Factually! with Adam Conover - Why Climate Change Isn’t the End of the World with Dr. Hannah Ritchie

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

The climate crisis is undeniably real, but it won't be the end of the world. Tomorrow, the planet will still be here, whether it's better or worse, and we'll all have to live in it. While it's understandable to feel hopeless, surrendering isn't an environmentally responsible choice. In this episode, Adam talks with Dr. Hannah Ritchie, author of "Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet," about striving for a future that not only averts disaster but also fosters a healthier planet overall. Find Hannah's book at at factuallypod.com/booksSUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. You know, I gotta confess, I have always been a sucker for Japanese treats. I love going down a little Tokyo, heading to a convenience store, and grabbing all those brightly colored fun packaged boxes off of the shelf. But you know what? I don't get the chance to go down there as often as I would like to. And that is why I am so thrilled that Bokksu, a Japanese snack subscription box, chose to sponsor this episode. What's gotten me so excited about Bokksu is a Japanese snack subscription box, chose to sponsor this episode.

What's gotten me so excited about Bokksu is that these aren't just your run-of-the-mill grocery store finds. Each box comes packed with 20 unique snacks that you can only find in Japan itself. Plus, they throw in a handy guide filled with info about each snack and about Japanese culture. And let me tell you something, you are going to need that guide because this box comes with a lot of snacks. I just got this one today, from Boxu and look at all of these things. We got some sort of seaweed snack here. We've got a buttercream cookie. We've got a Dolce. I don't I'm going to have to read the guide to figure out what this one is. It looks like some sort of sponge cake. Oh my gosh.

This one is I think it's some kind of maybe fried banana chip. Let's try it out and see. Is that what it is? Nope, it's not banana. Maybe it's a cassava potato chip. I should have read the guide. Ah, here they are. Iburigako Smoky Chips.

Potato chips made with rice flour, providing a lighter texture and satisfying crunch. Oh my gosh, this is so much fun. You got to get one of these for themselves and get this for the month of March. Bokksu has a limited edition cherry blossom box and 12 month subscribers get a free kimono style robe and get this while you're wearing your new duds, learning fascinating things about your tasty snacks. You can also rest assured that you have helped to support small family run businesses in Japan because Bokksu works with 200-plus small makers to get their snacks delivered straight to your door. So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself,

use the code FACTUALLY for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code FACTUALLY for $15 off your first order on Boxu.com. I don't know the truth. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's all right. That's OK. I don't know anything.

Hello, and welcome to Factually, I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show again. You know, the climate situation is very bad. In order to stop a laundry list of dire consequences, we need to keep the rise in temperature to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, higher than pre-industrial times. And currently, we're on track for warming

by almost 2.7 degrees by 2100. Like I said, that is bad. And given this situation, given the stunning inaction we have seen for decades, you could be forgiven for writing it all off and finding a nice hole to bury yourself in as things get worse until you die. There's an attitude a lot of people have right now that basically says the world is ending and there's nothing we can do about it So let's all give up. But guess what? That is not true. The world is not ending It is going to exist tomorrow Whether it's better or worse and you are gonna have to live in it and personally I'm too much of a fan of my life and of planet Earth itself to give up

I don't think it's an environmental position to say, oh, we're fucked, there's nothing we can do because there is always something we can do. The problem is figuring out what that is. And to answer that question, we need to understand clearly where we are, how we got here and just what is actually possible. What are the policies, approaches, and technologies

we can actually apply? It's not about optimism and it's not about pessimism. It's about understanding the reality of the world we live in and what we can actually do about it. And you know what? The best cure for despair is to grab a shovel and pitch the fuck in. And our guest today is gonna help us do that.

She is deep in the weeds on all of the data and she has written a deeply data informed book that we can use as a baseline to help us attack the challenges we face in creating a sustainable future. But before we get into it, I just wanna remind you that if you wanna support this show,

you can do so on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of this podcast. Ad free, we got a bunch of other every episode of this podcast. Ad free. We got a bunch of other great community features as well. And if you want to come see me on the road, if you like standup comedy, head to adamconover.net. Coming up soon, I'm heading to La Jolla, California,

San Jose, California, Indianapolis, a lot of other dates as well. Head to adamconover.net for tickets and tour dates. And now my guest today is Dr. Hannah Ritchie. She's a data scientist who works as a lead researcher and deputy editor of the indispensable website, Our World in Data, a researcher in global development at Oxford.

And she's the author of the new book, Not the End of the World, How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet. I know you're gonna love this conversation. Please welcome Dr. Hannah Ritchie. Hannah, thank you so much for being on the show. No, thanks very much for having me.

Looking forward to the conversation. Yeah, so you have a new book out called Not the End of the World. We're at a time where so many people talk about the world that we live in as though it's about to end. Oh, who knows if there'll even be another presidential election. Oh, who knows if a retirement,

oh, the world's not even gonna be around that long. We have this fatalism about almost everything, which is, I think, a very odd viewpoint to have. It's a very interesting thing about our time that so many people feel that way. But it really seems seems to stem, first of all, from the climate crisis that we've you know, I was brought up knowing, you know, watching kids cartoons about how climate change is coming and we're ruining the planet and we have to do something.

And then for the last, you know, 30 plus years of my life, I've watched very little be done. And so I understand why people would say, okay, well, that means we're screwed because I was told about this crisis as a kid and we're still not doing as much as we should be. And therefore, you know, we're gonna be a member of the last generation,

you hear people say. You have a new book out called Not the End of the World, which takes the opposite viewpoint in its title. I love that. Tell me about it. Why do you have that view, that it's not the end of the world? Yeah, I mean, the title is called Not the End of the World,

and I think it matters how you see it. I mean, the book tackles seven big environmental problems. I think climate change is the big one that we think of, but we face a range of other big environmental problems as well. And I think the title is not, you know, oh, it's not the end of the world. This is not a big deal. No, it's a definitive. These are massive problems,

but we're going to make sure that this is not the end of the world because there are solvable problems. I mean, I think if we even if we just focus on the issue of climate change, I think, you know, coming from an environmental background, working in this area for years and you know, also speaking to other climate scientists in this area, it feels like we've done a very fast 180 from, you know, not that long ago, you know, the discussion around this was, you know, is it actually happening? Are humans actually causing it? We seem to have done like a 180 towards, oh, it's too late and now there's nothing we can do.

Right. And I think, you know, I think we're kind of suffering from this kind of whiplash of, you know, what happened in the last five to 10 years that we've done a complete 180 from almost semi-denial to it's too late and there's nothing we can do. So, you know, what I try to do in the book is lay out, yes, these are massive and urgent problems, and if we don't get our act together, the consequences will be really, really catastrophic.

But there is something we can do about it, and although we aren't making progress as fast as we would want, and we're not on track for where we need to be, we are actually making progress, and we can massively accelerate that if we make the right decisions now. Do you think the view that it's too late,

there's nothing we can do about it, is that another form of climate denialism? You say we've made a 180 from, oh, we're not doing it at all to it's too late. Is that just the new form of climate change denialism? I mean, I think maybe some people try to push that message because they think that it's helpful for the kind of climate denial message.

