#743 - Hannah Ritchie - Why Does Everyone Believe The World Is Doomed?
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Hello, friends, welcome back to the show. My yesterday is hanna Ritchie. She's a data scientist, senior researcher at the university of oxford and deputy editor at our world. In data, climate alarmism dominate headlines, painting a grim picture of impending global catastrophe.

But what if the actual data reveals a less worrying situation, one where we don't all end up in a fairy inferno, expect to learn why everyone thinks the world is doomed due to climate change, and what we can do about IT, why people are more pessimistic about the world than the data suggests, what the actual research shows about climate change, whether concerns about ocean plastics are being over exaggerated if we are actually in a mass extinction event, hands thoughts on population d growth and much more brian meals here for, I guess, my hundreds mid commercial. No, no, no, no, no. Honestly, when I started this, I thought only have to do like four of these.

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But now, ladies and gentleman, please welcome hana Ritchie.

Why do you think that there's so many people who believe the world's doom?

I think because we're facing a pretty broad range of or are potentially existential or very catastrophic problems. So like from my demand, the big one is a climate change, and that's what I right about most of all. But there's also all the ones are nuclear war. There's the rise of V I. I think there's no a host of problems that and the past might not have seemed existent, al, but too many people today seem very existential .

if you are needed in the data, why aren't you an agreement?

So I can't speak on A I or a nuclear war but my backgrounds environment in climate change um and I think actually probably I was in a similar possession you know a decade or go or so go um where I did really feel like in the depth of there's no way that we're going to solve this problem. This is a nice extension al problem. We are all kind of diomed wondering.

That was a lot of the message that was coming through. My perspective on that has changed, not that climate change isn't a big problem, is that why I study IT, but there is a really broad spector between climate change is not a problem and we're doomed and there's nothing we can do about that. I think there is a bank space in the middle and not big space in the is determined by what we do about IT. So I think like my stand on IT is so big problem and it's an urgent problem. But there actually are things that we can do about IT, and there are ways that we can adopt to changing climate.

When IT comes to climate change, in particular, why are more people pessimistic about the world and the data suggest that they maybe should be?

I think one of the key misunderstandings on climate is that we've kind of set these climate targets that we want to keep temporary ze below one point five degrees of bean and especially below two degrees. I think some of the master sage that's come out of that as the you know one point five degrees as a tapping point, where once per past one point five degrees or this kind of the point of no tin and were doomed.

And that's that's definitely not the case. Climate changes more of a spectrum than a media tapping point. So one point five degrees that impacts are worse and at one point six, or worse again, at one point seven.

And you can get escalate in risks where the the change is not necessarily when are with every zero point one percent degree, but there's nothing particularly special about one point five degrees. So I think I think is very clear that we probably we are gonna pass one point five degrees. But if you're main set as the ones were past one point five degrees, there's not saying we can do in this kind of a terminal touch point. Then I think that breeds a lot of this kind of apocalyptic thinking.

What is the what's legit and what bullshit about tipping points and stuff.

So there are big tipping points where in the kind of climate system there are, we don't know. There are like a lot of unknown about when we might have a touching point and what that tough point would be. There are some potential like quite near term tapping points for you in the kind of between one point five degrees and two degrees ranges are a couple of tapping points that that could be break.

what happens, what what when they talk about in points from a like functional climate functional perspective.

So I think that the the kind of definition of a tapping point is that you can have change a system from one state and to an another. And it's very hard, if not impossible, to take IT back from that. No, I think one of the misunderstandings of tapping points that people think that it's kind of abot in immediate IT was almost like A A doman effect to us as once I set off as sk within a year, the whole thing kind of blows up.

And I think some tipping points can be fast, but often they're quite slow on kind of human time goes. So some of these tipping points will evolve over no centuries or or thousands of years. That's not just like the entire I sheet just immediately melts in the space of a year.

Um so I think that's one of the the key differences there. Um but there are some new new term potential tapping points where you will shift the system into a different day and that will contribute to more warming. But what not necessarily said this like less feel tine, where you know it's kind of unstoppable and there's nothing we can do about that.

What this is one of the common talking points around coastal cities, miami. Miami is gonna water. If we go over this, i'm gna guess that miami may be underwater. But in one thousand, two hundred years, not like twenty thirty, yeah.

I mean, the the sea levels are rising and the rising are pretty stay DIY. That could accelerate yeah but a lot of the the very extreme level is I was tend to be on the order of of centuries, for example.

extreme take century. So we at least this a little .

a little bit the time to yeah yeah I think I mean the risk of sea level rise and coal city is very valid um and there there could be some near term displacements um but a lot of them could be on a longer time skill.

Imagine I read an article from you what you said, many Young people feel like the future is in peril. To make progress on climate change, we must move past dome day scenarios. why?

Because I think get lows us into a kind of state of paralus. Like I speak to a lot of Young people, a lot of people email me and they are in a very dark. There are N A place where they don't even know whether they should go to college. They don't know whether you'd actually invest in the future because we've kind of received the message that there's no point because they kind of doomed from climate change.

And I think one thing that's just like bad for people's mental health, but I think the second is I think get paralyzes us and stops people from taking action like a dom, then what's the point and actually take action against the so I think in some ways that hinders progress and uh, in terms of taking action. And then I think there's another dimension to IT where I think some of these really extreme scarious s have been used by people on the other. So kind of more on the climate in island when they see the really extreme scenarios is just the perfect domination. They just think all this is dict ous um and so often like pushes people away at the other end of the spectrum that might .

