A short review of Hannah Ritchie’s Not the End of the World

An excellent handbook when all hope seems to be lost regarding climate change and man’s future as a species. Ritchie demonstrates with extensive sources how a lot of the things we have thought to be in a certain way are most definitely false. This stretches from farming via energy use to forests and oceans. In every case when we have been painted a certain doomsday situation, Ritchie shows how this is simply not true.

I loved that in Not the End of the World.

My only real critique I aim at Ritchie’s lack of proof for economic growth. To my knowledge we cannot continue on the BAU line of continuous growth. Ritchie picks this up quite early in the book, on p. 36 in fact:

Economic growth is not incompatible with reducing our environmental impact. In this book I’ll show that we can reduce our environmental impact and reverse our past damage while becoming better off. - p. 36, chapter 1: Sustainability - A Tale of Two Halves. Not the End of the World. Chatto & Windus. 2024.

On first reading, I don’t think Ritchie does that. They go through a plethora of man-made climate-related issues and offer solutions to many, but the growth dilemma remains unsolved.