I mean, I think for some people, that's not their motivation. I think they genuinely just feel, you know, paralyzed and helpless in the massive problem. So I don't think it comes from the same place. I think the actions or the outcomes are very similar, right? Both extremes of it's not a problem or it's too late to do anything about it, both lead to the outcome of inaction, right? They both lead us to, you know, what on one side you don't take action because there's not a

problem to deal with in the first place. At the other extreme, you don't take action because it's pointless and if we're screwed then what's the point of doing anything anyway? So I think the outcomes of these two extremes can be the same, even if the intent behind them is not. Yeah, so you say we are making progress. What are examples of that? Let's try to front load the podcast episode with some good news. How about that?

Like, what is a reason for an optimistic viewpoint? So I think if you look at the trajectory we're currently on on climate change, it's not where we need to be. What is a reason for an optimistic viewpoint? So I think if you look at the trajectory we're currently on on climate change, it's not where we need to be. We're on track for between two and a half to three degrees of warming. Now that's way above our 1.5 degrees or two degrees target.

But if you were looking at where we were talking about we were headed a decade ago, it was three and a half to four degrees. So that's like a degree lower than trajectory we thought we were on a decade ago, you know, it was three and a half to four degrees. So there's like a degree lower than trajectory we thought we were on a decade ago. Now it's where we are is not acceptable, but if we can make that progress in a decade, why can we not make more progress to pull two and a half degrees down to two degrees? So there is a bit of a good news story there. I mean, I think the most dramatic and positive change for me has been that if you look a

decade ago, I was really pessimistic about where we were. Because if you looked at any of the solutions we need to tackle climate change, I mean, fundamentally is we need to move away from fossil fuels to low carbon energy. The problem a decade ago is that the forms of low carbon energy we had were way more expensive than fossil fuels. So no one was going to deploy this at scale because it was way, way too expensive. Over the last 10 years or so, the price of solar has fallen by 90%, the price of wind has fallen by 70%, the price of batteries and electric vehicles has fallen by about 90%, which means that

the low carbon energy sources we need are now cheaper than fossil fuels. So you don't no longer have this, you know, this trade off of, you know, should we sacrifice the economy to tackle climate change? Because they're now aligned as actually just in a short term economic interest as well, to go for the low carbon option. And I think for me, that's been the most dramatic change and the most dramatic progress we've made. Now it's really about building the stuff, right? We've pulled the prices down. Now it's about building this stuff out as quickly as we can. What I think is interesting about the answer, and you hear that a lot from,

you know, folks who are really following what's happening with the climate, that the price of renewable or non-fossil fuel energy has gone down so much, that's hugely good news. What I think is interesting about that is it really is relying on the market, on capitalism, right? The price is low and therefore the good thing is going to happen. I guess what I'm curious about is what is our ability to do things that the market does not demand?

For instance, if I look at transportation here in the US, let me just give you a pessimistic case or a pessimistic example. A huge amount of our emissions come from transportation and a huge of that is because of single occupancy, passenger cars, people driving two and four in these giant pieces of metal. And if we had, for instance,

massively expanded public transportation in the United States, high-speed rail, for instance, massively expanded public transportation in the United States, high-speed rail, passenger rail, subways, et cetera, even just increased buses, we could massively reduce emissions. But instead, we're putting all of our change into electric vehicles, which are a marginal improvement. We're changing the engine of the car, right?

And we're pushing the emissions to the power plant, but that'll be an improvement. However, even that has stalled in the last year, because A, the government has not built a massive series of electric vehicle charges everywhere. But B, you know, the car industry is kind of like, ah, sure looks like consumers love the giant gas guzzling SUVs

That's what they prefer to buy and who are we to tell them to buy something different? People want to buy giant people don't even want small electric cars when they're buying electric cars They're buying fucking huge ones that like take massively more energy to move around massively more energy to build etc and so it you know reducing the price and and et cetera. And so, you know, reducing the price and hoping, all right, if we just make the slope go in the right direction, all the water will run the right way and we'll be moving in the right direction. That's great. But it also seems we have to have an ability to do things that are that are counter to what is cheap and available, right? And do we have the ability to do that? I know that's a big question to land on you early in the podcast, but it's

what you made me think of. No, it's not. And I largely agree with you. I mean, there's a couple of points there. I think I disagree that an electric car is just like a marginal improvement on a petrol or diesel one. I mean, even a big electric car, if you look at, I mean, what's what there's always a debate of, is an electric car actually better on carbon than a petrol or diesel? I think what's true there is that the manufacturing of the car emits more carbon, right? Because it takes more energy to build the battery than you would have in a petrol or diesel car. But once you start driving it, you pay off the carbon debt very quickly.

So in the UK, for example, it pays off within two years for the average driver. And then from then on, the carbon emissions of the car are much lower. So you're talking about like a two-four up to two-four reduction. And that's great. But I do just want to toss in that almost everyone I know in the United States buys a new car every three years. So if you're paying it back in two years, or at least they're on a lease where they renew it every three years, so there's still that consumer behavior problem. But please keep going.

I think on that, I think the three years seems very, very sure. I mean, I think most people in the UK at least buy secondhand cars. I mean, the key point is that if they're buying a new car, their car they're selling will go to someone else that will be might be replacing a petrol or diesel car. So I think at the system they're selling will go to someone else that might be replacing a petrol or diesel car. So I think at the system level, it'll be better. But if you look at the emissions of an electric car, you're talking about around a two-forge reduction in emissions. And actually, that will get better over time, right? Countries are decarbonizing the electricity grid so that,

hopefully by 2035, for example, actually the running emissions of your electric car might be zero because the US has decarbonized its electricity grid. But I take your point that I think just leaving this for the markets to run won't get us there. I think what's also really key is the time scale on which this is needed. I think the economics of the energy transition are now just so good that we would just do this anyway, but we might do this over 60 or 70 years, and we don't have 60 or 70 years. We need to do this in a much faster timeframe, which means you do need to take the advantages of the free market economics, but also impose policy on top of that. I mean, even if you're looking at the really dramatic declines in the prices of solar,

for example, over the last 10 or 15 years, they were initially pushed by policy, right? Some countries very early on, you know, set up R&D, set up, you know, schemes to do this at a very high cost. And that has been like the first push that we needed in order to get these emissions out. So I think you do need this combination of policy to put, you know, accelerate these timescales. And you can also take advantage of the free market

economics of it as well. I really appreciate you pushing back on my rant about cars with the data that you have. And that was what I was hoping you pushing back my rant about cars with the data that you have. And that was what I was hoping you would do, because I think you sort of, I found a little bit of my own built-in pessimism and I loved the way that you spoke to it. Do you often get a lot of pushback

when you are spreading these messages? Is there a way in which the people that you're talking to, myself included, sometimes seem like we almost want to be pessimistic about this topic? Like we have a, maybe a built-in cynicism about it. A little bit. I think what I sometimes find is that for every solution we come up with,

there's a, yes, but there's always a counter of like why that solution won't work or why that solution is not good and I think that's very healthy like I think if we want to find good solutions we need to be highly critical of them right we need to work out what is the good solution what's effective what's not effective so we're putting our priorities and money and investment in the right places so I think we really need this this kind of critical lens to these solutions I think what I think for me of think we really need this this kind of critical lens to these solutions. I think what I think

for me of what's really critical in this energy transition and tackling climate change is that I think we are always hunting for the absolute perfect solution. We're looking for the solution that has no land use no minerals and zero carbon, you know, there's zero negative impacts whatsoever. And I mean, the reality is those solutions just don't exist. What we're looking for, and we need to do this quickly, we need to move away from fossil fuels quickly. So what we're looking for are solutions that are orders of magnitude better than fossil fuels.