Normally engage yeah IT seems like in an attempt to try and convince people that this is something we need to pay attention to, something which is important, which needs resources in time and and and energy spending on IT uh that encouragement to try and get people to work harder is done by over exaggerating uh or or creating a more catastrophe where that perhaps isn't quite so much. But the actual reality is that just makes people sad and anxious and believe that the efforts are futile, which is from a net effect, is actually the opposite of what you want.

right? I mean, think that mean the road like a really broad petra. And communication, I many, most climate scientists are very good on the communication, are very careful about how they communicate.

I think that often messages are are weaponized by some people, and actually they put in front of IT, the science says, and they see a statement that the science doesn't see um and I think think for some people, probably a small segment of the the population that actually does work, that does that fear does drive them. They do get involved. I think there's like a much larger part of the petro that that that puts them off.

Yeah, I watched a video that you spoke about in that article from Roger halen, founder of extinction rebellion. The video is titled advice to Young people as they face a iolaus. Hardly inspiring stuff.

No, I think anything can. A big point of the video I think like Young people should just have known hope for the future um and that that's not in lane with the science. I mean the science is very clear that the climate changes a big problem.

There are really big potential risks. But you know it's not a all or nothing like there are things that we can do about IT. So this the notion that we should have no hope because of nothing we can do just false.

What was that story of the group called the last generation?

Yes, was an activist group. Um I in germany called the last generation and the the message there can be interpreted in several ways. I think one is like very valid which as we can be the last generation to solve climate and I think that's true um the you know we're talking about solving climate change were talking about you know the next few decades or very year forty years.

So kind of yes, we are the this the generation that will have to solve this. But I think the other interpretation is kind of the notion that if we don't sold over then we will literally be the last generation. And that's very similar to the kind of extinction rebellion, a activist group where IT is very much good towards. We will be kind of the last generation and we're kind of dumb.

yeah. And they did. They monthlong g hunger strike that resulted in a ton of them going to hospital.

Yeah, over the year there was a hunger strike here.

yeah. Ah, so when he comes to climate change, what are the what are the most salient concerns that you have? And what are the ones that you think are most exaggerated, almost misrepresented .

something for me. There are a few bad concerns. One is just exposure to you. I mean, I think there are just a very the most obvious and most well documented length between rising temperatures is just exposure to extreme heat waves um as you would expect and I think that will be a significantly growing problem, will be also be a really big problem because many of the people that will be exposed to this will be people closer to the quater, typically in law income countries where they don't you know have an condition house.

So ten will will also for disruption on on people on bore incomes where they might not have the money. And Lucy, that we would have to just adapt to that. I think then the other big concern for me is as agriculture, where we've got a growing population, climate change, there could be a significant problem.

One in terms of extreme weather events or flood drought you could lose like a whole harvest um for entire season but also crops and that varies across the world depending on where you are and and what crop you're working with. But increased temperatures could start to reduce yids. So some of the kind of scenarios you could see, for example, a thirty percent drop in you now at a time when we need to be increasing food production because we will have a growing population, that could be significant concern. So for me, those are the two like biggest direct and parts. I think .

what about the efforts that have been made over the last few years? You know it's not just now that people have started talking about climate change, even if maybe the um discourse is getting more heated all the time. It's not like this is a new thing. And there's been many initiatives are being put in in the U K, in the U S, trying to counter this. How effective or ineffective of those been?

I think we are get in there. We're just not get in there fast enough. I think people have the notion that we are still in the same position on tackling climate change as we were a decay ago.

And I think that's not true. I think I think what what's really fundamental to dress in climate change is that humans need energy, right? They need energy for development.

And that has been a massive driver of human progress over last few centuries. So our basis of producing energy has been fossil fuels. no.

In order to tackle that, there are billions of people still try to move of poverty, still trying to increase their energy use, quite violated um and they are they're not going to a stop doing that. You're not gonna stop them doing that. So you need a substitute as a substitution as you need to substitute fossil fuels with a low carbon energy source.

The problem in the past has been that these energy ressources were way too expensive, right? So you're never gonna solar or wind or batteries or lege of vehicles because there were just way more expensive than fossil fuels. What's been a really dramatic change, especially last decade, is that the Prices of these have plummeted.

Um so you know they know the cars are growing now they're getting very cost competitive with petrol or or disease car play. They were really far away a decade ago. Same as solar and wind, they were extremely expensive that now undercutting the cost of fossil fuels.

Now that's completely and fundamentally changed the position that were in because no longer asking people to make a trade off of do you want to escape energy poverty or do you want to keep your CEO to emissions, will say they were always going to move out of energy poverty. I think we've reached a possesion now where there's no longer that trade off such the often people just go for the low carbon energy source because it's the cheapest. I think to me, that fundamentally changed the equation to the overall story on carbon version, that is, red countries over the last few decades have tended to reduce their emissions, whether middle and low income countries are, are still growing there. So we kind of this togo war at the global level, which means that global emissions are kind of no hovering .

around a peak. Yeah, I think this is, I know this sort of .

a the fact .

that we have a shared environment, but individual actors acting independently of each other to contribute to IT means that there is always going to be the sort of push pull, right there is going to be a group of people in developed countries that are going to be told you need to reduce energy emissions and it's very easy to say, well, that not not going to do IT and yeah, this what's IT called the tragedy of the commons um yeah there is always going to be some equivalent of a free rider problem or something else.

