A review by inquiry_from_an_anti_library
Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie

adventurous hopeful informative inspiring fast-paced

5.0

Is This An Overview?

The problem with doomsday environmental narratives is that they can paralyze decision making efforts to solve the crises, and reduce public trust when the claims turn out to be wrong.  Doomsday claims contain a lot of misinformation, which enable policies that appear to be environmentally sustainable but are harming the environment.

 

Through human efforts in obtaining environmentally sustainable knowledge, people have changed practices of production and developed technology that can enable humanity to achieve sustainability in the 21st century.  Achieving sustainability for the first time in human history, as the world has never before been sustainable.  Throughout history, people either could not satisfy their present needs, or they compromised future needs.  There used to be a sustainability trade-off, a conflict between human well-being and environmental protection as each came at the expense of the other.  But, technology and methods have enabled the ability to achieve both human well-being and environmental protection at the same time.

 

There used to be a trade-off between cheap energy sources or environmentally sustainable energy sources.  But technology has enabled environmentally sustainable energy sources to become cost-competitive with unsustainable technologies.  Removing the trade-off as the cheap energy sources are the sustainable sources.  Economic policies no longer need to be in conflict with environmental sustainably, as economies can grow while reducing pollution.  Although energy use has increased relative to how much was used before, there is far less pollution than before.  There are many different ways that human society is much better than in the past such as life expectancy, food availability, education, and income opportunities.  But there is still much for humanity to resolve. 

 

Caveats?

To overcome environmental sustainability misinformation, various metrics are used to show the evidence of certain claims.  The evidence is presented in a way that does not require a statistics background.  As the author references, the focus of the metrics is on environmental sustainability, while societies have various needs for which different metrics would be more appropriate.