yeah. Some of the, some of the... I mean there is, the sea levels are rising and they're rising at a pretty steady rate. That could accelerate. Yeah. But a lot of the, the very extreme sea level rise scenarios tend to be on the order of, of centuries, for example.

   15. CWChris Williamson4:54

       Extreme takes centuries. So we, at least there's a li- a little bit of time for this.

   16. HRHannah Ritchie4:57

       You have the time to... Yeah. (laughs)

   17. CWChris Williamson4:59

       Yeah. Um-

   18. HRHannah Ritchie4:59

       But I mean, I think the, the, the risk of s- sea level rise around coastal cities is, is very valid. Um, and there are, there could be some near-term displacements, um, but a lot of them could be on a longer time scale than we imagine.

2. 5:12 – 9:13

   The Problem With Doomsday Climate Narratives

   1. HRHannah Ritchie5:12

   2. CWChris Williamson5:12

      I read an article from you where you said, "Many young people feel like their future is in peril. To make progress on climate change, we must move past doomsday scenarios." Why?

   3. HRHannah Ritchie5:23

      'Cause I think it lulls us into a kind of state of paralysis. Like I speak to a lot of young people, a lot of people email me and they're in a very dark place. They're in a place where they don't even know whether they should go to college. They don't know whether they should actually invest in a future 'cause they've kind of received the message that there's no point because they're kind of doomed from climate change. And I think one thing that's just like bad for people's mental health, but I think the second is it, I think it paralyzes us and, and stops people from taking action. Like if we're doomed, then what's the point in actually-

   4. CWChris Williamson5:54

      (laughs)

   5. HRHannah Ritchie5:54

      ... taking action against it? So I think in some ways it hinders progress.... and, uh, in terms of taking action. And then I think there's another dimension to it where I think some of these really extreme scenarios have been used by people on the other end, so kind of more on the climate denial end. When they see the really extreme scenarios, it's just the per- the perfect ammunition. They just think, "Oh, this is so ridiculous." Um, and so it often, like, pushes people away at the other end of the spectrum that might normally engage.

   6. CWChris Williamson6:25

      Yeah, it seems like in an attempt to try and convince people that this is something we need to pay attention to, something which is important, which needs resources and time and, and, and energy spending on it, uh, that encouragement to try and get people to work harder is done by over-exaggerating, uh, or, or creating, um, more catastrophe where there perhaps isn't quite so much. But the actual reality is it just makes people sad and anxious and believe that their efforts are futile, which is, like from a net effect, is actually the opposite of what you want.

   7. HRHannah Ritchie7:01

      Right. I mean, I think... I mean, there's also like a really broad spectrum in communication. I mean, I think many, most climate scientists are very good on the communication. They're very careful about how they communicate, but I think that often messages are, are weaponized by some people, and actually they put in front of it the sign says, and they say a statement that the science doesn't say.

   8. CWChris Williamson7:18

      (laughs)

   9. HRHannah Ritchie7:19

      Um, and I think for some people, probably a small segment of the, the population, that actually does work. That does... That fear does drive them. They do get involved. I think there's like a much larger part of the spectrum that, that, that, that puts them off.

   10. CWChris Williamson7:32

       Yeah, I watched, um, a video that you spoke about in that article, uh, from Roger Hallam, founder of Extinction Rebellion. Uh, the video is titled Advice to Young People as they Face Annihilation. Hardly inspiring stuff.

   11. HRHannah Ritchie7:47

       No, and I mean, and he says... He said kind of a big point of the video, I think he says, like, young people should just have no hope for the future. Um, and that- and that's- that's not in line with the science. I mean, the science is very clear that the climate change is a big problem. There are really big potential risks, but, you know, it's not, uh, uh, an all or nothing. Like, there are things that we can do about it. So this... The- the notion that we should have no hope because there's nothing we can do is just false.

   12. CWChris Williamson8:12

       What was that story of the group called The Last Generation?

   13. HRHannah Ritchie8:17

       Yeah, so there's an activist group, um, I think in Germany, called The Last Generation, and I think the- the message there can be interpreted in several ways. I think one is, like, very valid, which is, "We can be the last generation to solve climate change," and I think that's true. Um, the, you know... We're talking about solving climate change. We're talking about, you know, the next few decades or 30 or 40 years, so kind of, yes, we are this g- generation that will have to, to solve this. But I think the other interpretation is kind of this notion that if we don't solve it, then we will literally be the last generation, and that's very similar to the kind of Extinction Rebellion, uh, activist group, where it is very much geared towards "We will be kind of the last generation, and we're kind of d- doomed."

   14. CWChris Williamson9:02

       Yeah, and they did a month-long hunger strike that resulted in a ton of them going to hospital.

   15. HRHannah Ritchie9:09

       Yeah, it... Yeah, there was a hunger strike. Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson9:12

       Yeah.

3. 9:13 – 16:33

   Most Exaggerated Climate Change Concerns

   1. CWChris Williamson9:13

      Uh, so when it comes to climate change, what are the... what are the most salient concerns that you have, and what are the ones that you think are, uh, most exaggerated or most mis- misrepresented?

   2. HRHannah Ritchie9:28

      So I think for me, there are a few big concerns. One is just exposure to heat. I mean, I think that just the very... uh, th- the most obvious and, and, and m- most well-donc- documented link between rising temperatures is just exposure to extreme heat waves, um, as you would expect. And I think that will be a significantly growing problem. It'll be... also be a really big problem because many of the people that will be exposed to this will be people closer to the equator, typically in lower-income countries where they don't, you know, have an air-conditioned house. Um, so it can... will a- will also fall disproportionately on, on people on lower incomes where they might not have the money, uh, and luxuries that we would have to just adapt to that. I think then the other big concern for me is, is agriculture. Where we've got a growing population, climate change there could be a significant problem, one, in terms of extreme weather events, so floods, droughts. You could lose like a whole harvest, um, for an entire season, but also crops. And it varies across the world depending on where you are and, and what crop you're working with, but increased temperatures could start to reduce yields. So some of the kind of scenarios you could see, for example, a 30% drop in yields. Now, at a time when we need to be increasing food production because we will have a growing population, that could be a, a significant concern. So for me, those are the two, like, biggest direct impacts, I think.