It's it's always going to be done. I think it's always going to make people feel uncomfortable about making sacrifices. I guess if they were to go and to live in a country that didn't have access to reliable energy, I was burning, what are done to be able to do IT? They might think maybe i'm not making that much of a sacrifice, but you know, humans, creatures of relativity, right? We have angering biases. Like, I remember how much my refrigerator energy fee was last year, and i've seen IT go up this year year been told that I can't water my garden or whatever, like we anker of where our lifestyle was previously not of someone in the sudan, right?

And I think I think that's been A A, A key stumbling block been these divisions. I think for me, there's there's so much finger pointing in as this kind of Young people put in at old people or old people put in at Young people, or left put in the right and right point at left and and rich counties point in china or india. And I think that's create a lot of division.

I think in general, what's work Better on climate as a the way international climate process is used to work with that was a very like top down, where basically this kind of global coalition and the kind of would set try to set tar, impose targets from the top down. And actually I didn't get us that far and country didn't really like IT was actually be more successful has country it's been like a bottom of or countries have decided this is the the the pledges or the targets that we're going to put on the table and they no money to themselves. Now you might think all they all just not put anything on the table.

And to some extent, there's much room for the increasing these these promises. We we hope they do, but you do start to get like a little bit of a competition exercise where IT does start to put pressure on different countries. Sorry, the the bottom up approach of people volunteering what they're willing to do has actually contractual vely work Better than a top down.

This is what you have to do having in general that also works at the individual level. I think the I mean, there's a lot of push back against people trying to tell others what you should and shouldn't do. Often that's like the best way to get someone to do, actually what you don't want them to do is to is to try to force .

them to do IT. Yeah what i'm i'm interested in this start that you put up about in the U. K.

Carbon emissions per person a half what they were when our grandparents were our age. And we haven't just offshore all of these either. That seems like quite a big win.

yeah. So carbon emissions and the U. K. Have fAllen a lot. They have fAllen by own fifty percent. Um a big driver of that has been the reduction of coal.

So like most of electricity used to come from coal, and we're basically now call fly, so we kind of got rid of the king of the dotty st. Fuel and our electricity as mix, which has pushed down emissions a lot. Now the covey out there is the fifty percent like exaggerate the total amount of reductions that we ve card because we offshore some of them.

So um we've kind of got rid of a lot of our manufacturing industries. So like we import goods from other countries that reproduce them. And it's very valid to see that you know the uk's carbon footprints should be what the U. K. Consumer are actually consummate. So the the total drop will not abuse is not as big as fifty percent, but there is still a decline and emissions are so for and that's a kind of general trend that we see across most high income countries that domestic commissions have reduced um but theyve also reduced when we take offshoring account.

Do you how difficult is IT onna be to provide a good quality of life for eight billion people while still being .

sustainable is a big chAllenge? Um yeah it's gonna be big. I think it's achievable. I think I think for me, what's key is the time skill. I think it's just inevitable that we will just move to clean energy.

I think how long we take to do that will be the big question that will be the big question about what temperature ze we we get to. Can we do IT in the next five years? Um I will be a chAllenge, but I would expect that we will do IT in the next fifty or sixty years. So the emphasis is on the speed. Um but she's gonna be very difficult, but to me is not completely unachievable.

What do people mean when they talk about deep growth?

So I think there's two terms here. I think one focused on population was more like depopulation, so kind of an environmental movement. So especially in the past, uh like a big point was the problem is just just just too many people um and and the planet cannot possibly provide for so many people. So the solution to this problem to have less people and then there's more of a kind of degree of movement where the argument there is that the driver has been over consumption. And therefore, in order to reduce emotions, we need to beats shank our economies.

right? And what your thoughts on day growth.

my thoughts are you cannot do the growth at a global level because you would leave billions of people in poverty and not to me, just morally unacceptable and you just won't achieve IT, right? Like you're not gonna stop people in more income countries from from time to of of poverty. Now is a question of should you keep GDP in rich countries the same, or should you shrink the the economies of rich countries? I don't think that's gonna a political reality like I do not see any political leader standing up and saying our main policies that we're gonna reduce our economy in order to reduce our co emissions.

And it's definitely not gonna en in on the time skills that we're talking about, right? We need to get moving on this the next decade um and to me, I do not see at being politically feasible the the one that a leader would stand up and promote that I think we kind of be political suicide um but also that they would actually get elected into government and then you ve got the the long time period. Even if you did get that and people voted for IT and they went into government, then you ve got the time that IT takes actually implement that.

And we don't actually know how effective that would be in reduce emissions like no one's tried kind of delivery the growth. So I think there's like tons of one known there. And for me, it's kind of a political nonstarter.

I guess, over a long enough time horizon. The next hundred years, the people calling for antilles or the population, they're gonna get the they're going to get the outcome that they want. It's just gonna en due to declining birth rates.

I know you made a really good clarification at the very beginning of this, which is exist the difference we ex essential risk and just you know a big problem, basically existential risk, permanent unrecoverable collapse, right? It's a very specific category of rest that shouldn't be thrown around. incorrectly. And I don't think that declining birth rates are one of those either, but they're definitely going to be the sort of thing that will impact human life front center very, very harshly, very quickly. You know within what when we're gonna pick twenty one hundred ish.

I I think I think the latest U N projections, but that was that I would global population would peak round to eighties and they have actually brought that forward like the far project. The the one pression before that was you know still increasing past twenty one hundred. And actually because fertility rates, which is just the number of children, a woman with a women um is falling quicker than than we expected. That's actually been brought forward to the twenty eighties.

