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We Have Never Been Sustainable
But
Maybe We Can in Our Lifetime.
Ritchie,H. (2024). Not the end of
the world: How we can be the first generation to build a sustainable planet.
Little, Brown Spark.Sources: https://www.nottheendoftheworld.co.uk/
https://hannahritchie.com/
https://www.gatesnotes.com/Not-the-End-of-the-WorldIn the first class of
Understanding China with Data, I will introduce two people who are both
dedicated to using data to better understand the world. It is their work that
inspired me to create this course, with the goal of using data to better
understand China. The first is Hans Rosling. Hans Rosling was a professor of
international health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, a doctor (having
worked in Africa for twenty years), a public health researcher, a statistician,
and a pioneer in data visualization. Along with his son and daughter-in-law, he
founded the GapMinder Foundation (named after the London Underground's
"Mind the Gap" sign, symbolizing the effort to bridge the gap in
public understanding). He developed data analysis software for public use free
of charge, advocated for the free accessibility of public data—even at the risk of being sued by international organizations like
the World Bank—and made his research results available
to the public for free. He was committed to educating the public and urging
people to build a fact-based world view (CityReads | The Joy of Stats;CityReads | Remembering Edutainer Hans Rosling, Who Made Data Dance and Taught
Us Fact-Based Worldview; CityReads | Ten Rules of Factful Thinking to Learn
about the World).Hannah Ritchie, the
Deputy Editor and Lead Researcher at Our World in Data, has written numerous
data analysis articles on topics such as climate change, energy, food and
agriculture, biodiversity, air pollution, and deforestation. This year, she
published her first book, Not the end of the world: How we can be the first
generation to build a sustainable planet. In the Introduction, she shares how,
as a young person, Hans Rosling’s talks
changed her worldview and how she learned to understand the world through solid
data analysis, particularly using data to understand sustainable development.
In a sense, Hannah Ritchie continues the unfinished work of Hans Rosling.The book begins with the
concept of sustainability.In 1987, the UN
Brundtland Commission released the Our Common Future report, defining
sustainability as "meeting the needs of the present without compromising
the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." This definition
has two components. The first part ensures that everyone in the present world
can lead a healthy and prosperous life. The second part ensures that the
environment we live in will not degrade to a point where our descendants cannot
live healthy and prosperous lives.Ritchie argues in the
book that we have never achieved sustainable development because we have never
achieved both components simultaneously. Either neither of the two components
has been achieved, or one has been achieved at the expense of the other.On the first part—human well-being—through much of human
history, the child mortality rate was over 50%, so there was no "meeting
the needs of the present generation," and thus, it was not a sustainable
world. We take for granted the natural order of death: the elderly die first,
and the young die later. But this order is a recent phenomenon. The prospect of
children outliving their parents is not a "natural" phenomenon but
rather a progress achieved through human effort. Until 1800, 43% of children
did not live to see the age of five. Today, the child mortality rate has
dropped to less than 4%, which is a great achievement, although 5 million
children still die each year before reaching five.On the second part—environmental protection—humanity has
performed just as poorly, if not worse. There is a common misconception that
the world was once sustainable, but over time, particularly after the
Industrial Revolution, it became increasingly unsustainable. In reality, humans
have long had a devastating impact on the environment, not only after the
Industrial Revolution but even before the Agricultural Revolution. Our
hunter-gatherer ancestors hunted hundreds of large animals to extinction,
burned wood, crop residue, and charcoal, causing air pollution, and cleared
vast forests for energy and farmland.The starting point of
the book is that we are now close to completing the first part of sustainable
development. We have made tremendous progress in improving human well-being,
which can be measured in seven areas: child mortality, hunger and nutrition,
maternal mortality, life expectancy, education, extreme poverty, and access to
basic resources such as clean water, energy, and sanitation.Based on the progress we
have made, Ritchie argues that there is no better time to be alive than today.
This does not deny the existence of poverty, war, violence, instability, and
inequality around the world. As Max Roser, the founder of Our World in Data,
puts it, "The world is awful; the world is much better; the world can be
much better."![]()
But the other side of
the coin is that in order to improve human well-being, the environment has paid
the price. Many people believe that it is difficult to achieve both
simultaneously, and thus a trade-off must be made between human well-being and
environmental protection. Not the End of the World argues that these two
goals are not necessarily in conflict, and we do have ways to achieve both
human well-being and environmental protection.The book mainly focuses
on the latter part of sustainable development—the challenges and progress in
environmental protection. It discusses seven major environmental issues: air
pollution, climate change, deforestation, food, biodiversity loss, ocean plastic,
and overfishing. The book reflects an ecopragmatism, pointing out that although
in many areas the environmental situation is worse than it used to be, it also
presents progress in environmental protection, suggesting that we are on a
better track than most people realize. Therefore, the author believes that we
can truly achieve sustainable development for the first time in our lifetime.The World Health
Organization estimates that 7 million people die every year due to air
pollution: 4.2 million from outdoor air pollution and 3.8 million from indoor
air pollution caused by burning wood and charcoal. This is similar to the
number of deaths caused by smoking: about 8 million. It is six to seven times
higher than the number of deaths from road accidents: 1.3 million. It is
hundreds of times greater than the number of deaths from terrorism or war each
year. Air pollution is a silent killer that doesn’t receive enough attention.
