If you care about a sustainable planet, you don't have to go out of your way to find bad news. Forests are disappearing, extreme weather is increasing, the green goals that governments set themselves are not being achieved. Are you already feeling gloomy or are you resistant?
That's why it's great when someone paints a more positive picture based on the facts. British scientist Hannah Ritchie does this in the book worth reading Not the end of the world. Thirty-something Ritchie was herself a climate pessimist, convinced that she was living “in the most tragic period of humanity.” But the reality turned out to be more nuanced when she started studying the major trends for Our World in Data.
Of course, Ritchie does not claim that nothing is wrong. She addresses the seven biggest environmental crises: air pollution, climate change, deforestation, providing enough food without eating the planet, biodiversity loss, plastic in the oceans and overfishing. “If we don't address them, the consequences will be terrible and horribly uneven.”
But the doom stories that are circulating are exaggerated. The problems are “major and urgent, but also solvable.” According to Ritchie, we pay too little attention to the progress that is being made.
In this way, Ritchie compares her life with that of her grandparents. Her standard of living is much higher than when her grandmother was her age now. And you would think that Ritchie's generation uses much more energy per person and therefore emits much more greenhouse gases than her grandmother's generation at that age. Wrong.
Ritchie's generation (born in 1993) emits less than half of the CO2 per person2 that her grandparents (born in 1938) ejected when they were the same age as Ritchie in the 1960s. While she turns on the heating earlier and has more energy-consuming gadgets. How does that happen? Cleaner energy. When her grandparents were young, energy in the UK came mainly from coal. Now that is less than 2 percent, the rest comes from gas, nuclear energy, sun and wind. Energy consumption per Briton also fell by a quarter.
Ten years ago I would not have expected that we would already be in such a decline, but at the same time there is still a lot to do
Robert Koelemeijer Environmental Planning Agency
Ritchie uses this example of British domestic energy consumption to make a broader point: in most rich countries, greenhouse gas emissions have been falling for the past twenty years or so as the economy grows. This is partly because emissions have been moved abroad, for example by producing the things that rich countries buy in China. But even if you look at consumption in rich countries, emissions are falling. And there is more in the barrel now CO2-poor energy from sun and wind is quickly becoming cheaper, just like batteries and electric cars.
Is there such a positive story to be told for the Netherlands? Not quite. Domestic CO emissions are also falling here2 per person considerable, but clear Less hard than in the UK. Especially if you compare the emissions now with the emissions in the year Ritchie uses: 1965. In the Netherlands, emissions in 1965 were much lower than in the UK, but they continued to grow considerably. Only after 1979 did emissions per Dutch person start to increase to drop considerably. In total with 46.6 percent, where the British achieved a minus of 59 percent.
Emissions per Dutch person are now higher than those per Briton. This has to do with the structure of the economy and energy supply. While in the UK very old and therefore climate-unfriendly coal-fired power stations closed after Ritchie's grandfather and grandmother's younger years, three new coal-fired power stations were commissioned in the Netherlands in 2015. The British also made savings more energy than us. The Netherlands uses a relatively large amount of energy per capita. This is because we have a lot of energy-intensive industry.
Is Ritchie right that we pay too little attention to the positive change that has already been initiated? Yes, say Robert Koelemeijer and Mark van Oorschot of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. The Netherlands has also managed to grow prosperity per Dutch citizen since 2005 to reduce emissions. The Netherlands is now pushing 30 percent less CO2 out. “Ten years ago I would not have expected that we would already be experiencing such a decline,” says Koelemeijer.
But at the same time there is still a lot to do. Europe does not want to emit any greenhouse gases on balance in 25 years' time. In the Netherlands, the remaining 70 percent also has to be removed. “So the glass is 30 percent full, but 70 percent empty,” says Koelemeijer.
Van Oorschot also sees a positive change. “You see that some of our environmental footprints have decreased by producing much more efficiently.” But on the other hand, the population is growing, just like how much we consume. “We buy more, we fly more. The gains we make in technology are partly offset by this consumption growth,” says Van Oorschot. “Without a 'volume policy' that focuses on less animal proteins, buying less stuff and flying, it will be very difficult to reduce our footprint on the world.”
So much has already been achieved, but at the same time it is still far from enough. With such a big change, that makes sense. That is precisely why both optimists and pessimists can continue to be right about the state of climate policy for a long time to come. One sees what has already happened: a lot! And what changes are already in the works: a lot! The other thing that still needs to be done: a lot!
Ritchie quotes her colleague Max Roser from Our World in Data: “The world has improved enormously. The world is still terrible. The world can be much better.” All three of these statements are true.
A version of this article also appeared in the March 2, 2024 newspaper.
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