So by the end of this century, the deep growth from a population standpoint, i'm aware that we're going to have to gain two billion before we start to come back down to where we are now.

Um but how much how concerned are you about that? You know if we presuming that what we're trying to do here, I don't know the basis of your philosopher, I don't know IT um seeing the earth is something that needs to be protected, whether it's trying to maximize human flourishing, whether it's trying to know this a variety reasons why people don't want the world to go to shit um but if we presume that in a months that is the flourishing utility you demonian happiness of the conscious humans that live on IT, reducing that number down precipitously is dangerous. That doesn't seem to be an alignment, ida. So how much time do you spend thinking about both rates? And what are your concern with population collapse?

Um I don't spend much time at all thinking about buff race in a climate context, and I don't think it's effective in any way to try to to use claim or environment to to promote Loring buff rs.

I mean I think the the basic story of following fertility rates and following buff rate is the um as countries develop, as they get richer, as girls go to school, women going to education, women wanted the uh economic opportunities and jobs, um fertility rates tend to decline. So you see a very clear relationship. But as countries get richer, they decline. Um and the I think I think one of the key part key parts of development as the futility rates will actually just continue to follow.

The countries like low income countries where both rates are still quite high, like maybe like four or five or six, um those will just fall because they will develop uh get girls will get to the skill, women will get going to work and our economic opportunities, and those are fantastic developments actually don't think you need the climate lens as part of the amino of your list of priorities of what would be the driver of declining. perfect. I think climate change is very, very low on that risk lake. And for a promotion of girl was going to school just because they should have the opportunity to go to school, not because we should reduce the population in order to address climate change.

right OK, that would be, that would be like a five dimensional chess move to trains a speed up the education of girls in low income countries in an attempt to reduce and birth rates. That would be that would be an impressive strategy. Um you ve said um I saw another quote from me that said we should use data to understand the world to make Better decisions.

That seems to be like a nice tag line. How effective have you found data being at nudging beliefs and culture and debate? Do you a part of this great website, our world in data, you put this to forward. But I would guess that the vanguard, like the front lines of trying to convince people by data, might be more difficult than we would think, given that data is like truth as long as it's right.

Yeah yeah. I I mean, is very mixed. I mean, I mean, there are some people that are so warm in today, there's nothing there's no data you could throw in front of them that would make them change their mind. And there will always be no excuse why that data doesn't fit with the narrative or why that data is flawed. Um I think some people are sweet by data can make good decisions based on IT. Um I think I mean, a range of people use a work, like the general population use a work, but also journalists, policymakers, user work and enough I think those fields data can actually make a difference to inform decisions .

what's happening with that pollution.

So there have been a couple of big air potion problems. There have been a couple of what we call like transboundary problems, which is more again, the tragedy of the comments problem where it's not just you know pollution on your own country that kind of cross across many countries um and you kind of need you know several counties are the whole world to work together to solve IT and one of the big ones there was the old there.

So kind of before climate change, the big environmental problem was the old there and uh, the growing ozone hole. Now at the time, that was really politically controversial bet like climate changes today, there were kind of push back against scientists. That was um i'm really politically controversial, but we we actually managed to resolve IT like we we brought in mode of the monitor protocol and we reduce the emissions of the gases that were destroying.

Those only are violent more than one thousand nine nine percent. So we've basically got rid of them and their own own hole should just repair itself in the next few decades. Um there was another big problem of acid rain, which when you born coal, you tend to produce what's called self for dioxide and that can dissolve in rainwater and you can get acid rain again.

That was a big problem. And we we've been pretty successful and solving IT, especially across europe and north america. And then there's the other problem of what we called local air pollution, which is like the pollution you'd find in your say from like cars and burning fossil fuels and home heating and stuff.

Now the the story there is my rich countries have gone through this process where um as they tended to get richer, their pollution increased. So if you think about london or edinburgh where I am um go back to the kind of the the beginning to met twenty century these cities were so so polluted like really on image more from what you would assume today. I mean the stories like you know the great smog in london where no, you couldn't even see a few feet front of you a shofar in china fin the court feet.

So the lisa is were incredibly polite. And i've actually been really successful over the last fifty years or so on and dramatically resign the amount of local area portion, especially in rich countries. So A A little bit of a different story in loan midlands m countries.

They're kind of kind of going out that of the um london or edinburgh went through uh kind of fifty years to a century ago. Um and air politian in general, a is a big killer in the world. So there are range of estimates, but there are all in the range of millions of premature deaths per year. So is a is A A big, big problem in some sense. You know, today, in terms of a number of lives lost is arguably bigger than climate change, although that could change in the future.

Wow, what do we do? How do you help a pollution? Now you can .

I mean the key one has stopped burning fossil fuels. Um you can put kind of strict a air pollution kind of standards on power plants like that was the big thing of as a drain lake. It's not that we necessarily just stopped burning coal.

We managed to put what called scrubbers on the power plant where I kind of took this far. 哎 so you don't get the the self for emissions。 Um a big driver in in in rich countries has been just increased uh their quander for cars.

So the amount of um of pollution viewer out the back of a cartey is much, much less than IT wasn't the past. And actually a move to electric vehicles would would decrease that even further. So even in rich countries know the estimated deaths attributed their pollution, and the U.

K, for example, told tens of thousands. So we know that we can still bring down that down further. That would be by, for example, moving away from petto dio cars.

What about the forest location?