   3. CWChris Williamson10:57

      What about the efforts that have been made over the last few years? You know, it's not just now that people have started talking about climate change, even if maybe the, uh, discourse is getting more heated all the time. Um, it's not like this is a new thing, and there's been many initiatives that have been put in in the UK, in the US, trying to counter this. How effective or ineffective have those been?

   4. HRHannah Ritchie11:25

      I think we are getting there. We're just not getting there fast enough. I think people have the notion that we're still in the same position on tackling climate change as we were a decade ago, and I think that's not true. I think, I think what's re- what's really fundamental to addressing climate change is that humans need energy, right? They need energy for development, and that has been a massive driver of human progress over the last few centuries. So our basis of producing energy has been fossil fuels. Now...In order to tackle that, there are billions of people still trying to move out of poverty, still trying to increase their energy use quite validly. Um, and they're, they're not gonna stop doing that, right? You're not gonna stop them doing that. So you need a substitute. It's a, it's a substitution exercise. You need to substitute fossil fuels with a low carbon energy source. Now, the problem in the past has been that these energy sources were way too expensive, right? So you're never gonna use solar or wind or batteries or electric vehicles 'cause they were just way more expensive than fossil fuels. What's been a really dramatic change, especially in the last decade, is that the prices of these have plummeted. Um, so, you know, they're no... Electric cars are growing now and they're getting very cost competitive with petrol or, or diesel cars, but they don't, they were really far away a decade ago. Uh, same with solar and wind. They were extremely expensive. They're now undercutting the cost of fossil fuels. Now, that's completely f- and fundamentally changed the position that we're in 'cause we're no longer asking people to make a trade-off of, do you want to escape energy poverty or do you wanna keep your CO2 emissions low? 'Cause like they were always gonna (laughs) uh, move out of energy poverty. I think we've reached the position now where there's no longer that trade-off such that often people will just go for the low carbon energy source because it's the cheapest. I think to me that's fundamentally changed the equation. So the overall story on carbon emissions there is that rich countries over the last few decades have tended to reduce their emissions, whereas middle and low income countries are, are still growing there. So we kind of have this tug of war at the global level, which means that global emissions are kind of now hovering around a peak.

   5. CWChris Williamson13:32

      Mm. Yeah, I think this is, I don't know, this sort of a, uh... The fact that we have a shared environment but individual actors acting independently of each other to contribute to it means that there is always going to be this sort of push and pull, right? There is going to be a, a group of people in developed countries that are going to be told, "You need to reduce energy emissions." And it's very easy to say, "Well, they're not. They're not gonna do it." And yeah, this, what's it called? Uh, the tragedy of the commons? Um, yeah, it, there is always going to be some equivalent of a free rider problem or, or, or, or something else. It, it's, it's always going to be there and I think it's always gonna make people feel uncomfortable about making sacrifices. I guess if they were to go and live in a, a country that didn't have access to reliable energy or was burning wood or dung to be able to do it, they might think, "Uh, maybe I'm not making that much of a sacrifice." But, you know, humans are creatures of relativity, right? We have anchoring biases. Like, I remember how much my refrigerator energy fee was last year and I've seen it go up this year, or I've been told that I can't water my garden or whatever. Like, you know, we, we anchor off where our lifestyle was previously, not off someone in the Sudan.

   6. HRHannah Ritchie14:54

      Right. And I think, yeah, I think that's been a, uh, a key stumbling block has been these divisions. I think for me there's, there's so much finger pointing, and it's this kind of young people pointing at old people or old people pointing at young people, or left pointing at right and right pointing at left, and, and rich countries pointing at China or India, and I think that's created a lot of divisions. I think in general what's worked better on climate is that the way international climate processes used to work was it was a very like top down where basically there was kind of global, um, coalition and they kind of would set, try to set tar- imp- impose targets from the top down. And actually it didn't get us that far and countries didn't really like it. What's actually been more successful has country... it's been like a bottom up exercise where countries have decided this is the, the, the pledges or the targets that we're gonna put on the table and they nominate it themselves. Now, you might think, "Will they all just not put anything on the table?" And to some extent there's much room for them increasing these, these promises and we, we hope they do. But you do start to get like a little bit of a competition exercise where it does start to put pressure on different countries. Um, so I think the, the bottom up approach of, of people volunteering what they're willing to do has actually counterintuitively worked better than a top down, "This is what you have to do." And I think in general that also works at the, the individual level. I think the, uh, I think there's a lot of pushback against people trying to tell others what you should and shouldn't do. Often that's like the best way to get someone to do (laughs) exactly what you don't want them to do, is to, is to try to force them to do it.

   7. CWChris Williamson16:32

      Yeah. What,

4. 16:33 – 18:38

   The Emissions Progress in the UK

   1. CWChris Williamson16:33

      uh... I, I mean I'm interested in this stat that you put up about, um, in the UK carbon emissions per person are half what they were when our grandparents were our age, and we haven't just offshored all of these either. That seems like quite a big win.

   2. HRHannah Ritchie16:52

      Yeah. So carbon emissions in the UK have fallen a lot. They've fallen by around 50%. Um, a big driver of that has been the reduction of coal. So like most of our electricity used to come from coal and we're basically now coal free. So we've kind of got rid of the kind of the dirtiest fuel in our electricity mis- mix, which has pushed down emissions a lot. Now the caveat there is that the 50%, like, exaggerates the total amount of reductions that we've incurred because we've offshored some of them. So, um, we've kind of got rid of a lot of our manufacturing industries so, like, we import goods from other countries that produce them. And it's very valid to say that, you know, the UK's carbon footprint should be what the UK consumers are actually consuming. So the, the, the total drop on that basis is not as big as 50%, but there is still a decline and emissions are still falling. And that's a kind of general trend that we see across most high income countries that domestic emissions have reduced, um, but they've also reduced when we take offshoring into account.

   3. CWChris Williamson17:52

      Got you. How difficult is it gonna be to provide a good quality of life for eight billion people while still being sustainable?

   4. HRHannah Ritchie18:00

      It's a big challenge. Um, yeah, it's gonna be big. I think it's achievable. I think, I think for me what's key is the time scale. I think it's just inevitable that we will just move to clean energy. I think how long we take to do that will be the big question. That will be the big question about what temperature rise we, we get to. Can we do it in the next 30 years? Um, it'll be a big challenge, but I would expect that we would do it in the next 50 or 60 years so that, that the emphasis is there on the speed, um, which is gonna be very difficult, but to me, is not completely unachievable.

