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

by Hannah Ritchie

The problem was that I mistook the increase in the frequency of reporting as an increase in the frequency of disasters. I mistook an increase in the intensity of my second-hand suffering for an increase in the intensity of global suffering. In reality I had no idea what was happening. Were disasters getting worse? Were there more this year than last? Were there more people dying than ever before? After Hans Rosling taught me that extreme poverty and child mortality were falling and education and life expectancy were rising, I went looking for other areas where my preconceptions might be wrong. I started with data on ‘natural’ disasters. I would have bet a lot of money that more people were dying from disasters today than a century ago. I was completely wrong. Death rates from disasters have actually fallen since the first half of the 20th century. And not just by a little bit. They have fallen roughly 10-fold.3, 4 It’s at this point that I should make one thing clear: none of the above means that climate change is not happening. The decline in deaths from disasters does not mean that disasters are getting weaker or less common. Deniers often misuse this data to downplay the existence or risks of climate change. But that’s not what the data shows us at all. In the past it was common for disasters to claim millions of lives a year. The 1920s, 30s and 40s were particularly bad. There were a few large earthquakes which claimed many lives: China, Japan, Pakistan, Turkey and Ita...

In a large-scale consumer survey in the UK, palm oil was deemed to be the least environmentally friendly of the vegetable oils.33 Forty-one per cent of people thought palm oil was ‘environmentally unfriendly’, compared to 15% for soybean oil, 9% for rapeseed, 5% for sunflower and 2% for olive oil. And yet, for all of its flaws, palm oil has actually been a ‘land sparing’ crop, at least in a world that demands lots of vegetable oil. It gets a bad reputation, but it is surely the best of a bad bunch. Deforestation is almost entirely about farming: around three-quarters of it is driven by the conversion of primary forests for agriculture or plantations for the paper and pulp industries. The single biggest driver, by far, is beef.34 Forest clearance to make room for cows to graze on is responsible for more than 40% of global deforestation.35 South America is home to most of this destruction. In fact, Brazilian beef production alone is responsible for one-quarter of global deforestation. The next largest category is oil crops. This spans a wide range of crops, but is dominated by two: soybeans and palm oil. However, deforestation rates for both have been falling rapidly over the last decade, which might be a sign that some of the world’s policies are making a difference.36, 37 The expansion of paper and pulp industries is another key driver of tropical deforestation. Tree plantations have expanded rapidly, particularly in Asia and South America. In the UK we plant lots of trees...

A lot of soy is grown in Brazil. Brazil is home to the Amazon. The Amazon is being cut down. Join the dots and we quickly reach the conclusion that our tofu, soy milk and veggie burgers are killing the rainforests. People are faced with a dilemma. They want to eat less meat and dairy, but they fear that the replacements are just as bad. This isn’t true. Brazil produces around one-third of the world’s soy. Argentina produces another 11%. In the past – particularly in the 1990s and early 2000s – soy was responsible for deforestation, both directly and indirectly. But it isn’t your tofu or soy milk that’s driving this. Around three-quarters of the world’s soy is used for animal feed: to raise chickens and pigs mostly, but also some cows and fish too.47 One-fifth goes directly to human food, and most of that is for vegetable oil. Just 7% goes to the classic ‘vegan’ products such as tofu, tempeh and plant-based milks. This is particularly true for soy grown in Brazil. Nearly all of its soy – 97% – uses genetically modified (GM) varieties, which are more likely to be used for animal feed than human consumption. In fact, GM soy is not allowed for direct human consumption in some markets, such as the European Union. It’s very unlikely that your tofu is killing the Amazon. Switching from meat and dairy to these alternative products is much more likely to save the forest than destroy it.

‘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 room was silent. No one was asleep. I’d hit my two goals before I’d even put my slides on the screen.

Measuring ‘calorie efficiency’ tells us what percentage of the calories we feed an animal is converted into ‘eatable’ products for humans. These figures are quite shocking. For beef, it’s just 3%.16, 17, vii This means that for every 100 calories we feed a cow, we get just 3 calories of meat back in return; 97 calories are effectively wasted. For lamb, it’s around 4%. Better than cows, but still crushingly bad. Pork is almost 10%. For chicken, it’s 13%. Even for the most efficient of animals, the vast majority – more than 80% – of calories are wasted. That fact is quite hard to stomach. Can you imagine buying a loaf of bread, cutting a slice, and throwing the rest – more than 90% of it – in the bin? When it comes to calories, that’s pretty much what we’re doing with meat. So, the calorie equation doesn’t look great for meat. But what about protein? Here, livestock are also pretty inefficient converters of protein. For pork, lamb and beef, more than 90% of the protein they eat from animal feed is lost. Put 100 grams of protein in, and you get just 10 grams back. Chicken is better, but we still only get 20% of the protein back in the form of meat.

The carbon footprint of meat – especially beef and lamb – really stood out. But it’s not just about climate change. Because food plays such a big role across many environmental issues, this single change has many positive spillovers. Whether it’s greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, or water pollution,ix the hierarchy is nearly always the same: beef and lamb are the worst, followed by dairy, pork, chicken, then plant-based foods such as tofu, peas, beans and cereals. This is true whether we compare them in kilograms, calories or protein. The differences here are not small. It’s not like we’re splitting hairs over using 100 metres squared of farmland rather than 99. It’s the difference between using 100 metres squared or 1. Literally 100 times the difference.

Simply cutting out beef and lamb (but still keeping dairy cows) would nearly halve our need for global farmland. We’d save 2 billion hectares, which is an area twice the size of the United States. That is, by far, where the biggest saving comes from. And it doesn’t mean that we all need to go vegan. If we were to cut out dairy too, we’d halve this land use again to just over 1 billion hectares. Three USA-sized farms saved. But from there, the reductions are marginal. Sure, the vegan diet does minimise it the most: if everyone ate a vegan diet we’d reduce the amount of land we use for farming by 75%. An area the size of North America, plus Brazil.

There are now multiple options. But which ‘milk’ is best? This is one of the most common questions I get asked. The short answer is: any of them. Take your pick. All of the plant-based alternatives have lower environmental impacts than cow’s milk. Cow’s milk generates around three times as much greenhouse gas emissions, uses around 10 times as much land, up to 20 times as much fresh water, and creates much higher levels of eutrophication (the pollution of waters with excess nutrients).33

You can see already that we don’t discuss fish in the same way that we discuss other wild animals. In the biodiversity chapter, our goal was to protect them at all costs. Some view fish in the same way, but most don’t: they think about them as animals to catch. And when people view fish through different lenses, these debates don’t get very far. They don’t even reach the stage where they can discuss the numbers. There are two main schools of thought when it comes to fish. One school – often adopted by environmentalists, ecologists and animal welfare advocates – views fish as animals in their own right. This is how we view most other wild animals, like elephants or monkeys. Here, our goal is to restore wild animal populations back to their pre-human levels. The same would apply to fish: we should allow populations to increase back to their historical levels, before we started fishing them. Here, sustainability would mean catching very few fish, if any. The other school views fish as a resource. Most of us eat fish, and hundreds of millions rely on it for their income. We can’t let fish return to their pre-fishing levels and catch lots of fish at the same time. So ‘sustainability’ according to this view means catching as much fish as possible, year after year, without depleting fish populations any further. This meets the classic Brundtland definition of sustainability: we catch as much fish as possible to meet the needs of people alive today, but don’t take so much that it ...