Again, it's a bit of a story where countries tend to go through a transition where they would actually caught down forests for wood, for energy like before they have fossil fuels. Um but then the biggest driver of deforestation is just expanding farmland, not by far the biggest driver of deforestation. You need more land to grow food, therefore you you cut down forests.

No um the U K ver example, we cut down in a forest like a long time ago, like centuries and centuries ago, and actually there was really, really very a little forests left um but then we stopped doing that. And many rich countries, forests are regrowing. And most of the deforestation that's happening today is happening the tropics and it's happening because where again, we're still expanding agricultural land.

Um so deforestation rates today are still very, very high. But we think these global deforestation rates have fAllen in zero the ninety eighties. But we we still have a big chAllenge in our hands because deforestation rates are so high.

What's the truth about the cycle between raising or rising C O two levels with uh like regret ing a and the increasing uh plant growth and tree growth, forest growth based on that increase in carbon .

yeah they are again is a little bit mixed on terms of like Greening uh forest natural habitat, not natural vegetation count likes you exercise to can increase um regrowth turn x ten. I think this is often also discussed in terms of agriculture, like I ve seen earlier, that one of the big risks of agriculture is is climate change.

And IT is true that to a certain extent, more seto means can mean more a more highways and more crop growth, but is about how much of that is outweight by the detrimental and parts of dw of floods of temperature. And for many crops, the increase temperatures will just out way. The increase benefits of seo too. So even if you increase seo two about, you would still see negative effect from, uh, the temperature effect.

It's interesting that everything so into link here that instant deforest station is intrinsically linked with food and hunger and agriculture. So what progress has been made with with food and hunger as well.

So um I mean food in hunger again in global hunger rates have declined substantially over the last fifty years. And particular we've kind of plant told and progress they are and actually in some regions that has started to regress. So we have our own eight hundred.

Moving people in the world, nearly one in ten just don't get enough footie. And not the key chAllenge with with deforestation and these problems is that again, there you have this tension between people just need more food and we need more agricultural land and there's world habitat and there is forest in the way. Um so that's the big chAllenge.

One of these big solutions to that is just to make agriculture are much more productive, right? So if you can increase crop yds by if you could trouble crop yards, then you can produce the same amount of foot a front of the land. So one of the big, uh, necessities there are is to just increase crop builds and productivity.

And I think in many regions, there are still a lot of scope to do that. I think the the other big link to deforestation there was like animal agriculture. So a lot of the deforestation of the amazon, for example, was clearing land for pasture for cattle breezing for a beef production. And by far, that's the biggest driver of deforestation. And in general, beef is just a really inefficient way of using land to produce food.

What what is the we talking about crop ds, that how much truth is thring top soil degradation and the quality of what we're growing our plants out of?

Yeah so I mean, there's been lots of headlines about you know soil laws and there's this kind of like we've only got the walls on, got sixty harvest left headline e that kind of went viral and that headline is not true and have no so santis would back that up across the world. You have a mixed again, a mix picture like some soils are stable and and fine. Some are actually growing, so they are actually grow.

Top soil is growing and there are others that actually are degrading over time and as a serious worry. But we're not gonna get to know this. No single point where you know just the the whole and sixty years that the world was harvest just stopped because of top oil, that just a really large variation and soil across the world when you could never just put a single figure on when this would happen.

And what about biodiversity? But something else that i've seen talked about an awful lot that the the fifth great extinction of the savage everyone were in. This is the beginning, whatever that one, six great extinction in the middle, that and we've lost more species in the last x number of years than in the whole bigger number of years before that .

yeah I mean by the trends of by by the a also are not good. And there like the area where i'm most pessimistic. So there's been five previous mass extinctions on earth and there a question of r the six mass tincture now in order to to qualify like a mass extinction, you kind of have this fresh hold of, you need to lose like seventy five to eighty percent of species, and you need to do on a is code of fast time scale. But us like two million years, like is fast on geological time skills for on human time skills are obviously not um no, we're obviously very, very far away from losing that percentage of species.

But what you can do you can look at the rate of change and say we know roughly how many species have gone back to the last few centuries, for example, um more five hundred years or thousand years and you can say, okay, what's the the rate of extinction there and then you can compare that to what was the rate of extinctions in the previous five masses extinctions and actually, what do you find when you cry those numbers as that we are actually losing species are faster rate than we wear in the five previous mass extinctions. Now if we just continued to lose species at that rate, then yet I would qualify as being in the sex master extinction. Um my optimism there is that we won't just continue to lose species that rate because we will hopefully address deforestation.

We will hopefully carb climate change, we will hopefully be able to restore natural habitat. So this kind of I think it's reasonably fair to say that you know the trends point towards the six mass extinction if we just continue as we are. But my hope is that we won't continue as we are.

What is driving this loss in biodiversity was IT coming from?

I mean, there is often referred to as death by a frozen cuts. So there's no like single driver about diversity losses is tends to be a mix. I mean, the biggest driver is is food production.

So either like either overall expo, which is just like direct hunting or direct overfishing or kind of log in a forest um or its destruction of habitats for farming and agriculture and that can be either cutting down um forest or or moving into whil grass lands, but IT can also be losing insects uh because of the use of fertilizers or passes on agricultural land. Not is a very to me that's a very, very tRicky problem to solve because there's a of there are kind of two counts on how you produce food and a kind of biodiversity friendly. We like one.