5. 18:38 – 24:34

   Degrowth & Depopulation as Solutions

   1. HRHannah Ritchie18:38

   2. CWChris Williamson18:38

      What do people mean when they talk about de-growth?

   3. HRHannah Ritchie18:41

      So, I think there's two terms here. I think one is focused on population, so it's more like de-population, so kind of an environmental movement, a big... Especially in the past, uh, like a big point was that there's- the problem is just there's just too many people, um, and, and, uh, the planet cannot possibly provide for so many people, so the solution to this problem is to have less people. And then there's more of a kind of de-growth movement where the argument there is that the driver has been over-consumption, and therefore in order to reduce our emissions, we need to literally shrink our economies.

   4. CWChris Williamson19:22

      Right. And what are your thoughts on de-growth?

   5. HRHannah Ritchie19:25

      My thoughts are you cannot do de-growth at a global level because you would li- leave billions of people in poverty, and that's, to me, just morally unacceptable, and you just won't achieve it, right? Like, you're not gonna stop people in low-income countries from, from trying to move out of poverty. Now, there's a question of should you s- keep GDP in rich countries the same or should you shrink the, the economies of rich countries? I don't think that's gonna be a political reality. Like, I don't know I see any political leader standing up and saying, "Our main policy is that we're gonna reduce our economy in order to reduce our CO2 emissions." And it's definitely not gonna happen in, on the time scales that we're talking about, right? We need to get moving on this in the next decade. Um, and to me, uh, I do not see it being politically feasible, the, the... One, that a leader would stand up and promote that. I think it would kind of be political suicide, um, but also that they would actually get elected into government. And then you've got the long, the long time period where even if you did get that and people voted for it and they went into government, then you've got the time that it takes to actually implement that, and we don't actually know how effective that would be in reducing emissions. Like, no one's tried kind of deliberate de-growth. So I think there's, like, tons of unknowns there, and for me, it's kind of a political non-starter.

   6. CWChris Williamson20:44

      Well, I guess over a, a long enough time horizon, the next 100 years, the people calling for antinatalist or depopulation, they're gonna get their... They're gonna get the outcome that they want, it's just gonna happen due to declining birth rates. I know, you know, you made a really good clarification at the very beginning of this, which is exis- the difference between existential risk and just, you know, a big problem, basically. Existential risk, permanent unrecoverable collapse, right? It's a very specific category of risk that shouldn't be thrown around incorrectly. Uh, and I don't think that declining birth rates are one of those either, but they're definitely going to be the sort of thing that will impact human life front and center very, very harshly very quickly, you know? Within, what, when are we gonna peak? 2100-ish? 2019, something like that?

   7. HRHannah Ritchie21:33

      I think, I think the, uh, I think the, the latest UN projections were, uh, that was that it would... Global population would peak around 2080s.

   8. CWChris Williamson21:40

      Right.

   9. HRHannah Ritchie21:40

      Um, and they've actually brought that forward. Like, the first project- the lat- the, the one projection before that was, you know, still increasing past 2100, and actually because fertility rates, which is just the number of children that a w- a woman would have, average women would have, um, is falling quicker than, than we expected. That's actually b- been brought forward to the 2080s.

   10. CWChris Williamson22:01

       Yeah, so by the end of this century, the de-growth from a population standpoint, I'm aware that we're gonna have to gain two billion before we start to come back down toward where we are now, um, but how much... How concerned are you about that? You know, if we presume that what we're trying to do here... I don't know the basis of your philosophy. I don't know if it's, um, seeing the earth as something that needs to be protected, whether it's trying to maximize human flourishing, whether it's trying to... You know, there's a, a variety of reasons why people don't want the world to go to shit. Um, but if we presume that in amongst that is the flourishing utility, eudaimonia happiness of the conscious humans that live on it, reducing that number down precipitously is dangerous. Uh, it, it, it doesn't... That doesn't seem to be in alignment either. So, how much time do you spend thinking about birth rates and what's your concern with population collapse?

   11. HRHannah Ritchie22:50

       Um, I don't spend much time at all thinking about birth rates in a climate context, um, and I don't think it's effective in any way to try to, to use climate or environment to, to promote lowering birth rates. I mean, I think the, the basic story of falling fertility rates and falling birth rates is that, um, as countries develop, as they get richer, as girls go to school, women go into education, uh, women go into, uh, economic opportunities and jobs, um, fertility rates tend to decline. So you see a very clear relationship that as countries get richer, they decline. Um, and the... I think, I think one of the key part- key parts of development is that fertility rates will actually just continue to fall. The countries, like low-income countries where birth rates are still quite high, like maybe, like, four or five or, or six, um, those will just fall because they will develop. Uh, kids... Girls will get to go to school, women will get, go into work and, and have economic opportunities, and I think those are all fantastic developments. I actually don't think you need the climate lens as part of that. I think if you have your list of priorities of what would be the driver of declining birth rate, and I think climate change is very, very low on that risk. Like-... I'm, I'm all for promotion of girls going to school just because they should have the opportunity to go to school, not because we should reduce the population in order to address climate change.

   12. CWChris Williamson24:18

       Right. Oh, okay. That would be, (clears throat) that would be like a five-dimensional chess move to try and, uh, speed up the education of girls in low-income countries in an attempt to reduce dumb birth rates. That would be, that would be an impressive strategy. Uh, y- you said, um...

6. 24:34 – 29:40

   The Impact of Data in Persuasion

   1. CWChris Williamson24:34

      I saw another quote from you that said, "We should use data to understand the world and make better decisions." That seems to be like a nice tagline. How effective have you found data being at nudging beliefs and culture and debate? So, you, uh, part of this great website, Our World in Data, and you put this stuff forward, but (clears throat) I would guess that the vanguard, like the front lines of trying to convince people by data, might be more difficult than we would think, given that data is like truth, as long as it's right.

