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February 18 - February 28, 2024
Complacent optimism is the feeling of a child waiting for presents. Conditional optimism is the feeling of a child who is thinking about building a treehouse. ‘If I get some wood and nails and persuade some other kids to help do the work, we can end up with something really cool.’
‘The world is much better; the world is still awful; the world can do much better.’10 All three statements are true.
In 1987, the UN defined sustainable development as ‘meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.
As the Native American proverb goes: ‘Take only what you need and leave the land as you found it.’ Similarly, the ancient Kenyan proverb: ‘Treat the Earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children.’
Until the last few centuries, there was almost no way for us to stop children from dying. It wasn’t until the rise of clean water, proper sanitary conditions, vaccines, better nutrition and other advances in health care that rates of child mortality started to plummet. As recently as 1800, about 43% of the world’s children died before reaching their fifth birthday.9 Today that figure is 4% – still woefully high, but more than 10-fold lower.
Humans started burning wood for fire at least one and a half million years ago.11 It gave us heat, fuels for cooking and protection in the darkness. But it also gave us poor health from the pollution it created. The small particles produced when we burn wood can get deep into our lungs and lead to a range of respiratory and cardiovascular problems, including heart disease and cancer.
Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel. Not only does it create the most pollution when we burn it, but it’s also the worst for driving climate change. But moving from wood to coal was a big step-up. Per kilogram, coal gives us about twice as much energy as wood. And you don’t have to cut down forests to supply it.
Decade by decade, these regulations were made tighter. In response, industries had to develop low-pollution technologies. We learned how to strip the sulphur out of coal-burning. We banned leaded petrol. We learned how to produce cars and trucks that emit just a fraction of the pollution they once did.
The path that countries follow is a predictable one. Pollution first rises as a country starts to move out of poverty. At this stage, access to energy is the priority. It burns coal, oil, gas without tight restrictions on how clean it needs to be. There are no demands for top-of-the-range power plants with anti-pollution controls, or new car engines with particle filters. Pollution levels continue to rise as more people get electricity, cars, and can afford to heat or cool their homes. The country enters an industrial boom. People have more money and life is getting better. The pollution isn’t
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at least 9 million people die every year from the air they breathe.27, 28 To put these numbers into context, this is similar to the death toll from smoking: around 8 million.29 It’s six or seven times higher than the number of people that die in road accidents: 1.3 million. Hundreds of times more than the number that die from terrorism or war each year. Air pollution is the silent killer that doesn’t get enough headlines. It doesn’t shock us like images of a flood or a hurricane, but it kills around 500 times more people a year than all ‘natural’ disasters combined, in most years.v
Globally our emissions come from a handful of sources. The first is burning wood or charcoal for energy or burning crops in the field. This is one of the biggest sources at lower incomes, and a big contributor to indoor and outdoor pollution. Then we have emissions from agriculture, with the ammonia and nitrogen gases that come from manure and fertilisers. The next is burning fossil fuels for electricity. Then emissions from industry – the fumes leaking out of chemical plants, metal manufacturers and textile factories. Finally, we have transport – the cars we drive, but also the trucks, ships
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(1) Give everyone access to clean cooking fuels Not everything we burn creates the same amount of pollution. Wood is worse than coal; coal is worse than kerosene; kerosene is worse than gas. This process of moving from one form of energy to another is called climbing the ‘energy ladder’. The world’s poorest still rely on wood as their main (possibly only) source of energy.
(2) End winter crop-burning
The waste residue could be gathered up to be used for animal feed or other materials. Or farmers could be encouraged to plant a different rotation of crops. There are also some technological solutions. A tractor-like machine called the Happy Seeder can cut and lift the rice straw, sow the wheat underneath, then put the straw back on top as organic manure.
the debate on petrol versus diesel is quickly becoming outdated. Fossil fuel-powered cars are on their way out. Electric cars and car-free living are making their breakthrough.
We should be more ambitious about how we imagine our cities, towns and transport systems in 2040 or 2050. They could be built around pedestrians and cyclists, not cars. In my dream world, there would be no need to own a car, especially if it does nothing 23 hours a day. We could create networks of driverless, low-carbon Ubers that serve the city. When you do need a ride, press a button on an app, and a clean, autonomous vehicle will swing by to pick you up.
