Book Review: Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet
by Hannah Ritchie
This is a refreshingly adult conversation, in which doomsayers and climate change deniers alike are effectively refuted. In this book, Hannah Ritchie presents a strategic plan for an environmentally healthy Earth—it can readily serve as a practical how-to manual for government policy, industrial practices, and individual contributions toward a thriving life for everyone. The author provides a straightforward assessment of the environmental damage already done in past centuries, and skillfully presents a level headed science based approach to applying practical solutions. This book equips the reader with the confidence that environmental challenges are surmountable—without any ideological overlay, except perhaps that we’d all like to live on a sustainable planet.
Ritchie methodically organizes this material into manageable categories with chapters on sustainability, air pollution, climate change, deforestation, food production and supply, biodiversity loss, ocean plastics, and over fishing. At every turn she presents practical solutions to difficult problems—without any hand wringing. A major component of the solution set is to stop burning fossil fuels—that’s not an ideological statement; it’s simply a scientific fact. This focus on practical applied science is crucial, especially as purity cliques on the left present problems as much as fossil fuel shills on the right. The author demonstrates that a practical way to remove fossil fuels from electric power production is to employ nuclear power generation—today’s nuclear tech is greatly improved over that in the 1970s and much more responsible ways are available now to manage nuclear waste.
Although the industrial and information revolutions of the recent past centuries have resulted in a sea change of improved living conditions for increasing numbers of people, their concurrent effects of environmental degradation and unnecessary excessive economic inequality present challenges that must be met, if these improvements in the human condition are to be retained and advanced further to all parts of the world. Human management of and relationship with animals (especially those animals raised for food) are essential elements of the practical solutions presented. We could act on the encouraging confidence Ritchie offers that these challenges can indeed be met—if nothing else, we should start with this book and proceed from there.