Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet

by Hannah Ritchie

Step into any environmental space and you will find a range of opinions on how we should proceed. Nuclear or renewables. Cycling or electric vehicles. Strict vegan or flexitarian. What’s odd and counterproductive is that people assume that solutions need to be all or nothing. One against the other. You must pick a ‘team’, and you must berate the other side. But this isn’t going to move us forward. As far as I’m concerned, most of us are on the same team.

While we fight among ourselves, the arrows pointing in the opposite direction pull against us. The fossil fuel companies, the meat lobbies and those that oppose environmental action get a free ride. To counteract our weight, they don’t have to do that much at all. We’re too distracted fighting internally to put up any resistance to the real opponents to progress. A good principle, then, is to be wary of attacking others that we’re broadly aligned with. That doesn’t mean we can’t debate their ideas – we absolutely need this critique to make sure we’re picking effective solutions – but we should be constructive and generous in these discussions.