Are there things that individuals – beyond walking, cycling, using public transport and electric cars – should be doing more of? The first obvious one is speaking up. Demanding clean air so that governments make it a priority. At the beginning of the chapter, we saw the power of speaking up in Beijing. The Chinese government took note and was forced into action. We already have most of the tools and knowledge we need to reduce air pollution. What’s missing is money on the table and the political will to act. That’s something we can influence.
burning wood is what many of the world’s poorest are trying to move away from. It creates large amounts of pollution inside your house, and also contributes to pollution outdoors. It’s much worse than gas or electricity.
Far fewer people are dying from natural disasters than in the past Death rates from ‘natural’ disasters, measured as the number of deaths per decade per 100,000 people. Deaths have fallen – not because disasters have become less frequent or severe, but because our infrastructure, monitoring and response systems have become much more resilient to them.
Building resilience, and predicting and responding to disasters costs money. Our success in reducing their impacts comes from an increase in knowledge and scientific understanding. Meteorologists can model storm tracks. Engineers work with seismologists to design buildings that can withstand extreme forces. Agricultural innovations mean that our food systems can weather and bounce back from shocks. But the success also comes from being a lot richer. These sophisticated networks and infrastructure need money. There’s no point in designing quake-proof buildings if no one can afford them. No
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humans have been tinkering with the balance of gases in the atmosphere for tens of thousands of years. Our carbon dioxide emissions come from two main sources: burning fossil fuels and changing the use of land. When we cut down trees we release biological carbon into the atmosphere.
In just a decade, solar photovoltaic and wind energy have gone from the most to the least expensive. The price of electricity from solar has declined by 89%, and the price of onshore wind has declined by 70%. They are now cheaper than coal. Leaders no longer have to make the difficult choice between climate action and providing energy for their people.
every time the installed capacity of solar PV doubles, the price falls by around 20%.
We can also integrate solar and wind with existing uses of land, such as farming. There is evidence that ‘agrivoltaic’ systems could be great examples of shared land. Recent studies show that, under certain conditions, the yield of agrivoltaic crops can even increase compared with conventional crops, because of better water balance and evapotranspiration, as well as reduced temperatures.
the production of an electric vehicle does actually emit more carbon than a petrol car. But once we start driving them, the tables quickly turn. Driving an EV emits much less carbon than petrol or diesel. How much less depends on how clean our electricity is.
When we look at the travel emissions across towns and cities we find a clear pattern: people in denser cities emit less.40 Part of bringing down our transport emissions will involve rethinking our living spaces. Many European cities are making good progress here. Cars no longer take centre stage, pedestrians and cyclists do. Cities not only become calmer, less polluted places to live, they also function much more efficiently.
The big dilemma of the 2000s and 2010s was whether to get a diesel car or a petrol one. The big dilemma of the 2020s and beyond is to get an electric car or no car at all.
Producing 100 grams of protein from beef emits around 50 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents.45 Then we have lamb, at around 20 kilograms. Then dairy, then pork, followed by chicken. You will notice here a clear ranking of animal foods: from the biggest animal (cows) to the smallest (chickens, then fish). Chapter 5 will look at why. Most plant-based foods – soy, peas, beans, lentils, cereals, nuts – lie at the bottom of the list. They have a much lower carbon footprint than animal-based products.
When it comes to food, there are a few interventions that matter much less than we think. Eating locally produced food doesn’t make a big difference. Nor does eating organic food. In fact, in both cases, those choices could actually increase our emissions if we’re growing foods that are better suited for other climates or conditions. The plastic packaging of our food also doesn’t matter much for our carbon footprint.
A carbon price could be incredibly effective. The strongest climate deniers would still end up making more sustainable choices. They wouldn’t do it for the planet; they would do it for their wallets.
putting a price on carbon would hit the poorest people the hardest. If you were to double the price of petrol tomorrow, the rich guy with five Lamborghinis might feel a bit of a pinch. But he’ll be all right. He might have to sell one of his five cars or fly first class rather than by private jet. He’ll get over it. But the parents living on the breadline might already struggle to heat their home and drive their kids to school. They cannot afford to buy an electric car. Carbon pricing policies need to include support for poorer households to make up for the increased cost of energy. This could
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develop crops that are either more resilient to these changes or better suited to the new climate we’re creating. We know we can do this because we’ve done it in the past. We can improve yields using nutrients, pesticides and irrigation; but we can also develop seed varieties that are resistant to disease and pests. Genetic breeding gets a bad reputation in environmental circles, but it has been absolutely crucial to increasing crop yields across the world, and could play a much bigger role if we’re to develop agriculture that works well in a changing climate.