The number of deaths from air pollution each year is about 500 times higher
than the total number of deaths from all "natural" disasters (in most
years).The good news is that
the death rate from air pollution is declining, even in countries with severe
pollution.Death rates from indoor
and outdoor air pollution, measured as the number of premature deaths per
100,000 people.![]()
Renewables and nuclear
energy are much safer and better for the climate than fossil fuelsFossil fuels kill
millions every year from air pollution, and also emit far more greenhouse gases
per unit of electricity.Total CO2 emissions are
still rising, with rapid increases in the 1960s and 1970s, and again in the
1990s and early 2000s. However, in recent years, the growth rate has slowed
significantly. From 2018 to 2019, emissions barely increased at all. Due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, emissions actually decreased in 2020.However, global per
capita CO2 emissions have already peaked. In 2012, the world’s per capita CO2
emissions reached a peak of 4.9 tonnes per person, and have gradually decreased
since then.Carbon dioxide emissions
from fossil fuels and industry. Land-use change isn't included.![]()
Where do our greenhouse
gas emissions come from?Around one-quarter of
the world’s
emissions come from food systems.Three-quarters come from
energy and industry.![]()
DeforestationSince the last ice age
10,000 years ago, the world has lost one-third of its forests, roughly twice
the size of the land area of the United States. The primary driver of this loss
has been the expansion of agriculture. The land used for crops and livestock
has nearly quadrupled. Agriculture has historically been the main driver of
deforestation, and it continues to be so today.10,000 years ago, 71% of
the Earth's surface was covered by forests, shrubs, and wild grasslands; the
remaining 29% was covered by deserts, glaciers, mountain ranges, and other
barren lands. By 2018, the proportion of forests had decreased to 38%, while
agricultural land had risen to 46%, including 15% cropland and 31% pastureland.
Urban built-up areas accounted for only 1%.Humanity cut down
one-third of the world’s forest to make room for agricultureAgriculture has always
been the biggest driver of deforestation. This is still true today.![]()
Global deforestation is
mainly concentrated in tropical regions. The primary drivers of tropical
deforestation are shown in the chart below, which presents the main reasons for
forest clearing from 2005 to 2013, ranked from highest to lowest. Beef (pasture
land) accounts for 41%, with forest clearing for grazing land for cattle
contributing to more than 40% of global deforestation. South America is the
major area for this destruction. In fact, Brazilian beef production alone is
responsible for a quarter of global deforestation. Oil crops (palm oil and
soybeans) account for 18%; paper and pulp forestry account for 13%; cereal
crops (excluding rice) account for 10%; vegetables, fruits, and nuts (such as
cocoa and coffee) account for 7%; rice accounts for 5%; other crops account for
3%; sugar accounts for 1%; and plant fibers make up less than 1%.Shown are the drivers of
the conversion of primary forest over the period from 2005 to 2013.Half of the world
population is reliant on synthetic fertilizers for food![]()
Half of the world’s
habitable land is used for agricultureAgriculture is the
largest driver of deforestation and habitat loss. Three-quarters of
agricultural land is used for livestock.
The world may have
passed peak agricultural landThe extinction of large
mammals follows the footsteps of human migration
![]()
The Quaternary Megafauna
Extinction killed off more than 178 of the world’s largest mammal species from
52,000 to 9,000 BC. These extinctions closely mapped human migrations across
the world’s continents.
Most mammals are now
humans and their livestockMammals are compared
based on their biomass, in the year 2015. Wild mammals are just 4% of total
mammals.![]()
What are driving the
world’s species to extinction?The chart below shows
the factors driving species extinction globally, ranked from highest to lowest:
overexploitation 72%, agriculture 62%, urbanization 35%, invasion and disease
27%, pollution 22%, land transformation 22%, climate change 19%, war and
conflict 14%, transportation 14%, energy production 11%, and geological
disasters 1.4%.Only a small fraction of
the world’s
plastic ends up in the oceanAround 0.3% of the world’s plastic waste ends up in the ocean![]()
Until recently, most of
the plastic waste in global trade was exported to Asia, especially China. In
2018, China began to restrict the import of solid waste, and in 2021, it banned
the import of all solid waste.Each region’s share of
the world’s imports of plastic waste.One-third of the world’s
fish stocks are overexploitedFish stocks are
overexploited when fish catch exceeds the maximum sustainable yield – the rate
at which fish populations can regenerate.The world now produces
more seafood from fish farming than wild catchMost of the growth in
seafood production in recent decades has come from aquaculture. This is good
for the protection of wild fish stocks.
1.“Louie found the raft offered an unlikely intellectual refuge. He had
never recognized how noisy the civilized world was. Here, drifting in almost
total silence, with no scents other than the singed odor of the raft, no
flavors on his tongue, nothing moving but the slow porcession of shark fins,
every vista empty save water and sky, his time unvaried and unbroken, his mind
was freed of an encumbrance that civilization had imposed on it. In his head,
he could roam anywhere, and he found that his mind was quick and clear, his
imagination unfettered and supple. He could stay with a thought for hours,
turning it about.”― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A
World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption![]()
2.“The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon
those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come
only when their tormentors suffer.”― Laura Hillenbrand,
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and RedemptionCityReads ∣Notes On Cities"CityReads", a subscription account on WeChat,
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