Ingrid Robeyns over at Crooked Timber:
Should those who care about climate change worry less about whether food is locally sourced or comes wrapped in plastic? Should they worry less about rising rates of energy consumption, and more about changing their diets? In Not the End of the World, Hannah Ritchie tries to dissolve such quandaries by arguing that many people make decisions like these on the basis of poor information, which makes them ineffective in addressing climate change and ecological crises.
According to Ritchie, data scientist at Oxford University, environmentalists typically worry about the wrong things. There are indeed some things that are more harmful than environmentalists often presume, such as picking fights with people who have slightly different ideas of the best climate-friendly solutions. But when it comes to most of our decisions about climate action, we should be worrying less, not more. And crucially, we should not fall prey to doomism that tells us that humanity cannot be saved. In Not the End of the World, Ritchie sets herself the task of showing that, while the problems of climate change and other ecological crises are serious and urgent, there has been more progress in solving them than we are inclined to think.
For Ritchie, this becomes obvious if one considers the data. Take deforestation: worries about losing the ‘lungs of the earth’ abound, but looking at the data of the last century, forests have actually made a comeback in rich countries, she argues. The data, Ritchie claims, tell us that we can be the first generation that will reach sustainability. The pathway to sustainability is clear if we look at the data on the ecological crises that we face.
More here.
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