And we're having them, we have them and we're developing them. And we need to work on the downsides of those and make sure we're not creating more damage by the solutions that we're bringing in. I think if we are to wait for the absolute perfect solution to come along, we'll just maintain the state's quota, right? We'll just keep burning fossil fuels and we won't be willing to move to anything else. I think we need to get a bit of the balance there where we acknowledge the downsides to some of these other technologies or other alternatives.

But we try to make the most of them and we go for this transition anyway. I think that's a really good point. And it's something I think about a lot is when we are trying to change the world for the better, not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, but while at the same time, maintaining a little bit of skepticism and criticality, because there are also folks who will sell a solution as being better than it is when we could be asking for a little bit more. And that's why, look, I'm a transportation wonk. I care about that a lot.

And in my view, if we're rethinking, especially the US's transportation system, if we only change the engines that are in the vehicles, that's a missed opportunity, because there's a much bigger win to be had, there's a better society to be built, and we shouldn't expect, we shouldn't accept, hey, there's a lot of people who wanna sell us

a bunch of fancy new cars, you know? And if we do more, we will have an even better outcome. But at the same time, I'm not one of those people who's like, ah, it's expensive, you know, it costs a lot of carbon to build the battery, so fuck it, right? Like, I don't think, there's a medium to be found there, right? I don't think everyone should go out and buy a brand new electric car every three years.

I think that's excessive. But I do think, hey, if you can get a used electric car and, you know, you've driven your previous car into the ground and it's time to up, like, go ahead, et cetera, right? There is that, There is that medium. I'm very curious though, you talk about how we need to find new forms of energy that are many orders of magnitude better than fossil fuels.

There are some who would say, well, what if instead of finding a great new form of energy, what if we cut back? What if we just didn't waste so much? What if we didn't use so much? What if we didn't insist on so much? What if we didn't use so much? What if we didn't insist on, you know, so much growth, etc. This is sort of the de-growth movement. There's a lot of folks who have that sort of perspective. What if rather than more we had less? And I'm curious what you think about that point of view.

I mean, I think there is some room for that. I think where I'm skeptical is I think trying to convince people to do that is very, very difficult. And I, you know, I mean, we will, we would, we will struggle with that type of message. I mean, to come back to the policy point earlier, of course, there are things that you could do to like put a cap on what we would consider very excessive consumption, right? If massive SUVs are a problem, okay, tax really big SUVs. Um, if, if really frequent flying is, is, is a challenge, then, then, then set a tax on really frequent flying. I think, I think you need to be quite careful of those policies that

you don't get lots of pushback. You may get pushback if you were to put a high tax on, you know, the first flight that someone takes in a given year. You might be able to do it at much higher levels of consumption, someone's fifth flight of the year, you start to put high tax on. So I think that- I'm a standup comedian.

I fly, I take maybe 40 flights a year. That was that last year. I easily am on the highest level of frequent flyer loyalty bonuses because it's what I do for a living. And you know what? I think I would be okay being taxed on that because I'm doing it to make money.

That's how I make a living. And it's something like, if I'm using the system that much, I would be happy if I knew that, some amount of money that I was spending was going towards ameliorating the climate harms of the flying, but you're right, I cannot just say,

hey, what if I cut back in flying a little bit? Because it's literally how I make a living. And I think a lot of folks are in the same situation. It's very difficult to ask people, hey, what if you just cut back? What if we all just cut back and have smaller lives where we're less prosperous, having less fun, enjoying life less?

That's just sort of not a great pitch to people for how to solve a problem. Yeah, I don't think it's a great pitch. And I think if that's gonna be your message, I don't think we'll get very far very quickly. I mean, I'm not against reductions in what we might call excess consumption. I think there are potential ways to do that.

I think what would be difficult is like, how do you set, how do we agree on what a level of what excessive is, right? What excessive is to you is not the same as what excessive is to me. I think there is another key part of this, which is that if we want to reduce energy consumption, a really good way to do that is just to decarbonize. I think we can talk about behavior change and that's fine, but I think we're also underestimating how much we can reduce energy use just by getting rid of fossil fuels and by electrifying our energy systems. So if you look

at, you know, if you blow up like a diagram of the US energy system today from like the fossil fuels that are burned and where that actually goes towards providing people what we call energy services. So that's like heating your home or lighting your home or you know, the wheels turning in your car. The majority of that energy is wasted along the way. And that's because when you burn fossil fuels, most of it goes to waste heat. It doesn't actually go towards, you know, actually giving you the power that you need. Right. Which means that if you were to take fossil fuels out of the system, you would get rid of a lot of the energy use without taking anything away from the energy services or the final consumption.

So your behaviors could stay exactly the same if you wanted to, but you would need much, much less energy in the system. And that just comes from getting rid of fossil fuels and then electrifying stuff like transport, for example. So if you take your gasoline car, for every dollar of gasoline you put in it, only 20 cents actually goes towards turning the wheels and moving you. The other 80 cents is just wasted. Whereas an electric car is almost the opposite. So every dollar of electricity you put in, only 20 cents is wasted. And around 80 cents goes towards turning the wheels.

So actually to drive the same distance an electric car of the same size, you might need three to four times less energy. So your behavior hasn't changed, but you've actually massively reduced your energy consumption. So I think we also underestimate our ability to reduce energy use just by doing the decarbonization bit. And then you can talk about individual behavior changes as a way to also supplement that. Okay, you're really smacking down my argument again about electric cars being a marginal improvement. It's still marginal, but it's a very large margin. I absolutely grant you that. And I agree, it's really important to look at where the actual waste is. If we're talking about flying,

rather than me flying around to make a living, we could look at, for instance, private jets. We could look at where the largest waste is. Maybe, you know, certain celebrities don't need to take a 15 minute flight from one airport to another. They could take a goddamn cab, you know, etc. OK, I want to talk about some of the other crises that you mentioned. I just want to ask you one more question on this first about the price going down, because there's also a phenomenon. When things get more efficient and the price goes down,

we do tend to use more of them. I think about, you know, LED lights, right? Which are massively more efficient than every other form of light ever made. But the result is that people are using, and businesses especially, are using a lot more LED lights because, hey, guess what? We can now have 10 times the lights for the same cost or whatever. So why not leave them running all the time? Because they're

just LEDs. That sort of effect, you know, is that at all an issue in, you know, hey, the price of moving, the price of heating your home goes down, the price of lighting goes down, the price of all these things go down. Does that just mean we'll use more of them, not less? I think there's two angles to this. I think one angle is looking at a large part of the world where a big constraint is just they cannot afford energy. People that don't have much heating or lighting or aircon. And actually,

just a big, you know, everyday struggle for them is like, how do I get access to energy? And for those people, you know, a reduction in energy prices is a massive benefit, right? They might get energy for the first time. They may get, you know, vital energy services that we have enjoyed for a long time. So I think for them, energy, low energy prices is just a benefit. And actually, we should be supportive of the fact that their energy use might increase because it will massively increase. That's a great point. Thank you. And then I think, I think when we're talking about, for example, people in the