You could just use lots of feroza, lots of pesticides, get really productive land. You could use less land by doing that. So basically, see, we're going to accept that were gona have lots of biodiversity loss on this smaller bit of land or you can go for another approach for, say, we're going to lose less bit of us but were going to spread over a larger area. I think the kind of jury on that is, is still out on how you how you best to manage that.

Yeah, that's difficult. A really difficult baLance to strike. Have you got any idea what types of animals have contributed most to despite a diversity loss as IT been segmented out, as IT been the fish there all falling off, but the mamas are fine? Or is IT mostly insects and reptiles are fine if you got any .

idea sko mixed um like the mamas are not doing out in particular. I mean, if you look over the course of human history, the big change has been what we call like the downsizing of mammals. So we've tended to just lose the big mammals.

So should they were get in smaller and smaller over time, that could be predominant hunger animals um and they tend to go instinct and they also take longer to reproduce. So smaller animals can kind of recover because they can rip reproduce rather quickly. Where is large animals take much longer.

So we've tended to lose the largest mamo barges are not doing partly well, neither are an hibiya insects like the general trend there is, is not looking good. I think insects in general, or just harder to count, is very hard to get really long term data on inside, like you can kind of count elephants like pretty well and kind of get good to circle records. But IT is really hard to do for insects. Go, I think insects are pretty uncertain, but I think they are definitely, there are very few, very few like good, good transit. And video ity trying .

to find A A silver lining in the by diversity loss. IT didn't really seem to be.

I can give you one. I like in some regions like europe, for example, we lost a lot of mamo, but we are actually bringing a lot of them back now there's been lots of restoration um uh programs and you know the european bison is is on its way back. So I think the rest stuff that you can do um and that is possible to restore a lot of these populations. But the overall trend is .

I had a conversation a couple of months ago with a guy who is bringing Willy mam ths back to life .

was IT brand. No, no, IT wasn't.

I can't remember the I can't remember the name of the place closed lower closes, I think, uh, is the name of the company and yeah that the sequence IT from a bunch of frozen bone and I think maybe something else samples and then they're going to use an asian elephant, maybe and they're going to implant. And then over time, they will have this. And then maybe they can go up north and they're good at compacting down the earth.

And compacting down the earth changes the way that hits IT. And then they help with furnishing and moving so that and he also wanted to do had this really cool idea of wanting to bring back ah the dodo bird and the reason he wanted to do that was as a symbolic gesture to remind people about biodiversity loss. So thinking basically explaining the this huge process that we'd have to go through, we'd have to do this and we'd have to do this and we've to do this. And then finally, we would get something that looks like the dota. But I think there was one other type of tiger maybe that was thinking about doing IT with, and then to basically use that as the tip of the spear, to, say, G, C, all of this work that we've just had to do to try bring this bird back to life, like just try try to kill IT this time type thing.

Yeah, I mean, it's it's but a little bit the same story with the forest where I think we often think about like planting trees and regrown forests where's like the best thing we can do a force is just like not to cut them down in the first place and into some sense as the same of biodiversity, where you you've take a mass of effort to be able to bring back species or even restore a population so that you know the office best. Wk is like not to to push IT to extinction in the first place.

What about ocean plastics? And a way that microplane s like we can, alex Jones, our way into sallets in the waterloo that we want, but ocean plastics, to heard this story about this island the same size of texas, that somewhere, and it's swell round. And then there was that guide that made the the ocean scrape of thing. And he was in he was doing really great work. But I the what's the story that with ocean plastics?

Yeah I mean, I don't I can't solve the plastic problem like I I think plastic is a really tRicky one. It's like a really amazing and viable material or which I think is wise. We produce so much to make IT, so hard to get off of IT.

But the simple problem of like plastics flooring into the ocean is a very, very like actable one. Um we do have significant ment of plastics for into the ocean like the at least is as much are like our own one to two million ton year if a perspective that's about zero point five percent of the plastic uh waste to be produce. So I think the ocean that you know all of our plastics are flowing into the ocean is not great, like is a great quite a small percentage but in an upstate terms is quite big.

Um the key problem with plastic ocean plastics is not necessarily using plastics is like how they are managed. So if you can um store plastics in landfill or the recycle d or they are in generated, then they don't lego into the environment and they don't end out in the ocean, rivers or ocean. The problem is often that um in many countries the waste management is not they are to to to deal with the amount of plastic that they are such that it's often dumped to its and an open landfall and blows into the ocean.

Um now I get is um I mean some extent that then is socialist is quite simple, like it's not sexy. It's just like bold landfill or bold waste management structures, but like that doesn't tend to get a ton of investment because is not like flashy. Um but there is also projects trying to do the opposite one is, as you said, as a guy called boy and sla and he created the ocean cleanup project where they obviously trying to scoop plastic oh, let's already in the ocean and get IT oh and I think they're not a really good job.

I mean, they haven't got all the plastic o yet, but they are being successful getting some of the and then we've also generally eats, uh, a kind of separate project, which is trying to stop IT going into the ocean in the first place. So a lot of this wage tend to come tends to come down through rivers. And what theyve done, they've like model to try to work out like what are the biggest rivers that are contributors to those in plastics.

Then they have what's called an interceptor where they absolutely tried to like stop the plastics going in um at the end of the river before IT reaches the ocean. So there are I think he's done an amazing job and he's kind of came of nowhere and decided, I mean, we all just watch and see all that's really bad that the plastics in the ocean and he's like, no, there doesn't have to be plastics in the ocean. It's kind of tried to to engineer a solution out of IT.

