Book Summary and Review: Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet. By Hannah Ritchie, Deputy Editor and Lead Researcher of Our World in Data. (Little Brown Spark/Hachett Book Group, 2024).

     For more than a few years now I have been reading short interpretations and explanations of data by Hannah Ritchie on the Our World in Data website. I was delighted when I saw her on Amanpour and Company and decided to get her new book. Ritchie is in the ‘gen y’ age range of 25-40 and I think perhaps she can communicate some realities about data to younger people. In this book, as a Ph.D. data scientist, she utilizes the data as much as possible to arrive at conclusions regarding risk levels, risk perception and misperception, and policy. She also points out the many misconceptions and fallacies among environmentalists as she considers herself an environmentalist as well but of a more pragmatic and less aspirational type.

     Through the course of the book, she dispels various myths and misconceptions that had become dogma among environmentalists. She also recounts some of her changes in position and policy regarding a few different topics. These changes came about due to the data showing that her previously held positions were not supported by the data. A well-known axiom is: ‘The data doesn’t lie.’ Analyzing data is a preceding step to determining what is true or not true. As a data scientist for a company that compiles and presents global data, she has a front-row seat in analyzing data. In presenting results from data analysis there are responsibilities to show the limitations of data interpretations. Data and its interpretation can be manipulated, cherry-picked, full of caveats, and presented in various skewed and incomplete ways, often to favor a certain narrative being promoted.

     The chapter headings reveal the subjects addressed: sustainability, air pollution, climate change, deforestation, food, biodiversity loss, ocean plastics, and overfishing. These represent many of the major environmental challenges for our global society. These, she deems are the world’s biggest environmental problems. As expected, this book is full of graphs and charts.

     She begins by dissing the catastrophist narratives that have been spread in recent years, resulting in children being bombarded with environmental pessimism. She believes that the data shows that we are making important headway on some problems and others are not as bad as depicted. She argues that in many cases the data does not support catastrophist interpretations, but rather optimistic ones. She tells how hearing Swiss physician, statistician, and public speaker Hans Rosling speak one night, impacted her and her views. Rosling was famous for showing people that they very often have their facts about the world wrong, that they are not integrating global data into their policy opinions. Things are often not as bad as depicted in the media and in society in general. I would recommend Stephen Pinker, Bjorn Lomborg, and Ted Nordhaus as other thinkers revealing similar results. It is the data that is most important. She argues: “If we want clarity we have to take in the full picture, and that means giving ourselves some distance. If we take several steps back, we can see something truly radical, game-changing and life-giving: humanity is in a truly unique position to build a sustainable world.”

     She argues that doom is a huge exaggeration, and I would add that an exaggeration is fairly synonymous with a lie. Interestingly, she also argues that these exaggerations tend to undermine the reputations of scientists and erode trust in science, even as they are proved wrong as many are. She also takes on the shift to the goal of keeping global warming under 1.5 deg C temperature rise. That goal was always considered non-attainable and by putting catastrophic impacts at that threshold we add to the impending sense of doom. We don’t really know what average global temperature increase will trigger catastrophic impacts. The same can be said for the activist group 350.org. We don’t really know whether 350ppm is better than 400ppm. We do know that we need our atmospheric CO2 concentration to peak at some point and then begin to drop. There are some important benefits like better plant growth and global greening at our current CO2 concentration of 425ppm.

     In opposition to the radical group Extinction Rebellion who argue that they are the last generation, Ritchie argues that we can be the first generation to achieve a sustainable world.

She notes that while our environmental challenges are big and important, they are not our major existential risks, and that we need to be realistic in comparing facts, acknowledging progress toward solving problems while also acknowledging that they are still major problems.

     In the first chapter about sustainability, she notes that “the world has never been sustainable.” Of course, people often forget this or perhaps never learn it, being deceived that the past was without serious environmental problems. She uses the 1987 UN definition of sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Thus, there are two aspects: meeting present needs and preserving future needs. One is mostly human well-being, and the other is mostly environmental protection. Both are necessary and she argues that we have never achieved both so that is why the world has never been sustainable.

     With graphs she shows our very important improvements in child and mother mortality, life expectancy, in addressing hunger and malnutrition, access to basic resources like clean water, energy, and sanitation, education, and extreme poverty. She also points out two approaches that will not help fix our problems: depopulation and degrowth. Ending poverty requires economic growth as redistribution alone would fall very far short. The wealth that economic growth provides also helps us better address our environmental problems.

     The section on air pollution points out how it has improved in many places, including in Beijing, China, falling there by 55% between 2013 and 2020.