U S or the UK, like richer countries, I think this effect that you describe is, is what we call the Jevons paradox. Um, whereas the price of something falls or as efficiency improves, you use more of it. Now, there are a range of studies trying to look at how big this, we call it the rebound effect, how big the rebound is. And most tend to find that there is some rebound, right? So you do undo some of the improvements that you get in efficiency, for example, but they rarely rebound more than 100%. So they might rebound 50%.

So rather than getting the full 100% of the efficiency gains, because you use more, you might only get 50%. So it's not as good as you might initially expect just from the numbers, but it's often not so much that you use more energy than you did before. So LEDs is a good example where people, after getting LEDs, you did just use more lights or you left them on or you might have installed more

in your home, but actually energy use for lighting in the US has still gone down. So the rebound wasn't 100%, but we did undo some of those gains because we use more. Yeah. Well, and I was thinking about reading studies about light pollution that like light pollution has, if you're an astronomer or someone who cares about bats,

like you might not be happy about LEDs because we're using more, but I'm glad to hear that the energy use has gone down. I love knowing the name of that, the Jervin's paradox. I hadn't heard that before. Jevins, yeah. Oh, Jevins. Yeah, Jevins paradox.

That's really cool. This is great. I love that I keep standing up these arguments for you and you keep knocking them down so ably. You're my favorite kind of guest. You say that climate change is only one of many types of environmental problem that we have facing only one of many types of environmental problem that we have facing us. What are some of the others?

I mean, I think another big one is air pollution, where I mean, globally estimates, there are a range of estimates of how many people die prematurely from air pollution every year, but they're all in the millions. And the World Health Organization, for example, estimates that there's around seven million premature deaths every year from air pollution, which is a massive deal. And there's two problems with air pollution there. One is what we call indoor air pollution. And that's people typically on much lower incomes where actually the only sources of energy they have are like wood or charcoal. And they burn these in their home for heating or cooking fuels, and then they inhale the

smoke. And that's really, really bad for human health. So they have millions of deaths from that. And then we have millions of deaths from outdoor air pollution. So that's stuff from our cars, power plants, for example, industry. And again, millions of people die there prematurely every year from that source of pollution. So for me, if you were to quantify,

deaths from environmental problems today, air pollution would be very much top of the list. And it's something we kind of have in the back of our mind, but don't really think about. Yeah. I mean, it's completely insane that when we look at the toll of our energy system, it's one that we don't often keep in mind because it's sort of like an invisible death

toll. Like, again, you know, transportation causing emissions. Even if you just look at deaths from our transportation system, we think of car crashes, people being hit by buses or whatever. We don't think about the number of people who are dying of respiratory illnesses that they got because they live 800 feet from a freeway, as many people do here in Los Angeles where I live. I mean, there's like some federal regulation

that says you're not supposed to build a home with an X number of feet of a freeway. And in Los Angeles, something like, I don't know, a huge percentage, like 40% of homes are in violation of this because we have freeways everywhere. There's just so much air pollution. And so people are dying left and right of respiratory diseases, but that doesn't hit the news, right?

It doesn't say, hey, you know, a five-year-old child with asthma killed, or, you know, a person dies at 65 when they would have died at 90 because of air pollution in the same way that a car crash does. And yet those deaths are caused by the same thing. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, this is another what we call an

externality of burning fossil fuels. And that works in the same way as climate, you know, the CO2 emissions and the damages from climate change are like an externality, a kind of a cost to society, a social cost and environmental cost that isn't factored into the price of fossil fuels when you burn them. And it's the same for air pollution. It's exactly the same thing. This is a kind of hidden externality that we just don't really think about. I mean, I think that, again, like I like to highlight that these problems are solvable problems, they're tractable problems. I mean, if you were to look across a range of especially high income countries, we have actually made progress on reducing air pollution over the last few decades.

The US Clean Air Act has been really successful in reducing emissions of these gases. The same in the UK, we've seen a really rapid decline. There's still an unacceptable number of people dying from this, but we can make progress when we put the right policies in place and we make these transitions. I guess the key challenge there is that most people dying from air pollution today live in middle-income countries that have industrialized very, very quickly, but they've done that by burning fuels, especially very close to city centers. Delhi, for example. Beijing was one, you know, if you were to go to Beijing a decade or so ago,

really, really heavily polluted. Over the last decade, it's made amazing progress in reducing air pollution and added years onto the lives of its citizens. So I like to highlight that these are massive problems, but they are also tractable ones and they are ones that we can make progress on. And what are some of the other environmental challenges?

I love hearing this. I love hearing a problem and then a solution right after it. I mean, I think a big one is our food systems. I think people massively underestimate the environmental impacts of our food systems. I mean, I think there's almost no environmental problem where food isn't either a big player

or completely dominates the impacts. I mean, it contributes around between a quarter and a third of greenhouse gas emissions for climate change. Wow. You know, it's the leading driver of deforestation. It's the leading driver of biodiversity loss. It's the biggest user of fresh water. I mean, I think when we think about fresh water, you know, we think about, you know, taking a shower

or brushing our teeth, it's farming is the biggest user of water. It's the leading driver of water pollution. You know, so there's a really long list of environmental problems where food and what we eat and how we produce it really sits at the center of that. Yeah, and so how do we solve this? Because there are, I mean, look, some people will, some people are watching this or listening to this going,

vegan, we should all be vegan, right? And what a wonderful world that would be. And I've eaten vegan for long periods for many times in my life. And yet I do not believe that we are going to solve this problem by convincing every single person to go vegan one by one every single person to go vegan one by one in the way that a religious proselytizer might. The folks who are doing that are doing

the Lord's work. Good on you, but I don't think we're going to solve the problem that way. And I also think that eating organic, eating local, a small scale farm is very nice for folks who can afford it, but we need a system, a food system that can feed, what, seven billion people at this point, eight billion we're on our way to? Eight, excuse me, thank you. I always forget how many billions. Because when I was a kid, let me just say,

one of the fucking weirdest things in my entire life is I remember being in high school and being told there are six billion people on earth. And then I remember, like 10 years later, it was like, hey, now it's seven. And I was like, how, there's a billion more people than there were when I was just like, when I was like watching DVDs