   2. HRHannah Ritchie25:08

      Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, it's very mixed. I mean, I mean there are some people that are so immune to data that there's nothing, there's no data you could throw in front of them that would make them change their mind. And there will always be, you know, an excuse why that data doesn't fit with the narrative or why that data is flawed. Um, I think some people are swayed by data and can make good decisions based on it. Um, I think, I mean, a r- a range of people use our work. Like the general population use our work, but also journalists, policymakers use our work. And then I think in those fields, data can actually make a difference to informed decisions.

   3. CWChris Williamson25:45

      What's happening with air pollution?

   4. HRHannah Ritchie25:48

      So, there have been a couple of big air pollution problems. There have been a couple of what we'd call like transboundary problems, which is more, again, the tragedy of the commons problem, where it's not just, you know, pollution in your own country. It kind of crosses, uh, across many countries, um, and you kind of need, you know, several countries or the whole world to work together to solve it. And one of the big ones there was the ozone layer, so kind of before climate change, the big environmental problem was the ozone layer and, uh, the growing ozone hole. And at the time, it was really politically controversial, a bit like climate change is today. There were kind of pushback against scientists. There was, um... It was really politically controversial. But we u- we actually managed to, to solve it. Like we, we brought in what was called the Montreal Protocol, and we reduced the emissions of the gases that were destroying the ozone layer by like more than 99%. So we've basically got rid of them, and the ozone hole should just repair itself in the next few decades. Um, there was another big problem of acid rain, which when you burn coal, you tend to produce what's called sulfur dioxide, and that can dissolve in rainwater and you can get acid rain. Again, that was a big problem, and we're, we've been pretty successful in solving it, especially across Europe and North America. And then there's the other problem of what we call local air pollution, which is like the pollution you'd find in your city, uh, from like cars and burning fossil fuels and home heating and stuff. Now the, the story there is mixed. Rich countries have gone through this process where, um, as they tended to get richer, air pollution increased. So, if you think about London or Edinburgh, where I am, um, go back to kind of the, the beginning to mid-20th century, these cities were so, so polluted, like really unimaginable from what you would assume today. I mean, there's stories of like, you know, the Great Smog in London where, you know, you couldn't see, even see a few feet in front of you, like kind of shuffling, trying to find the curb with their feet. So there, these cities were incredibly polluted, and we've actually been really successful over the last 50 years or so in, in dramatically reducing the amount of local air pollution, uh, especially in rich countries. It's a little bit of a different story in low and middle income countries. They're still, uh, kind of going up that curve that, um, London or Edinburgh went through, uh, kind of 50 years to a century ago. Um, and air pollution in general is a, is a big killer in the world. So, there are a range of estimates, but they're all in the range of kind of millions of premature deaths per year. So it is a, is a, a big, big problem. In some sense, you know, today, in terms of number of lives lost, it's arguably bigger than climate change, although that could change in the future.

   5. CWChris Williamson28:33

      Wow. What do we do? How do you help air pollution now?

   6. HRHannah Ritchie28:38

      You can... I mean, the key one is stop burning fossil fuels. Um, you can put kind of strict, uh, air pollution kind of standards on power plants. Like that was the big thing of acid rain. Like it's not that we necessarily just stopped burning coal. We managed to put what are called scrubbers on the power plant, where it kind of took the sulfur out, so you didn't get the, the, the sulfur emissions. Um, a big driver in, in, in rich countries has been just increased, uh, air quality standards for cars. So the amount of, um, of pollution spewing out the back of a car today is much, much less than it was in the past. And actually, a move to electric vehicles would, would decrease that even further. So even in rich countries, you know, the, the estimated deaths attributed to air pollution, in the UK for example, is still tens of thousands. So we know that we can still bring down, that down further, and that would be by, for example, moving away from petrol and, and diesel cars.

   7. CWChris Williamson29:38

      What about deforestation?

7. 29:40 – 34:27

   Why is Deforestation Happening?

   1. CWChris Williamson29:41

   2. HRHannah Ritchie29:41

      Again, it's a bit of a story where countries tend to go through a transition where they would initially cut down forests for wood for energy, like before they had fossil fuels, um, but then the biggest driver of deforestation is just expanding farmland. That's by far the biggest driver of deforestation. You need more land to grow food, therefore you, you cut down forests. Now, uh, the UK for example, we cut down our forests like a long time ago, like centuries and centuries ago, and actually there was really, really-... very little forest left. Um, but then we stopped doing that. And in many rich countries, forests are regrowing. Now, most of the deforestation that's happening today is happening in the tropics, and it's happening because we're, again, we're still expanding agricultural land. Um, so deforestation rates today are still very, very high, but we think these global deforestation rates have fallen since around the 1980s. But we, we still have a big challenge on our hands 'cause deforestation rates are still high.

   3. CWChris Williamson30:42

      What's the truth about the cycle between raising or rising CO₂ levels with, uh, like, re-greening, uh, uh, and the increase in, uh, plant growth and tree growth, forest growth based on that increase in carbon?

   4. HRHannah Ritchie30:58

      Yeah. There again, it's a little bit mixed. In terms of, like, greening, uh, forests and natural habita- n- natural vegetation, it can... Like, CO... Extra CO₂ can increase, um, regrowth to an extent. I mean, this is often also discussed in terms of agriculture, like I was saying earlier, that one of the big risks of agriculture is, is climate change. And it is true that to a certain extent, more CO₂ means... can mean more, um, more higher yields and more crop growth. But it's about how much of that is outweighed by the detrimental impacts of drought, of floods, of temperatures. And for many crops, the increased temperatures will just outweigh the increased benefits of CO₂. So even if you increase CO₂ a bit, you would still see negative effects from, uh, the temperature effects.

   5. CWChris Williamson31:49

      It's interesting that everything is so interlinked here, that, for instance, deforestation is intrinsically linked with food and hunger and agriculture. So what progress has been made with, with, uh, food and hunger as well?

   6. HRHannah Ritchie32:02

      So, um, I mean, food and hunger, again, global hunger rates have declined substantially over the last 50 years, in particular. We've kind of plateaued on progress there, and actually in some regions that has started to regress. So we have around 800 million people in the world, one in... Nearly one in ten just don't get enough food to eat, and that's the key challenge with, with deforestation and these problems is that, again, there you have this tension between people just need more food, uh, and we need more agricultural land, and there's wild habitat and there's forest in the way. Um, so that's the big challenge. One of those big solutions to that is just to make agriculture much more productive, right? So if you can increase crop yields by... If you could triple crop yields, then you can produce the same amount of food on a third of the land. So one of the big, uh, necessities there is to just increase crop yields and productivity. And I think in many regions there is still a lot of scope to do that. I think the, the other big link to deforestation there is, like, animal agriculture. So a lot of the deforestation of the Amazon, for example, is clearing land for pasture for cattle grazing, for beef production, and by far that's the biggest driver of deforestation. And in general, beef is just a really inefficient way of using land to produce food.

