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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.
Every day, 300,000 people get access to electricity and a similar number get clean water, for the first time. This has been the case every day for a decade.
One of the biggest misconceptions is that nuclear power is unsafe. In fact, it’s one of the safest sources of energy.
In 2011, the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan was hit by a tsunami after the country’s largest recorded earthquake. Remarkably, no one died directly from the incident. Several years later, the government announced that one man died from lung cancer which might be linked to the disaster. Overall, that is quite remarkable: a nuclear power plant was hit by a tsunami and there was only one possible death. However, the government does attribute around 2,700 premature deaths to the stress and disruption of evacuation from Fukushima in the years that followed.
We need to keep our existing nuclear plants in operation. Build some more in countries where this is affordable and they have technological expertise.
If the world moved to 100% nuclear, we’d need just 0.01% of the world’s land.
In no particular order, here is a list of common things that people think make a big difference, but usually have a small impact on their carbon footprint. Sure, continue doing them if you want to (I do some), but don’t stress and definitely don’t do them instead of the big things that really do matter. Recycling your plastic bottles (see Chapter 7) Replacing old light bulbs with energy-efficient ones You don’t have to stop watching TV, streaming movies or using the internet How you read: whether it’s Kindle, paper or audiobook, it doesn’t matter Washing your dishes in the dishwasher, it
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The popular Netflix documentary Seaspiracy sparked controversy when it pinned the world’s plastic problem on the fishing industry. Many of the points in the documentary were factually wrong
A global map of total plastic use per person would highlight Europe and North America. But the map of mismanaged plastic per person is the opposite.
If every country had the waste-management systems that rich countries have, almost no plastic would end up in the ocean.
There’s no way to dress up waste management. It’s just collecting rubbish. It’s hard to make the case for investing in bins and landfills when countries have so many other priorities to grapple with. That’s why we’ve ended up in this position in the first place. Living standards have increased quickly. People have moved to cities where they use many more consumables. They can now afford to use lots of plastic. That’s a good thing; it’s a sign that people are getting richer and can enjoy a better life. But waste management has remained low on the priority list.
H. Ritchie, ‘What was the death toll from Chernobyl and Fukushima?’, Our World in Data, https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima (2022).
