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

by Hannah Ritchie

It has become common to tell kids that they’re going to die from climate change. If a heatwave doesn’t get them then a wildfire will. Or a hurricane, a flood, or mass starvation. Incredibly, many of us hardly blink before telling our children this story. It shouldn’t, then, come as a surprise that most young people think their future is in peril. There is an intense feeling of anxiety and dread about what the planet has in store for us. I see this daily in the emails that land in my inbox.

A recent global survey asked 100,000 16- to 25-year-olds about their attitudes to climate change.2 More than three-quarters thought the future was frightening, and more than half said ‘humanity was doomed’. The feelings of pessimism were widespread, from the UK and US to India and Nigeria. Regardless of wealth or security, young people the world over feel like they’re hanging on for dear life.

Why doomsday thinking is so damaging ‘We need people to wake up. We need people to start paying attention!’ People often say that is why the apocalyptic environmental story needs to be shared far and wide. Or, as they argue, the apocalyptic truth.

Every doomsday activist that makes a big, bold claim invariably turns out to be wrong. Every time this happens it chisels another bit of public trust away from scientists. It plays right into the hands of deniers. When the world doesn’t end in 10 years, deniers turn around and say, ‘Hey, look, the crazy scientists got it wrong again. Why should anyone listen to them?’ In nearly every chapter of this book I’ll list doomsday claims that turned out to be completely untrue.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, our impending doom leaves us feeling paralysed. If we’re already screwed, then what’s the point in trying? Far from making us more effective in driving change, it robs us of any motivation to do so. I

As Dr Kate Marvel, a climate scientist at NASA, puts it: ‘I unequivocally reject, scientifically and personally, the notion that children are somehow doomed to an unhappy life.’7

Nevertheless, pessimism still sounds intelligent and optimism dumb. I often feel embarrassed to admit that I’m an optimist. I imagine it knocks me down a peg or two in people’s estimations.

The air I breathed as a child was much cleaner than my parents ever experienced in their youth, and much, much cleaner than my grandparents enjoyed. We’re breathing air that is cleaner than it has been for centuries. But it’s a success story that we rarely tell.

We can debate which type of car causes the least pollution, but this misses the solution that trumps them all: not driving at all. If it’s doable for you, ditching the car for a bike or a walk is one of the best ways individuals can reduce air pollution (and climate change).

people still view other animals as very separate from them. They miss the true co-dependencies. They seem less important than cutting air pollution or tackling climate change. We see biodiversity loss more as a charitable cause than as a core element of how we move forward.

So far so boring: trade policies, more landfills and recycling centres, and someone who counts the number of nets on fishing vessels. Isn’t there something a bit jazzier, a little more high tech, that we can nerd out on here?