and taking the bus home from school. Like, how did, what a massive change. And yet everything looks the same to me when I'm walking down the street. It's bizarre. And now we have eight. So we've added a quarter as many people, or a third as many people as already existed when I was a kid, in the last couple decades. We gotta feed all of them. So, you know, how the hell can we have a food system that feeds these people food that they wanna eat

without destroying the environment? So I think there's two big solutions or things we need to do here. I think the first one is we need to produce food very, very efficiently. And by that, we need high crop yields. Now if you go back to the 1960s or the 1970s, the big crisis at that point

and what people were talking about was the world running out of food. They saw this really rapid increase in the global population and basically the conclusion was there's just no way that we will be able to feed everyone. The Population Bomb was the book that came out in 1968 by Paul R. Erlich, and that predicted, you know, just we're just going to have so many millions of people dying from famine and just wouldn't be able to feed everyone. And that hasn't come true. And that hasn't come true because we had what we call the green revolution, where we just see crop yields across the world just skyrocket. You know, you're getting doubling, tripling, quadrupling of crop yields, which means that despite having, you know, billions more people, the amount of food we

produce per person has still gone up. You know, we've seen a massive increase. I mean, going forward, that's also really key. What happens if you increase crop yields is you obviously get more food. But the key point is you, you grow on less land, which means you need to cut down less forests. You need to, you know, go into less wild habitats, you can, you can use much less land for farming. So that's number one. And then number two is just, we just need to see massive global dietary change. The biggest impact

by far of our food systems is, is, is meat and dairy consumption. And we do need to find a way of reducing that. But I completely agree with you that I think the message of we just all need to go vegan tomorrow is just like not gonna work. And actually- So how do we, I'm fascinated to hear you say that then because I agree with both points, right?

And so how do we square that circle? How do we reduce, and by the way, in the last couple years, there's been a huge amount of interest in meat replacement foods. There was like a brief fad for them in the United States. For a couple of years, I was buying Impossible Burgers and Beyond Burgers, and now I never wanna eat one of those things for as long as I live.

Like I ate so many Impossible Burgers that I can like picture the taste, like and it repulses me at this point. And, you know, God willing, they come up with a different version that tastes a little different and is a little bit more of an actual replacement. But, you know, unfortunately that industry turned out

to not have the results that it promised investors and the public. So yeah, what do we do to reduce meat consumption if all those things we sort of are agreed might not be the answer? I mean, I think I should say that I think food is way harder to tackle than energy. I mean, on energy, I think people, for the most part,

they just want cheap energy coming out of the socket, right? And if you can provide that for them, they don't really care where it comes from. Yeah. Um, for food, people really care about what they eat. And it's like a, such a strong part of the identity and their freedom, right. Try to tell someone what to eat and they will immediately push back, which is why I think this is a much harder problem to tackle. I mean, I think the, I mean, I think the key thing there is, um, trying to

sell it to someone as an all or nothing. Like you either eat meat or you don't eat meat is not going to work. Right. I mean, you need to find a way of reducing meat consumption or giving people options to reduce meat consumption and starting there. And then they might progress towards, you know, a more and more plant-based diet over time. But I think you're not going to get that overnight. I mean, I think for me, I think we will need to rely on solutions that produce almost complete

mimics of meat that we're currently eating. I guess I'm probably pretty pessimistic that people just accept, you know, we'll just eat beans and lentils and that'll be fine. I mean, for most people, they basically want a substitute for meat, which means we need to produce meat without the animal. And there are innovations coming through on this. The problem is that they are currently too expensive and we haven't scaled them yet. Why are you so upset? Yeah, I've read accounts of the current state of lab-grown meat where they're like sort of making like a lattice of animal cells, like very painstakingly in a lab and like one on top of the other

and like, okay, we've made the perfect artificial steak and it only costs $100,000 a pound or whatever. It's like encouraging work, but it's not really close to market yet. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, I think the costs are falling pretty rapidly still. I mean, yeah, a hundred thousand dollars would have been, you know, the price, you know, maybe a decade or so ago, but they've fallen quite fast since then. I actually think on cost, they might be competitive, you know, in the next five or so years. Really?

I mean, the scalability will be the problem. It's like how you then take that, you know, really fine you created process and scale that up, you know, to produce hundreds of millions of tons of meat. I mean, that will be the big problem rather than the economics of it. Yeah. And we also have the problem with the food system of people's health. I mean, as you say, uh, since, you know, the population bomb was written in the last 50 years,

there's been this enormous explosion of food production, which is great sort of demographically, right? If you're looking at, okay, we produced enough food for all of these 8 billion people. But if you look at at least the dietary health of people in the United States, it is poor. And you have to lay some of that at the feet of our food system.

It's not people need to make better choices. It's people need better choices in the supermarket. The food that is being rammed down people's throats is not what it should be because of, I would say the pressures of capitalism on these food producers to make food more cheaply and et cetera. And so, we have this explosion

in the number of calories we're creating, but they're maybe not the calories that are best for people's health. And I could imagine something similar happening if we have our meat substitute. Like we probably need, you know, some amount of regulations in place or somebody thinking about, like, let's make sure we shape this system so that we're not producing, you know, we're feeding people and we're also not feeding them shit. Right? Yeah, no, I agree.

I think the quality of the meat substitutes or, you know, whatever we replace it with will be really important. I think, and to some extent, that could be another lever to encourage people to move away from particular products. Like I think as I was saying, I think the transition in food is a much harder sell for people. But what people really care about is their health.

So if we can produce products that are one, more environmentally friendly and also better for people's health, that could be another lever to encourage people to make that transition. I mean, there are a range of studies looking at, you know, the, the health benefits of moving to a more plant-based diet doesn't necessarily mean a completely plant-based diet, but a more plant-based diet. And they tend to result in slightly better health outcomes for people. And that might not be because necessarily they're eating less meat, but I think often when people transition to a more plant-based diet,

they automatically increase the diversity of foods that they're eating, right? Like they diversify different meals, they eat a bit more veg, a bit more fruit, a bit more of various different foods. So overall, the quality of their diet might improve and diversify. So I think that the health lens of this

is also really, really critical. Yeah, and when, I think you can make the argument to people, hey, you're, if you eat less meat, if you diversify your diet, you're going to be healthier. That is an appealing message to people. You know, people want to feel better about what they eat. And I think if we sort of abandon the, the monkish devotion

to I'm never, never again shall meet past my lips. And that's fine for those who want to make that moral commitment. I think that's a wonderful moral commitment to make and I support it. But if we can focus on reducing diversifying for everybody in general, we can make huge, huge gains without requiring people to,

requiring people to give up so much if they don't want to. Is that sort of what it is? Yeah, exactly. I think for a lot of people, even that first step would seem overwhelming. You know, how on earth do I eat a vegan diet? Like, what do I eat? And actually think as you gradually, as people are gradually exposed towards, you know, eating a bit less meat or substituting, you know, one meal, you know, a day or a day a week for a more plant based diet, they then start to learn stuff that they can eat and oh, I actually quite like this substitute or I like this different meal that I've made. I mean, then they become more comfortable with it over time and may be able