   7. CWChris Williamson33:25

      What, what is the... You're talking about crop yields there. How much truth is there in topsoil degradation and, and the quality of what we're growing our plants out of?

   8. HRHannah Ritchie33:37

      Yeah. So the... I mean, there's been lots of headlines about, you know, soil loss, and there's this kind of like, "We've only got... The world's only got 60 harvests left," headline that kind of went viral, and that headline's not true, and kind of no soi- soil scientist would back that up. Across the world you have a mixed, again, a mixed picture, like some soils are stable and, and they're... Are, are doing fine. Some are actually growing. So the, the, their actually grow... Topsoil is growing. And there are others that actually are degrading over time, and it's a serious worry. But we're not gonna get to, you know, this, you know, single point where, you know, just the wh- the whole... In 60 years, the, the world's harvests just stop because of topsoil. There's just a really large variation in soils across the world where you could never just put a single figure on when this would happen.

8. 34:27 – 41:45

   Are We Living in an Era of Mass Extinction?

   1. HRHannah Ritchie34:27

   2. CWChris Williamson34:27

      Mm-hmm. What about biodiversity? That's something else that I've seen talked about an awful lot, that the, the fifth great extinction or the s- whichever one we're in, this is the beginning of-

   3. HRHannah Ritchie34:37

      Sixth.

   4. CWChris Williamson34:37

      ... the s-

   5. HRHannah Ritchie34:37

      Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson34:37

      ... sixth, whatever, that one, sixth-

   7. HRHannah Ritchie34:38

      Yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson34:38

      ... great extinction, we're in the middle of that, and we-we've lost more, uh, species in the last X number of years than in the whole bigger number of years before that.

   9. HRHannah Ritchie34:49

      Yeah. I mean, bio... The trends on bio- biodiversity loss are not good. I think they're like the area where I'm most pessimistic. So yeah, there's been five previous mass extinctions on Earth, and there's a question of like, are we in the sixth mass extinction? Now, in order to, to qualify as, like, a mass extinction, you kind of have this threshold of you need to lose like 75 to 80% of species, and you need to do it on a... It's called a fast time scale, but it's like two million years. Uh, like it's fast on geological timescales, but on human timescales it's obviously not. Um, now we're obviously very, very far away from losing that percentage of species, but what you can do is you can look at the rate of change and say, "We know roughly how many species have gone extinct over the last few centuries, for example, um, or, or 500 years or 1,000 years." And you can say, "Okay, what's the, the rate of extinction there?" And then you can compare that to what was the rate of extinctions in the previous five mass extinctions. And actually what you find when you crunch those numbers is that we are actually losing species at a faster rate than we were in the five previous mass extinctions. Now, if we just continued to lose species at that rate, then yeah, it would qualify as being in the sixth mass extinction. Um, my optimism there is that we won't just continue to lose species at that rate because we will hopefully address deforestation. We will hopefully curb climate change. We will hopefully be able to restore natural habitats. So this kind of-... I think it's reasonably fair to say that, you know, the trends point towards a sixth mass extinction if we just continue as we are. But my hope is that we won't continue as we are.

   10. CWChris Williamson36:32

       What is driving this loss in biodiversity? Where's it coming from?

   11. HRHannah Ritchie36:36

       Mm. I mean, it's often referred to as death by 1,000 cuts. So there's no, like, single driver of biodiversity losses. It tends to be a mix. I mean, the, the biggest driver is, is food production. So it's either like, either overall exploitation, which is just like direct hunting or direct overfishing or kind of logging of forests, um, or it's destruction of habitats for farming and agriculture. And that can be either cutting down, um, forests or, or moving into wild grasslands, but it can also be, you know, losing insects, uh, because of the use of fertilizers or pesticides on agricultural land. That's a very... To me, that's a very, very tricky problem to solve because there's a kind of... There's kind of two camps on how you produce food in a kind of biodiversity friendly way. Like one, you could just use lots of fertilizers, lots of pesticides, get really productive land.

   12. CWChris Williamson37:31

       Mm-hmm.

   13. HRHannah Ritchie37:31

       You could use less land by doing that, so basically say, "We're gonna accept that we're gonna have lots of biodiversity loss on this smaller bit of land." Or you can go for another approach where, say, "We're gonna lose less biodiversity but we're gonna spread it over a larger area," and I think the kind of jury on that is, is still out on how best to manage that.

   14. CWChris Williamson37:49

       Yeah, that's a difficult, a really difficult balance to strike. Have you got any idea what types of animals have contributed most to this biodiversity loss? Has it been segmented out? Has it been the fish, they're all falling off, but mammals are fine? Or is it mostly insects and reptiles are fine? Have you got any idea?

   15. HRHannah Ritchie38:13

       It's kind of mixed. Um, like the mammals are not doing well in particular. I mean, if you look over the course of human history, the big change has been what we call like the downsizing of mammals. So we've tended to just lose the big mammals, such that they're getting smaller and smaller over time. That's 'cause we predominantly hunt larger animals, um, and they tend to go extinct. And they also take longer to reproduce. So smaller animals can kind of recover 'cause they can rep- reproduce really quickly, whereas larger animals take much longer. So we've tended to lose the largest mammals. Birds are not doing particularly well, neither are amphibians. Um, insects, like the, the general trend there is, is not looking good. I think insects in general are just harder to count and it's very hard to get really long term data on insects. Like you can kind of count elephants, like, pretty well and kind of get good historical records, but it's really hard to do for insects. Uh, I think insects are pretty uncertain but I think they're definitely in decline.

   16. CWChris Williamson39:12

       Okay, so there was-

   17. HRHannah Ritchie39:13

       There are very few, very few, like good, (laughs) good trends here in biodiversity.

   18. CWChris Williamson39:17

       I was trying to find a, a silver lining in the biodiversity loss but it doesn't really seem to be there.

