Hannah Ritchie: Not the End of the World (Vintage Books)

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Image by AS Photograpy from Pixabay

Hannah Ritchie is a nerd’s nerd. I’ve never met her but I already love her because of the number of times she says ‘I crunched the numbers and found that…’

Usually what she finds is that things are a bit dire but not (yet) catastrophic. She straightens out a number of doomer beliefs but then says clearly that we still HAVE TO STOP BURNING FOSSIL FUELS.

And then she shows how actually we have reduced our burning of fossil fuels… Yes we have — we’ve switched from coal to gas. That’s still not good, but it’s better than dirty old coal. Our CO2 emissions have gone down a bit as well, so why not do a lot more of it?

At this point it is right for me to confess that I’ve always been a doomer. Now I’m in two minds. Sometimes I feel very depressed and doomed — after all, I’m quite old so more likely to die horribly when society breaks down. Sometimes I feel optimistic. Which by itself shows that I’m not thinking rationally or factually, I’m thinking emotionally.

She also convinced me not to buy a log-burner — it’s a step backwards plus a lot of pollution in the form of soot particles.

Now it’s very unfashionable to be a not-doomer. If your new movie or book says the ice at the poles will all be gone by next year or there…