to take it further. I think the overwhelm initially of, okay, I suddenly have to eat a completely vegan diet, you know, really puts people off. So I think we need to, to take people on baby steps along the way. And then they might end up a vegan diet at the end of the road. But I think, most people will not jump immediately to that. Yeah. I mean, my own, my own thing was like 10 years ago, I read a book by the cookbook author, Mark Bittman, called Vegan Before 6, where he's like,

here's my diet plan, I eat vegan before 6 p.m. and then I have whatever I want for dinner. And I did that for a year or two, and then I just sort of learned, oh, here's a bunch of vegan meals I can make myself. And so now I eat vegan quite often. I'm not a permanent vegan, but like, you know, more often than not, I'm like, oh, let me try

to have a vegan meal today. And I think getting that sort of muscle memory into people so that they know how to do it enables them to make those choices, et cetera. Now, vegans in the comments, I know you're yelling, everyone should just go vegan. It's fine, like keep doing what you're doing. But we are trying to get as many people

under the tent as possible. And having a little bit of allowance for where people are currently at, I think helps us do that, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, I've had this dilemma myself. So I'm now a vegan and I wasn't, you know, three years or so ago.

And I've actually questioned over the years, am I more effective in this role as a vegan or as someone that's not a vegan, but strongly encourages, you know, meat reduction? Like I sometimes have this kind of block of, if I, you know, people find out I'm a vegan, you know, they don't take my message seriously or they think I'm like way too extreme or, you know, they can't visualize how they would get from where they are to where I am. Whereas if I was someone that, you know, didn't eat meat that often, maybe didn't eat beef, ate some chicken or fish, they might find that more relatable.

And therefore they might actually feel like there was a shorter gap between where they are and where I am. I mean, in the end, I just went vegan anyway, but I have questioned, you know, what's the most effective communication strategy there or where to place yourself to reach a bigger cohort of people. Yeah, it is funny that if you're talking to a vegan and you're feeling bad about yourself and then they reveal,

I eat fish sometimes and you're like, oh, oh thank God. Oh, okay, all right, okay. So there's some hope for me yet, you know, like it's just having a little bit of flex, like makes people a little bit relieved. So I really love that we're making progress in so many areas. I am curious though, are there any areas where we're putting a lot of effort

into reducing our carbon emissions that are not so effective? That are things that, hey, we should direct our efforts elsewhere. Are there any current initiatives that you are a skeptic about? I mean, I think on climate change specifically, I mean, I think the issue there is I think there's a lot

of people that are really well intentioned. They want to make a difference. They want to cut their carbon footprint, but they don't have good information to base that on. And they often misplace their effort. And the issue there is that they do the stuff that has a really tiny impact or sometimes a negative impact, and then they miss the really big stuff. So when you

look, for example, if you look at surveys, you know, asking people, you know, what's the best thing you can do for the environment or the best thing you can do to cut your common footprint, they mentioned stuff like recycling, or you know, reusing a plastic bag or turning off the lights. And these are fine to do, do them, but they're small in the magnitude of things. And actually they miss the stuff like adopting a more plant-based diet,

or they even miss stuff like switching to electric car. So they're focusing on the really tiny stuff and putting effort in there, and then missing the really big stuff. And what I think was really key is if we're to have a hope of tackling this, you know, we're past the stage of the little stuff, right? We need to be focusing on the big stuff. So I think that's the issue that people have is, is also often misplaced

effort when there's actually a list of, you know, maybe five big things that really matter and then the rest is more like around an error. Yeah. Well, recycling is such a contentious one because a lot of people have an awareness that, recycling, at least how it's practiced in the US is in many ways a bit of a PR attempt by the plastics industry to distract

from the waste that they caused. Hey, if we put that little triangle on the thing and say it's recyclable, then people will think, oh, it's not so bad to buy one and it'll remove the guilt from them and then we'll shift the burden of being responsible onto the consumer.

Now, I believe all that is true. I know all that is true. I've studied it and done content on it myself, but that doesn't stop me from throwing all that shit in the blue bin because hey, why not? If some of it's being recycled, whatever, I don't stress out about it too much. But I think that that breeds a cynicism in people

that hey, these solutions that were being presented are capitalist schemes by people who are trying to get us to buy more. And I don't know, I think that is what leads a lot of people to say, oh, we're never gonna solve this problem unless we do something about our economic system overall, that we change its structure.

And that we have a rapacious economic system that is gobbling everything up, that always wants more, demands endless growth, mines the planet for resources, mines our labor to reduce it to its lowest possible cost and is just a fire that's consuming the planet until it's all gone. That's a very apocalyptic view,

but I'm curious what you think about our economic system itself and how it contributes to the problem or if we can actually solve it under capitalism. I mean, I think that was a lot. I like to give a lot at this point of the conversation. I'm saying you're a big fan of capitalism. No, I think I think I think those are all very valid points.

I mean, I think it's very fair to say that capitalism has got us into this mess. Yeah. Or at least has played a massive role has got us into this mess. Yeah. Or at least has played a massive role in getting us into this mess. I think you can still make the argument that it can play some role in getting us out of it now, or at least another way I'd frame it is that to me, I'm not sure we have a choice at this stage of trying to utilize some of the positives of capitalism, which, you know, we discussed earlier, the kind of free market economics of, of, uh, energy costs and technological change. I think that's like one benefit of this.

There are obviously still massive downsides. The question is, can you, um, garner the benefits of the system, but also try to address and pull down some of the downsides of the system? To me, that seems more realistic than deciding, we're just going to wrap up the system and build a new one. Especially on the time skills that we're talking about here, right? We're talking about tackling this, you know, we need to really get moving on. I mean, we should have got moving on this 20 years ago, but now we really need to get moving on this. And we're talking about, you know, decarbonizing or electricity grids in the UK or the US in five to 10 years. And, and I'm skeptical that we can tear down an economic system and build a new one on

that time scale. Maybe if we're talking about this over 70 years, then we might have a way of working on our economic system first and then deciding how we tackle our environmental problems later. So I think we are in some sense are stuck in the economic system that we're in, but that doesn't mean we need to accept all of the aspects of it or just accept it as the status quo. I think there are things we can do within that system to utilize the benefits and try to push down some of the major downsides of it. I agree with you entirely.

I mean, I'm a critic of our economic system and I agree that capitalism has gotten us into this mess and I'm a person who is constantly wanting to envision something better. However, I don't think that we can, we have time to wait. I don't think we have time to say, hey, let's figure out the economic system first and then deal with climate change.