   19. HRHannah Ritchie39:22

       Uh, no, I can give you one.

   20. CWChris Williamson39:23

       Okay.

   21. HRHannah Ritchie39:23

       Like in some regions, like Europe for example, we lost a lot of mammals but we're actually bringing a lot of them back now. There's been lots of, like restoration, um, uh, programs, and you know, the European bison is, is on its way back. So, I think there is stuff that you can do, um, and it is possible to restore a lot of these populations. But the overall trend is down.

   22. CWChris Williamson39:47

       I had a conversation a couple of months ago with a guy who wa- is bringing wooly mammoths back to life.

   23. HRHannah Ritchie39:53

       (laughs) Right.

   24. CWChris Williamson39:54

       So they-

   25. HRHannah Ritchie39:54

       Was it Stewart Brand? No.

   26. CWChris Williamson39:56

       No, it wasn't. I can't remember the, I can't remember the name of the place. Colossus, Colossum? Colossus, I think, uh, is the name of the company. And, um, yeah, they, they've sequenced it from a bunch of frozen, uh, bone and I think maybe something else, samples. Uh, and then they're going to use an Asian elephant, maybe, uh, and they're going to implant, and then over time they will have this and then maybe they can go up north and they're good at compacting down the earth, and compacting down the earth changes the way that heat hits it and then they help with fertilizing and moving. So, that's... And he also wanted to do... He had this really cool idea of wanting to bring back, uh, the dodo bird, and the reason that he wanted to do that was as a symbolic gesture to remind people about biodiversity loss. So thinking, basically explaining the, this huge process that you would have to go through and we'd have to do this and we'd have to do this and we'd have to do this, and then finally we would get something that looks like the dodo bird. I think there was one other type of tiger maybe that he was thinking about doing it with. Uh, and then to basically use that as the tip of the spear to say, "Do you see all of this work that we've just had to do to try and bring this bird back to life? Like just try not to, try not to kill it this time-"

   27. HRHannah Ritchie41:14

       Right.

   28. CWChris Williamson41:14

       ... type thing.

   29. HRHannah Ritchie41:15

       Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's, it's a b- a little bit the same story with, with forests where I think we often think about like planting trees and regrowing forests, whereas like the best thing we can do with forests is just like not to cut them down in the first place. And in to some sense it's the same with biodiversity where, you know, it would take a massive effort to be able to bring back a species or even restore a population so that, you know, the obvious best thing is like not to, to push it to extinction in the first place.

   30. CWChris Williamson41:42

       What about ocean plastics? I'm aware that microplastic, like

9. 41:45 – 47:58

   The Issue of Ocean Plastics

   1. CWChris Williamson41:45

      we can Alex Jones our way into "Phthalates in the Water" all that we want, but ocean plastics, I'd heard this story about this island the same size as Texas that's somewhere and it's swirling round and then there was that guy that made the, the ocean scraper thing and, and he was doing-

   2. HRHannah Ritchie42:01

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson42:01

      ... he was doing really great work but, uh, what's the, what's the story there with ocean plastics?

   4. HRHannah Ritchie42:06

      Yeah, I mean I don't... I can't solve the plastic problem, like I, I think plastic is a really tricky one. It's like a really amazing and valuable material which I think is why it's, we produce so much of it and it's so hard to get off of it. Um, but the, the simple problem of like-... plastics flowing into the ocean is a very, very, like, tractable one. Uh, we do have a significant amount of plastics flowing into the ocean, like the ed- latest estimates are, like, around 1 to 2 million tons a year. Now for perspective, that's about 0.5% of the plastic p- uh, p- waste we produce. So I think the notion that, you know, all of our plastics are flowing into the ocean is not correct. Like it's a quite, quite a small percentage, but in, in absolute terms, it's quite big. Um, the key problem with plastic, ocean plastics, is not necessarily using plastics, it's, like, how they're managed. So if you can, um, store plastics in landfills or they're recycled or they're incinerated, then they don't leak, leak out into the environment and they don't end up in the ocean, rivers or ocean. The problem is often that, um, in many countries, the waste management infrastructure is not there to, to, to deal with the amount of plastic that's there, such that it's often dumped or it's in an open landfill and, and blows into the ocean. Um, now I think it is a... I mean, to, to some extent that then is, the solution is quite simple, like, and it's not sexy, it's just like build landfills or build waste management structures, but like that doesn't tend to get a ton of investment 'cause it's not, like, flashy. Um, but there is also projects trying to do the opposite. One is, as you said, there's a guy called Boyan Slat, and he created The Ocean Cleanup project where they are basically trying to scoop plastic out, that's already in the ocean, and get it out, and I think they're, they're, they've done a really good job. I mean, (laughs) they haven't got all the plastic out yet, but they are being quite successful in getting some of it out. And then they've also generated a, a kind of separate project which is trying to stop it going into the ocean in the first place. So a lot of this waste tend to come, tends to come down through rivers, and what they've done, they've, like, modeled to try to work out, like, what are the biggest rivers that are contributing to the ocean plastics? Then they have what's called an interceptor where they basically try to, like, stop the plastics going in, uh, at the end of the river before it reaches the ocean. So I think there are... I think he's done an amazing job and he's kind of came out of nowhere and decided... I mean, we all just watch and say, "Oh, that's really bad that there's plastics in the ocean," and he's like, "No, there doesn't (laughs) have to be plastics in the ocean." And he's kind of tried to, to engineer a solution out of it.

   5. CWChris Williamson44:48

      Have you got any idea which were the rivers that were contributing heavily?

   6. HRHannah Ritchie44:54

      I mean, it's changed a lot, th- our understanding has changed a lot over time. I think initially, t- you know, there was estimates that, you know, most of it was coming from, like, 20 rivers. Now actually, that's quite good because then you only need 20 interceptors, but I think more recent studies have shown that actually it's coming from, like, 1000 different rivers, um, which is a much trickier problem to tackle. Like most of these rivers, uh, from the latest study from, you know, uh, Boyan Sla- uh, Slat and his colleagues tend to show that el- a lot of them tend to be in Asia or South America or Africa. They tend to be in middle income countries where, um, people have got richer, they're now using much more plastic, but again, the waste management infrastructure hasn't managed to catch up.