Have you got any idea of which with the rivers that were contributing heavily?

I mean, it's changed. The law that are understanding has changed a lot over time. I make a naughten. You know there was estimates, you know most of IT was coming from like twenty rivers. No actually not quite goods because then you they need twenty interceptors.

I think more recent studies have shown actually coming from like a thousands different rivers um which is a much trick problem to tackle like most of these rivers from the late study from the boy and the slight and his colleagues tend to show a lot of them tend to be in asia, south amErica or africa. They tend to be in middle and countries where um people have got richer there. No using much more plastic. But again, the west management infrastructure hasn't managed to catch up rich .

enough to buy the things that are in the plastic but not rich enough to be able to work out how to deal with that. Once .

you've is .

that what about .

overfishing? They are um again, there's a little bit of a split where overfishing is a tractable problem that is a problem that you can manage. Um the key for that is being able to baLance fish populations such that you know how much you can catch without massively reducing the population of the fish right you wanted be in a state we are um for fishing, your fishing um and the population is not decreasing.

Now if you've overfish so you're fresh too much, that population will start to decrease and decrease and decrease actually even for from an economic perspective, that's only good in the short term, right? Because in the medium to long term, the amount of stuff that you can fresh, well, just decline over time. So it's like a really short term benefit for a medium to long term detriment.

No many regions, fish populations are actually doing things because we can do that quite well. And we have policies in place and quarters on how much Fisherman can touch in other parts of the world. That's just not they are um and you would expect often the the fish populations they are, are declining.

So the estimates that are around are right afford of the world's a fish population ans are being over fished. Now there there is a slightly different story to that. We are in the in our only way of having fish was to like catch wild fish.

What we've seen over last few decades is the rise of what we call agriculture, which is fish farming. No um a little bit like on land where we would Normally just hunt animals. We then decided, no, we'll grow animals so we'll have livestock and we will be on animals ah that's kind of what fish farming is all about.

We are rather than only touch in wolfish, you basically farm your own fish. And actually no fish farming produces more than wild fish. So most of the growth and and global fish production over last few decades has come from fish farming is not come from catching wild fish.

IT seems to me like thinking about all this stuff that we've spoken about today. This tragedy of the comments thing really just comes back to the four, that we are individual nations who are not always even coordinated internally, but definitely not coordinated effectively externally between all of us, and that by trying to improve the quality of the shared environment that requires different actors and agents to behave in different ways. And IT can feel to some like that, having the brakes pressed on them, while are the people are getting away on a free ride. You ve got this free rider problem.

How do you how like, how do you suggest that especially developed the countries that are going to have to potentially go to their citizens and say, hey, your quality of life is going to stagnate or or perhaps even get more difficult, more expensive or whatever um have you thought around the city from a public messaging standpoint? But just like culturally, how do you deliver this message to people? Because we're not IT it's not in our nature to say, oh like sorry, the people in or or zimbabwe or whatever need to have Better access to whatever.

Don't worry, people of child like i've got you like that's just not in our nature and it's very difficult in an age of the internet sort of quippy sound bites and tiktok length videos IT way too nuance and settled to get across. But the alternative is the kind of use a more dome day scarier, which kind of just blanket coverage is everything with fear and terror. And that also is not only not to accurate, but doesn't necessarily have the desired outcome. So have you have you kind of conceived this what what I like climate culture three point would look like?

yeah. I mean, I think I think part of this has come come down to the fact that I mean, we've often not been very good on our messaging on this. I think coming from and part of kind of the environment movement I think often is framed as a sacrifice, right? It's like you have to sacrifice this um in order to solve this problem.

And I think again again, I think in the past stop may have been true. Um I think the only solution and the past would be you just have to use less energy and you have to have less stuff and you have to say about less, less, less, less. And I think we're moving to a stage with the development of many of these technologies where you can switch and it's not necessarily less and it's not necessarily sacrifice.

This is Better, right? So there are technologies where you can actually just reduce energy bows. You could create employment opportunities like and many of the these growing industries like they are creating a job, women, they are create in employment opportunities.

You could get lower energy bows. The cost of run in your car would be lower or electricity. I think there are a range of solutions. There was not necessarily a massive sacrifice that actually can just benefit and in hand slave. So I think we've done quite poorly on the message on that because it's all i've been about less, less, less sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice.

I mean, in terms of the role of rich countries and how they contribute to this uh dilema and and low income countries is that I think the responsible if rich countries of the they need to get their emissions down first and foremost, right they've had high emissions in the U. K. We've had on a high machines for a real long time.

We've managed to get to a stage where we're rich. Um we have really high living standards. And in some sense, I think it's just a responsibility to get our domestic emissions down, driving the role that the rich counties can also play as that they can also be the drivers of innovation and deployment of these low carbon technologies that we need.

And these tend to follow what we will call a learning curve where solar or batteries or when, for example, the more you deploy them, the law, the Price gets. So it's like a self a filling trend where deploy more, Prices fall, deploy more. So what what that means is that by um pushing these technologies and innovating on these technologies, we basically drive on the cost for the rest of the world.

So we can, we can, we can invest money, we can deploy them. We can make solar batteries, elect vehicles really cheap such that people in law income countries don't need to face that trade off anymore. They can develop they can follow um a pathway to already the high standard of living.

But they won't follow the pathway the the U K or the U S. uh. Followed because they won't have the high call esias.

They won't necessarily drive a petrol or a disco car. So I think that's the the bag role. The rich countries complain again, and I don't think it's necessarily the big sacrifice that often made out to be.

