![]() ![]() Would you describe yourself as a techno-optimist? I would probably get put in that camp. I think capitalism does drive innovation, which is what we need to create affordable low-carbon technologies. We need to be acting on this problem urgently, on a large scale, in the next five to 10 years, and to me it does not seem feasible that we’re going to dismantle the system and build a new one in that time. ![]() What I would push back against is the notion that we can just dismantle capitalism and build something else. Do you believe capitalism can right its wrongs? Or that it’s the best system to get us out of this mess? I accept that there are definitely flaws with capitalism. My proposition is that we can be the first generation that achieves both at the same time.Ĭapitalism has been a great accelerator of climate change and other environmental crises, but you don’t challenge it much in your book. We’ve achieved amazing human progress but at the cost of the environment. Our ancestors in many ways had a lower environmental impact but they never really achieved the first half of the equation of providing high standards of living. People have the notion that we’ve only become unsustainable very recently, when we discovered fossil fuels, and I don’t think that’s correct. You only really achieve sustainability if you’ve achieved both of these things. The other is caring about people who are alive today. One half is environmental sustainability: we should have a lower impact so we don’t remove opportunities from future generations and other species. I break down sustainability into an equation of two halves. But we do not have time to dismantle it and build something elseĮxplain why you think we are in a “truly unique” position to build a sustainable world. The other thing about doomsday predictions is that they’re a dream for climate deniers, who weaponise poor forecasts and say: “Look, you can’t trust the scientists, they’ve got this wrong before, why should we listen to them now?” There are definitely flaws with capitalism. That’s a very damaging message – because it’s not true, and there’s no way that it drives action. But there’s often this message coming through that there’s nothing we can do about it: it’s too late, we’re doomed, so just enjoy life. We need to get across a sense of urgency, because there is a lot at stake. Why? It’s appropriate to say that climate change is a really serious problem that has a large impact. You write that doomsday messages are often no better than climate denial. But the realisation I came to was that we have the opportunity to improve both of these things at the same time: we can continue human progress while addressing our environmental problems. Now, the world is still terrible, and we have a lot of progress to make. Take child mortality: 200 years ago, almost half of children would die before reaching puberty, and that’s now less than 5%. And it turned out that most of the human wellbeing metrics that I’d assumed to be getting worse were actually getting better. He did these Ted Talks, mainly focusing on human metrics, where he would show how the world was changing, through data. A key turning point was discovering the work of Hans Rosling. This fed into the notion that humans were incapable of solving problems. ![]() ![]() I was also assuming that extreme poverty and hunger must be getting worse. The environmental metrics were getting worse and worse. Then I went to university and that was all I was studying. I don’t really remember a time when it wasn’t talked about, so I became obsessed with it – a big part of my life was worrying about it. What changed? I grew up with climate change. You write that “I used to be convinced that I didn’t have a future left to live for”. Not the End of the World – described by Margaret Atwood as “an inspiring data-mine which gives us not only real guidance, but the most necessary ingredient of all: hope” – is her first book. Ritchie, who lives in London, is also a senior researcher at Oxford University. She is now head of research at Our World in Data, whose mission, according to Ritchie, is “to present data that helps us understand the world’s largest problems and how to solve them – that’s everything from the environmental metrics that I tend to cover to poverty, health, democracy and war”. Hannah Ritchie, 30, was born in Falkirk and studied environmental sciences at Edinburgh. ![]()
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