   7. CWChris Williamson45:41

      Rich enough to buy the things that are in the plastic, but not rich enough to be able to work out how to deal with it once you've used it.

   8. HRHannah Ritchie45:49

      Right. Exactly.

   9. CWChris Williamson45:50

      What about overfishing?

   10. HRHannah Ritchie45:52

       Um, there, um, again, there's a little bit of a split where overfishing is a tractable problem. It is a problem that you can manage. Um, the key for that is being able to balance fish populations such that you know how much you can catch without massively reducing the population of the fish, right? You want to be in a state where, um, for fishing, you're fishing, um, and the population is not decreasing. Now, if you've overfished, so if you fish too much, that population will start to decrease and decrease and decrease. And actually even for, from an economic perspective, that's only good in the short term, right? Because in the medium to long term, the amount of stuff that you can fish will just decline over time, so it's like a really short term benefit for a medium to long term, uh, detriment. Now, many regions, fish populations are actually doing fine 'cause we can do that quite well and we have policies in place and quotas on how much fishermen can catch. In other parts of the world, that's just not there, um, and you would expect often that the, the fish populins- populations there are declining. So the estimates that are around, around a third of the world's, uh, fish populations are being overfished. Now, there, there is a slightly different story to that, where in the past, you know, our only way of having fish was to, like, catch wild fish. What we've seen over the last few decades is the rise of what we call aquaculture, which is fish farming. Now, um, a little bit like on land where we would normally just hunt animals, we then decided, no, we'll grow animals, so we'll have livestock and we'll raise our own animals. Uh, that's kind of what fish farming is all about where rather than only catching wild fish, you basically farm your own fish. And actually now fish farming, uh, produces more than wild fish, so most of the growth in, in global fish production over the last few decades has come from fish farming. It's not come from catching wild fish.

10. 47:58 – 52:45

    A More Sensible Approach to the Climate Issue

    1. HRHannah Ritchie47:58

    2. CWChris Williamson47:58

       Mm. It seems to me, like, thinking about all of the stuff that we've spoken about today, this tragedy of the commons thing really just comes back to the fold, that we are individual nations who are not always even coordinated internally, but definitely not coordinated effectively externally between all of us, and that by trying to improve the quality of the shared environment, that requires...... different actors and agents to behave in different ways, and it can feel to some like they're having the brakes pressed on them while other people are getting away on a free ride, you've got this free rider problem. How do you, how, like, how do you suggest that especially developed countries that are going to have to potentially go to their citizens and say, "Hey, your quality of life is going to stagnate or, or perhaps even get more difficult, more expensive, more whatever." Um, have you thought around necessarily from a public messaging standpoint, but just, like, culturally, how do you deliver this message to people? Because we're not, it, it's not in our nature to say, "Oh, like, sorry, the people in Chad or, or, or Zimbabwe or whatever needs to have better access to whatever. D- don't, don't worry people of Chad, like, I've got you." Like that's just not, that's not in our nature and it's very difficult in an age of the internet and sort of quippy soundbites and TikTok length videos, it's way too nuanced and subtle to get across. But the alternative is to kind of use a more doomsday scenario which kind of just blanket coverage is everything with fear and terror, and that also is not only not accurate but doesn't necessarily have the desired outcome. So have you, have you kind of conceived this what a, what a like climate culture 3.0 would look like?

    3. HRHannah Ritchie49:52

       (laughs) Yeah, I mean, I think, I think part of this has come, come down to the fact that I think we've often not been very good on our messaging on this. I think coming from a, and I'm part of kind of the environmental movement, I think often it's framed as a sacrifice, right? It's like you have to sacrifice this, um, in order to solve this problem. And I think again, again, I think in the past that might have been true, um, I think the only solution in the past would have been you just have to use less energy and you have to have less stuff and you have to have... it's all about less, less, less, less. And I think we're moving to a stage with the development of many of these technologies where you can switch and it's not necessarily less and it's not necessarily a sacrifice. This is better, right? So there are technologies where you could actually just reduce energy bills. You could create employment opportunities like in many of the, these growing industries like they are creating a job boom, and they are creating employment opportunities. You could get lower energy bills. The cost of running your car would be lower on electricity. So I think there are a range of solutions there where it's not necessarily a massive sacrifice. It actually can just benefit and, and enhance life. So I think we've done quite poorly on the messaging on that because it's all been about less, less, less, sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice. I think in terms of the role of rich countries and how they contribute to this, uh, dilemma in, in lower income countries is that I think the responsibility of rich countries is they, they need to get their emissions down first and foremost, right? They've had high emissions. In the UK we've had hi- high emissions for a really long time. We've managed to get to a stage where we're rich, um, we have really high living standards, and in some sense I think it's just a responsibility to get our domestic emissions down. But I think the role that the o- rich countries can also play is that they can also be the drivers of innovation and deployment of these low carbon technologies that we need. And these tend to follow what we would call a learning curve where s- solar or batteries or wind for example, the more you deploy them, the lower the price gets. So it's like a self-fulfilling trend where deploy more, prices fall, deploy more. So what, what that means is that by, um, pushing these technologies and innovating on these technologies we basically drive down the cost for the rest of the world. So we can, we can, we can invest money. We can deploy them. We can make solar, batteries, electric vehicles really cheap such that people in lower income countries don't need to face that trade-off anymore. They can develop. They can follow, um, a pathway to a really high standard of living, but they won't follow the pathway that the UK or US, uh, followed 'cause they won't have really high coal emissions. They won't necessarily drive a petrol or a diesel car. So I think that's the, the big role that rich countries can play, and again, I don't f- I don't think it's necessarily this big sacrifice that it's often made out to be.

11. 52:45 – 59:40

    China’s Role in Climate Change

    1. HRHannah Ritchie52:45

    2. CWChris Williamson52:45

       What about China? Obviously it's often brought up in this discussion as a country that is quite developed but also I have no i- you will probably know how much truth there is in it, they built more coal plants or whatever plants in the last however many years than so on and so forth. The point being that the, the free rider of free riders would be China. What, what's the truth about that?