The countries that have contributed to climate change the least and have the fewest resources are the ones that have to adapt the most. Rich countries should contribute financially to adaptation. They have committed to doing so, but are coming up short in their delivery.
people shouldn’t be stressed out by every tiny decision they make. It can get overwhelming. Tackling climate change feels like a massive sacrifice that has taken over our lives. That would be okay if all of these actions were really making a difference, but they’re not. It’s misplaced effort and stress, sometimes even at the cost of the few actions that really will matter. There is a concept called ‘moral licensing’: it explains the psychological trick we play on ourselves where we justify one behaviour because we’ve made a sacrifice somewhere else. So, we go for the steak because we’ll
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the big stuff: eating less meat, switching to an electric car, taking one less flight, insulating their home or investing in low-carbon energy.53
We don’t need to resort to misleading headlines to gain attention, because when the truth comes out, they erode the public’s trust in scientists and belief in the reasons that we actually should care.
If we were to boycott palm oil and replace it with one of these alternatives, we would need far more farmland. If every company were to follow Ben & Jerry’s lead and use coconut and soybean oil instead of palm, we would need about 5 to 10 times as much land devoted to oil crops.
Forest clearance to make room for cows to graze on is responsible for more than 40% of global deforestation.
make sure that we’re buying palm oil that is certified as sustainable, even if that means buying it at a slight premium. The most well known certification scheme is the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).
the goals of animal welfare and environmental impact are not always aligned. Unfortunately, the environmentally friendly or ‘efficient’ choice is often one that is worse for the animal. How you balance these priorities is up to you.
optimise for beef production in the regions that can do it most efficiently. The ‘worst’ (where we’re defining ‘worst’ as those that use the most land) 25% of beef producers use up 60% of the total land that is used for beef production. If globally we were able to reduce the amount of beef we eat by 25%, and eliminate this from the ‘worst’ beef producers, land use for beef production would be cut by a whopping 60%.
There is a strong case for paying countries to stop deforestation. At the very least, these countries should receive some form of compensation for the money they will pass up. It’s a controversial proposal. How much should countries be paid? Who should get this money? How would we know that countries were actually keeping their promises?
Our cities and urban areas take up just 1% of the world’s habitable land. Agriculture takes up 50%. Our biggest footprint on the world’s land is not the space that we ourselves take up, and build our houses on; it’s the land that’s used to grow our food. This is the biggest driver of deforestation, not the rise of urbanisation.
Ask a soil scientist how many harvests the world has left, and they will laugh. The concept has no scientific meaning. The world’s soils are so diverse and heterogeneous: some are degrading, some are improving, and many are stable as they are.
It’s not that soil loss isn’t a problem. It really is. We need to find ways of farming that rebuild soils rather than depleting them. But the idea that we only have 30, 60 or 100 harvests left is just wrong. These zombie statistics are frustrating but they do have one silver lining: they are a great way of knowing which campaigners and reporters are more interested in a headline than the truth.
‘If we split the world’s food production equally between everyone we could each have at least 5,000 calories a day. More than twice what we need. Or, to put it another way, we produce enough food for a global population twice the size that it is today.’
The total impact of our hunter-gatherer ancestors might not be comparable to ours today, but the notion that they lived in perfect balance with other species is a fantasy. Humans have always competed with other animals, first hunting them directly, impacting landscapes with fire, and later fighting them for space to grow crops.
Around half of the world would not be alive today without the invention of synthetic fertilisers.
the world cannot go organic. Too many of us rely on fertilisers to survive.
So, how can it possibly be true that we produce 5,000 to 6,000 caloriesiii per person per day, more than double what we need, yet still struggle to feed everyone? The obvious answer is global inequality. Hundreds of millions don’t get enough to eat, but billions get too much. Around four in 10 adults in the world are overweight.