What about china, obviously, is often brought up in this discussion as a country that is quite developed. But also I have no, you will probably know how much truth there isn't IT. They built more coal plants or whatever plans in the last, however many years than so in south. The point being that the the free rider of free riders would be china. What what's the truth about that?

I don't think china's a free writer. I think it's true that they are and they they produce the high them or and they produce a lot of coal um and they are still building coal plants by the kind of paradox they are as they are actually just leading completely on low current technologies like they're building solar and went so fast they are are pushing really hard lunch of vehicles.

So the biggest a car uh elect car company is not tesler but byd which is A A chinese company. Um they are dominating in the supply chains for these minerals. They are they are seeing this as an economic opportunity.

And in some sense, they're gone to start pushing a lot of western manufacturer out of the market because they've been. Um and I think that the kind of general trend of where that's going, so china is the playing these technologies is really quickly. As an example, last year, china produce or uh installed enough soul and went to power the U K A.

France and the writing and one year. Um so they're about in the staff really quickly. And to the extent we are and were really bad at predicting ting peaks, i'm not onna put a definitive peak on, but some people have been talking about what of china's emission could peak this year or next year just because they're building low carbon technology so quickly.

So that's the paradox of china or they are so producing lots of coal, but are also really leading the way on low carbon technologies. Again, not necessarily because they really, really care about climate change. They're doing IT for the economic opportunities.

They are doing IT for employment. There's an opportunity there um which to me in some sense of positive, right? Because it's really hard.

I would love everyone to be really passionate about climate change, but that's just not the reality. So you need to create other incentives for people to act. And the the key point there is people will just act because it's economic to do so. And you get the side benefit of, yes, we reduce carbon emissions and we also air plan. So for me, in some sense, that's also a positive.

Seems to be the kind of like one of the and one of the the laws of physics of of climate change of of impacting IT in an effective way, which is show me the incentives and i'll show you the outcome. You know, before tezila came along, at least in the west, driving in electric car wasn't a state of symbol. So the incentive of I want to buy a vehicle that I look cool in and IT gives me prestige.

People think that i'm like trendy or whatever. The driving IT wasn't happening so much with a prius IT was like a political statement to drive a praus was a political statement. Um well, as if you can make the thing that you want people to do, also the thing that they want to do, then you're swimming dom stream and yeah totally if if this is the way that IT is and if getting reliable energy from solar, from wind, from other stuff.

I've had a lot of criticism around the reliability of a germany's problem that they've had where they've had to like retta o fit gas and then obviously became super dependent on an area of the world that was dominated by a war for two years and then that meant that Price going up and at all the german going to freeze in the winter and all list of um but presumably all of these are just, I would imagine, keeping problems are only going to be made by one country and moving forward. It's like don't do a germany like if you ever make yourself into you know like one of those quotes that if you mean yourself into an energy, uh uh energy strategy, that probably idea but yeah if we can get IT to the stage where it's both more economically viable and also impact the environment in a positive way, that literally the best if if the people that we and a lot have been super critical of china. But I do sometimes find myself like leaning into the the almost like immoral it's like an immoral country somehow and that you know that they um they were because the antagonistic are adversarial with the west, that they are doing things to try that completely disregarding the environment.

Like does not necessarily the case. Like I need to kind of fact check on thought, check myself when I do do that. But the point being that we presume china has more priorities than simply the climate.

And yet if they've managed to build sufficient renewable energy to power the U. K. Or france in the last year, okay, that if if we can encourage them to do IT, then countries that are part of the g or whatever of the organization, that should be pretty easy.

Yeah I mean a range of examples like I I in the books of example of like on a personal level at my broader no, my broader bought a tesler and I didn't buy a tesla because as lag, he really, really cared about climate change. He just thought as look as a test and was cool. And I was a really nice car to drive like he saw on one and was like, this is the best thing of our, i'm going to get tesla.

And I mostly most sively cut his carbon fibre, but I wasn't necessarily because of climate. And we got like clear example. There is the like in the U.

S. There's obviously there is a very, quite strong partisan divide on climate. We are like after really poor climate policies and a lot people are in the right are are less so.

But then you look at what which states in the us. Are producing the most renewable power and the top five, five states with the largest ament of wind and their energy sector are over republican. Um and again, they're not doing that for climate.

They're doing that just because one donors commit money, there's an economic opportunity. The community starts to get behind IT. And actually, when you look at kind of message in our own climate and the kind of contacts um the language you use is so important.

So if you just talk about clean energy, many more people are behind IT like on the left, in the right. Everyone loves clean energy. Um what they don't like necessarily all like is talking about climate.

And actually you ruin the chances of the clean energy in the point if you try to push the climate message too far. I think really gearing the climate message to like whoever you're talking to is so important if you're talking to someone that really in to climate change, of course, talk about climate. If you're talking to someone that's got sceptical, but they they are pretty favour of clean energy, then you actually can actively push them away from IT. If you try to force the climate message to hard.

yeah use the right language with the right audience. Very interesting. Let's bring this one home. Hanna, I really appreciate you have for today.

Where should people go? They want to keep up today with all the stuff that you do. Why should you send them?

Um I have a news letter code, sustainability by numbers, and I tried to break down all the stuff by numbers. Um have a new book, old cold, not the end of the world where I discuss all of this. And then I work our world in data where you can find like all of this data and research on how all of this service changing.

Thank you hand.

Thank you.