    3. HRHannah Ritchie53:11

       I don't think China's a free rider. I think it's true that they are and th- they produce, th- they're the highest emitter and they produce a lot of coal, um, and they are still building coal plants, but I think the, the kind of paradox there is that they are actually just leading completely on low carbon technologies. Like they're building solar and wind so fast. They are, uh, pushing really hard on electric vehicles so the biggest, uh, ca- uh, electric car company now is not Tesla but BYD which is a, a Chinese company. Um, they are dominating the supply chains for these minerals. They are, they are seeing this as an economic opportunity, and in some sense, they're gonna start pushing a lot of western manufacturers out of the market because they've been slipping. Um, and I think that's the kind of general trend of where that's going. So China is deploying these technologies really quickly. As an example last year China produced or, or, uh, installed enough solar and wind to power the UK or France. And they're adding that in one year. Um, so they are building the stuff quickly and to the extent we are and we're really bad at predicting peaks so I'm not gonna put a definitive peak on it, but some people have been talking about well if China's emissions could peak...... this year or next year, just because they're building low-carbon technology so quickly. So, that's the paradox of China, or like they are still producing lots of coal, but they're also really leading the way on low-carbon technologies. Again, not necessarily because they really, really care about climate change.

    4. CWChris Williamson54:43

       Mm-hmm.

    5. HRHannah Ritchie54:43

       They're doing it for the economic opportunities, they're doing it for employment. There's an opportunity there, um, which to me, in some sense, is a positive, right? Because it's really hard. I would love everyone to be really passionate about (laughs) climate change, but that's just not the reality. So, you need to create other incentives for people to act. And the, the key point there is that people will just act because it's economic to do so, and you get the side benefit of, yes, we reduce carbon emissions, and we also reduce air pollution. So for me, in some sense, that's also a positive.

    6. CWChris Williamson55:16

       Yeah. I mean, this seems to be the kind of like one of the, I don't know, one of the, the laws of physics of, of climate change or of, of impacting it in an effective way, which is show me the incentives, and I'll show you the outcome. You know, before Tesla came along, at least in the West, driving an electric car wasn't a status symbol, so the incentive of I want to buy a vehicle that I look cool in and it gives me prestige, and people think that I'm, like, trendy or whatever for driving it, w- wasn't happening so much with a Prius. It was like a political statement. To drive a Prius was a political statement. Um, whereas if you can make the thing that you want people to do also the thing that they want to do, then it, you're swimming downstream. And yeah, totally, if, if this is the way that it is, and if getting reliable energy from solar, from wind, from other stuff... I've heard a lot of criticism around the reliability of it, Germany's problem that they've had where they've had to, like, retrofit gas, and then obviously they became super dependent on, uh, an area of the world that was dominated by war for two years, and then that meant that their prices were going up, and then all the Germans are gonna freeze in the winter and all this stuff. Um, but presumably, all of these are just, I would imagine, teething problems that are only gonna be made by one country, and moving forward, it's like, "Uh, don't do a Germany." Like if you ever make yourself into, you know, like, uh, one of those quotes that's, if you've memed yourself into an energy, uh, uh, energy strategy, that's probably a bad idea. But yeah, if we can get it to the stage where it's both more economically viable and also impacts the environment in a positive way, that, like, that's literally the best. If, if the people that we... And I don't know. Like, I've been super critical of China, but I do sometimes find myself, like, leaning into the, they're almost, like, immoral. It's like an immoral country somehow, and that, that, you know, that they, um, that b- because they're, uh, antagonistic or adversarial with the West, that they're doing things to try and, you know, completely disregarding the environment. Mm-hmm.

    7. HRHannah Ritchie57:20

       Like, that's not necessarily the case. Like, so I need to kind of fact-check or thought-check myself when I do do that. But the point being that we presume China has more priorities than simply the climate, and yet if they've managed to build sufficient renewable energy to power the UK or France in the last year, yeah, okay, th- i- if, if we can encourage them to do it, then countries that are part of the G20 or whatever other organization, it should be pretty easy. Yeah. I mean, there are, I mean, there's, I mean, a range of examples there. Like I, I, in the book, I give the example of, like on a personal level, like my brother. Now, my brother bought a Tesla, and he didn't buy a Tesla 'cause like you really, really cared about climate change. He just bought a Tesla 'cause a Tesla was cool, and it was a really nice car to drive, like he sat on one, and he was like, "This is the best thing ever. I'm gonna get a Tesla." And obviously, he massively cut his carbon footprint, but it wasn't necessarily because of climate. And we got another, like, clear example there is that, like in the US, there's obviously, there is a very quite strong partisan divide on climate, where like left are really pro-climate policies, and a lot of people on the right are, are less so. But then you look at what, which states in the US are producing the most renewable power, and the top fives, five states with the largest amount of wind in their energy sector are all Republican. Um, and again, they're not doing that for climate. They're doing it just because landowners can make money. There's an economic opportunity. The community starts to get behind it. And actually, when you look at kind of messaging around climate in these kind of contexts, um, the language you use is so important. So if you just talk about clean energy, many more people are behind it. Like, on the left and the right, everyone loves clean energy.

    8. CWChris Williamson59:09

       Mm.

    9. HRHannah Ritchie59:09

       Um, what they don't like necessarily or like is talking about climate. And actually, you ruin the chances of the clean energy being deployed if you try to push the climate message too far. So I think really gearing the climate message to, like, whoever you're talking to is so important. If you're talking to someone that's really into climate change, of course talk about climate. But if you're talking to someone that's a bit skeptical, but they, they're pretty in favor of clean energy, then you actually can actively push them away from it if you try to force the climate message too hard.

    10. CWChris Williamson59:37

        Yeah, use the right language with the right audience. Very interesting.

12. 59:40 – 1:00:17

    Where to Find Hannah

    1. CWChris Williamson59:40

       Let's bring this one home, Hannah. I really appreciate you for today. Where should people go if they wanna keep up to date with all the stuff that you do? Where should we send them?

    2. HRHannah Ritchie59:46

       Um, I have a newsletter called Sustainability By Numbers, and I try to break down all the stuff by numbers. Um, I have a new book out called Not The End Of The World where I discuss all of this. And then I work at Our World in Data, where you can find, like, all of this data and research on how all of this stuff is changing.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:00:06

       Hell yeah. Thank you, Hannah.

    4. HRHannah Ritchie1:00:07

       Thank you.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:00:08

       If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks, and don't forget to subscribe.

Episode duration: 1:00:17