We can do both things at once. And we can be realists about the world that we live in and try to make the changes that we need to make in that world under the world that we live in and try to make the changes that we need to make in that world under the system that we're in as we also try to envision a better system and build it. And I do take issue when people say, ah, that's, as people are probably gonna say in the comments of this video when we post it on YouTube,

capitalism did this, we need to uproot capitalism. Yes, and we also need to, we need to uproot capitalism. Yes, and we also need to, we need to actually solve the problem that we actually face in the limited amount of time that we have. And it is not an either or problem, it is an and, and, and, and problem. So thank you so much for that.

Yeah, I agree. And I think, I mean, I think the argument is often, well, we're just gonna take the current system, energy system, for example, that we're in, and we're just subbing it for a different one. And it's just going to be just as bad, and it's going to be so as extractive as it was before. And again, I think this comes a little bit back to these kind of perfect solutions, this hunt for perfect solutions.

I mean, I think we need to be realistic that, you know, this is not about maintaining the status quo, but like this, the rebuilding our energy system is, you know, the biggest, ultimately one of the biggest challenges we're going to face. And we're just going to see really dramatic changes here. So I don't think we should underestimate how, you know, big this transformation is that we're asking, even in the food system, right? We're trying to completely transform our food system, completely transform our energy system, our industry, our transport systems. So these are really kind of revolutionary changes. I think we should underplay that. But on the kind of extractive component, I think, you know, we're trying to move away from a

fossil fuel system, which is just take, take, take, right? When you extract fossil fuels, you burn them, they're done, right? You need to extract more. You do this every year. And there we're talking about extracting 15 billion tons of fossil fuels every year. Now we move to low carbon energy, for example. We will also need to extract minerals. That's completely true. And we need to be conscious of the environmental impact of that. But what's key is that we are talking about, you know, orders of magnitude less minerals, you know, talking about tens to hundreds of millions of tons compared to 15 billion tons of

fossil fuels every single year. I think the key point of this transition as well is that you don't need to extract this year after year after year, right? You can start to then recycle those minerals, you know, at the end of a solar panel's life or a wind turbine and put that back into the system. So we will need a ramp up period initially, because we just need to build lots of new stuff, but we'll hopefully reach a position where a lot of that can be recycled and we get to more of a circular economy approach that people discuss

rather than just an extractive take, take, take one. Yeah, and what I love about that is that you're depicting us as taking a step towards the world we want. If you're someone listening to or watching this podcast who says capitalism is extractive and that's something I hate about it, well, you're describing an energy system that is far less extractive, right?

That is pulling less out of the earth, ultimately, especially if we're able to, as you say, reuse some of the minerals that we extract. And so that is addressing part of the problem that you are trying to address. We're not like ripping out the whole thing and replacing it in a day, but we are taking a step towards the world that we want. Um, which I think

is really important. You know, we talk about many issues on this show, whether we're talking about, um, you know, the criminal justice system, right? Some folks are prison abolitionists, police abolitionists. I'm like, Hey, Hey, I don't disagree with that. Uh, with the world that you're envisioning, let's take steps in the meantime to build forms of justice that are alternatives to policing so we can show people how it works and reduce our reliance on a day-to-day basis rather than just focusing on the far off horizon.

We also need to take steps towards that world today under the system that we live in. And that's what you're talking about doing, which is why I love it so much. Are you ever though, like, you know, is there ever a pessimist bone in your body about it? Like, do you ever, are there, you know, is there a world that, you know,

you see us possibly heading towards that you're trying to steer us away from? Because sometimes I do know that the optimist's point of view, especially for a climate activist, it can be a little bit of a strategic choice, right? We need to be optimistic in order to do these things. And therefore it makes sense to take a strategy of optimism and not be public about the fear

that's in the back of your head of like, oh, what if we don't do these things, right? So, are you still powered by fear to some degree or are you really like confident, hey, all of these great things are going to happen if we all keep pulling? No, definitely. Like the fear is still there.

I guess I still lose a lot of sleep over climate change. I guess I just try to balance that fear and in some sense, anxiety, also with the optimism that there is something we can do about it. Like I'm very clear always in my messaging and also in the book that, you know, the changes I describe in the book are not inevitable in any way, right?

I don't know if we will do it. I can't force us to do it, but they are possible. And I think there's a massive opportunity there. And I think what we need at the moment is a positive vision of the world we could live in. As almost as a North star. I think there's a lot of the environmental messaging is almost built around damage limitation.

And it's, you know, the world will inevitably worse in the future. We just decide how bad it's going to be. Um, and I think actually we need a bit more of a positive vision of, no, actually the future can be better. It will not inevitably better, but there is something better that we can work towards. How do we go from where we are now to where we would want to be?

So that's what I try to do with my messaging is try to present a bit more of a positive vision of where we're trying to go to, but also make clear that none of this is inevitable. And if we stay on our current path, I'm very scared about what the future will look like because we're not on a good one. But I just have some level of optimism that we can get our act together and bend that curve closer to the temperature changes that we want and are achievable. So give me a little bit of that positive version

of the, or vision of the future, right? Like paint us a little bit of a picture of, you know, here I am, like I said, I, you know, 30 years ago, I was watching those cartoons, right? Captain Planet and whatnot. Today, I'm in my forties, I was watching those cartoons, Captain Planet and whatnot. Today, I'm in my 40s, I'm like, hey, we didn't do as much as I feel like we should have done. But what is the world that I could live in when I'm 80,

if we do all the things that you say are possible? So if we get our act together and tackle this, we won't, I don't think we'll limit warming to 1.5 degrees. I think that's a very laudable goal, but I think we have kind of left it too late to achieve that. But I think the key point there is, 1.5 degrees is not a cliff, right?

We need to fight for temperature ranges above that because with each incremental rise in temperature, we increase risks. So I think two degrees is still within our grasp if we really get our act together. So we could limit warming to below two degrees. We will see increased impacts there, but there are things that we can do to limit a lot of those impacts. So we'll live in a world where hopefully the majority of the world

have access to energy. They have higher standards of living than they do today. Energy is very cheap. We don't have these massive energy price shocks that we have in a fossil fuel system because Putin invades Ukraine like we've seen in the last few years. So we have more stable and low energy prices. People have access to the energy services they need. We have much more livable cities that aren't completely governed by cars on the road. There are better communities where we can interact. We have cycle lanes, public transport, you know, people are walking, people can sit outdoors, they can dine outdoors. We have clean air to breathe so people aren't dying from air pollution. You know, we don't kill, you know, more than 70 billion animals every year for

food, but we still have, you know, really tasty, nutritious diets. We've got zero deforestation because we've brought that to an end. Um, and we have, you we have these amazing wild landscapes coming back and wild animals coming back. That is a beautiful vision. And you feel very confident that we can get there. You at least feel optimistic that we can get there. Yeah, these goals are completely achievable.

Whether we do them is up to us. And I mean us, at a very large collective level, but they're there for us. And I think the key point, and what I try to communicate in my messaging is that this transition is not a sacrifice. I mean, often this environmental stuff is posed as a sacrifice. It's, you know, oh, we'll just have to cut back or we'll just have to sacrifice this in order to preserve the future. And that's fine.

That actually, that messaging is fine if that's the correct, you know, notation, and the correct idea and correct message there. And maybe we should just sacrifice, but we actually don't need to sacrifice because the changes we're making are opportunities. So we have opportunities in the short term and also leads to good benefits over the long term. And I think we need to reframe our messaging here away from sacrifice towards one of opportunity

and abundance. Yeah, it's the classic scarcity mentality versus abundance mentality that we do not have to have worse lives. We do not have to have worse lives. We do not have to live in a worse world in order to prevent these outcomes. Actually, everything will be better. We will all have more healthy, more vibrant,

more prosperous lives if we were to make this transition. I also, I love the name of your book so much, not the end of the world, because it is such a deep philosophical thing that people think the world is ending, and it's not possible for it to end, right? Like you are, unless you personally die, right? You are gonna wake up in a world that exists,

and it is gonna be better or worse, you know? And you are gonna have to live in it. And you have some amount of control, we all have some amount of control over what that world is based on our actions today. And no matter how bad things are, we have the opportunity to do something that is going to make the world

that we're gonna wake up in tomorrow a little bit better, a little bit worse. And so, and when I think about it that way, it makes me realize this mentality that like the world is ending is nothing but a cop out. It's false and all it does is absolve you fictionally of that power. It takes power away from you to say that about the world.

Yeah, I think it's that extreme again. If you tell yourself that the world is doomed and it's too late to tackle these problems and it is the end of the world, then yeah, your reaction to that is, well, if it's over, then, you know, why should I take action anyway? You know, it won't make a difference. Maybe we should just, you know, enjoy the remaining of our lives that we have left because nothing we do now is going to change things. And that, again, I think that's a cop out because that's just not the reality. And that type of approach and that, you know, messaging is

not going to get us to where we need to be. I think we need to reframe our discussions around this of yes, these are very serious problems. For some people, these actually are existential problems. Like people will die, people are dying from air pollution, people are dying from climate change and people will die from climate change. So for some people this is really an existential threat, but we have the capacity to reduce those risks, to reduce those dangers and actually not just, you know, have this damage limitation vision, but also a better vision of actually improving the world going forward,

rather than just trying to stop some of the damage. Yeah. And I mean, once you start thinking about that way, it makes you realize how big of an opportunity you have, because it's sort of that you go from thinking, ah, what can I do to fight climate change or to fight these problems? To thinking, oh, everything that I do can be a solution. You know, like whether it's eating vegan or it's getting the electric car

or it's doing policy work or whatever, like every single thing that you do is a move in the right direction if you choose for it to be. And it can be massively empowering to think about it that way. Yeah, exactly. And I think the, as I was saying earlier, I think, I mean, these are massive transitions

that we're doing and they touch on basically every sector, which means that, you know, regardless of, you know, what you're working in or where you're working or what you're doing, you know, these issues are touching you and you can have a positive impact on that. Like I think we often think of what you're doing, you know, these issues are touching you. And you can have a positive impact on that. Like I think we often think of what you can do in environmentalism as just, you know, how do I reduce my carbon footprint? And that's fine. And I give recommendation of how people can

do that most effectively. But I think we should also be more ambitious about that. You know, my contribution is not just going to be how do I limit my footprint as much as possible? I actually want to offset that and more by the positive impacts that I make, whether it's communicating to others, whether it's someone working in politics, working in engineering or finance. We all play a role in trying to shift all of these systems into a more sustainable path. And actually, regardless of what you do, you're probably hitting on those every day.

Yes, and this is why I'm so against people putting themselves in a position of powerlessness. And a lot of times when I'm arguing with what I think people are gonna write in the comments, it's me arguing with that. People say, oh, we can't do anything because capitalism. No, you can do a hell of a lot. And it's not only your responsibility,

it's your opportunity to do so. And if you don't take it, you're putting yourself in a position, you're declaring that you have no power when the opposite is true. I so appreciate you coming on today to dispel some of my lingering pessimism and tell me why I'm wrong about it. I so appreciate you coming on today to dispel some of my lingering pessimism and tell me why I'm wrong about it. I absolutely loved it.

The name of the book is not the end of the world. People can of course get it at our special book shop, factuallypod.com slash books. But where can people find you online, Hannah? And how can they get involved in this fight? Yeah, so I, maybe one of the best places is I work for a project called Our World in Data, and that's a website, and we have data and research

on not just climate change and environment, but what we frame as the world's largest problems. So you can go on there and look at all the data to try to understand what's going on in the world. It's an incredible resource. It's really an amazing site. People should go check it out. Our world in data. Yeah, I have a sub stack called sustainability by numbers

where I try to understand these problems on environment and climate through numbers. So not about like gut feelings or intuitions or anecdotes, but actually looking at the data on electric vehicles, for example. So trying to- Good, because I was really going based on gut feelings and anecdotes, and so you bringing numbers

was an important corrective to that. I love that. Sustainability and numbers. Yeah, and I think how people can contribute this, like in so many ways. I think there is the, you know, reducing your personal carbon footprint bit, which is important, but I think much more wider than that.

I think a key one is just, you know, how do you contribute, you know, from your career, for example? A lot of people, especially younger people, are deciding what should I do with my life. If you're interested in this area, there are so many areas that you can get involved and make a positive difference, whether that's in engineering, whether that's becoming an electricity to massively enhance the grid or install heat pumps, whether it's spreading the message through art. I mean, there's so many ways that you can do this in a much more positive way.

And then obviously also really key to that is trying to influence politics. And as we discussed markets, I think you also have an impact on the market by the stuff that you buy. When you're buying an EV, you're signaling, we're done with petrol and diesel cars. The world is moving towards electric cars. I think we can also have an impact politically and on our market systems. Thank you so much for coming on, Hannah. I can't thank you enough.

It's been a wonderful conversation. Thanks very much. Thank you. Well, thank you once again to Dr. Hannah Ritchie for coming on the show. If you want to pick up a copy of her book, once again, head to factuallypod.com slash books. That's factuallypod.com slash books.

Every purchase there supports not just this show, but your local bookstore as well. If you would like to support this show directly, and I hope you do, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show, ad free. We also have a community book club coming up soon

when we're reading Caitlin Doty's book, Gets in Your Eyes and chatting with Caitlin over Zoom on a private Zoom link. Hope you'll join us for that awesome event for 15 bucks a month. I will read your name on this very podcast. Our most recent $15 a month contributors are Mask When You Can, Protect Your Community. Thank you so much, Mask When You Can, protect your community for slipping that message in there. I approve of it. AAK193 and Jasmine Andrade,

thank you so much to all of them. If you'd like to join them, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. If you'd like to come see me on the road doing standup comedy, head to adamconover.net for all my tickets and tour dates, heading to Indianapolis, Indiana, La Jolla, California, San Jose, California.

Would love to see you out there, adamconover.net for tickets and tour dates. I'd like to thank my producers, Tony Wilson and Sam Roudman, everybody here at Headgum for making the show possible. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you next time on Factually. I don't know. I don't know.

That was a Headgum Podcast.