 

Indoor fires have been polluting the lungs of people for millennia, even 400,000 years ago as analysis of the teeth of hunter-gatherers in Israel showed. Indoor and outdoor wood smoke has long been a major pollutant and continues to be in many places. We all know about the London smog and other events where toxic coal smoke was implicated. We now know much about the effects of black lung disease, silicosis, and other lung diseases from coal dust, silica dust, and other dust. But there are success stories like addressing acid rain, the hole in the ozone layer, and the reduction in sulfur dioxide and NOx emissions in many countries. The following graph is for the UK but mirrors other developed countries.

 

These successes show that we can solve many of our environmental problems and that we can do it with sufficient global cooperation. In many cases the air we are breathing now is cleaner than the air our ancestors breathed. Passing peak air pollution has been achieved in many developed countries and is beginning to occur in developing countries. Even so, air pollution still causes many premature deaths. She thinks that we are approaching the peak of deaths from air pollution and that they will eventually sometime soon begin to trend downward. Air pollution deaths per capita have been falling steadily for decades in many countries and in the world as a whole.

     While she says the solution to air pollution is to stop burning stuff, that is of course, not at all a practical solution at present. Useful solutions to reduce air pollution include use of cleaner cooking fuels, reducing crop waste burning, de-sulfuring fossil fuels like diesel, and more replacing of fossil fuels with renewables and nuclear energy. She points out that while we worry about climate change killing people in the future, air pollution has long been killing people and continues to do so.

     In the chapter on climate change she points out that it was once thought not so long ago that we were headed to 4-6 deg C of temperature increase. Now, it seems likely that we can keep it reasonably below 2.5 deg C of increase, much closer to the original goal of 2.0 deg C. 1.5 deg C seems quite unlikely in nearly all scenarios. Ritchie is more optimistic that we can hit the 2.0 target. I think we will likely be closer to 2.5 deg unless technology catches up. She also shows how she got caught up in catastrophism when she was younger due to what is known as the risk perception gap, the gap between perceived level of risk and real level of risk. Seeing the data removed the gap. She also points out how our improvements in disaster mitigation and extreme weather preparedness can help us adapt to climate change impacts. Importantly, she points out that while total global greenhouse gas emissions are still rising, emissions per person have peaked. This happened a decade ago and she notes that it is a fact that is very rarely acknowledged. Total emissions are also expected to peak soon. She mentions the importance of using similar metrics to compare and how the thorny issues of assigning values or attributes to certain emissions sources can be exploited in arguments. She also points out that her own and indeed our own carbon footprints are less than those of our grandparents, less than half in her case. Technology has enabled that change. Energy use per capita has dropped by 25% since 1960.  Technology leads to better efficiency which allows us to do more with less and to grow our economies while reducing emissions. She points out the use of trade records to quantify the “offshored” emissions so that proper emissions accounting is practiced. Offshored emissions uncertainties have been a point of disagreement with catastrophists often arguing that they are much more than they really are. She notes that in the UK since 1990 GDP per capita increased by 50%, domestic emissions have been halved, and consumption-based emissions (those accounting for offshored emissions as imported emissions) have dropped by one third. Thus, as the following 2^nd graph shows, many countries have decoupled economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions.

The ‘Energy Ladder’ The dominant energy source for cooking and heating, by level of income.

 

While she points out that solar, wind, and battery costs have continued to drop though time, she probably went to press before the rising interest rates made costs soar in those sectors. A pie chart showing the sources of emissions shows the main issues we must address if we are to solve climate change.

    

She notes that coal use continues a steady drop in many countries and globally. She also notes some of the issues with wind and solar like land use and minerals demand. She doesn’t mention much or anything about the challenges and costs of integrating intermittent and variable energy sources.

     She considers transport and the footprint of an EV vs. an ICE vehicle, noting that global sales of new petrol cars peaked in 2017. In considering the emissions of food she offers the following solutions: 1) Eat less meat and dairy, especially beef. 2) Adopt the best and most efficient farming practices we can. 3) reduce overconsumption. 4) Reduce food waste. 5) Close yield gaps across the world. The graph below compares the emissions of different meats and plant proteins.

 

Plant-based foods are better for the climate Measured in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) per 100 grams of protein.

 

     She covers the challenges of decarbonizing the heavy industry sector. Currently, the best and most feasible solutions are things like carbon capture. She also considers the pros and cons of pricing carbon.

     In considering climate change adaptation she offers the following three necessities: 1) Pull people out of poverty.  2) Improve the resilience of our crops to drought, floods, and a warming world. 3) Adapt our living conditions to deal with sweltering heat.

     At the end of the chapter, she offers some interpreted data that shows gaps between the footprints of certain actions in emissions savings vs. what people think is most effective, as in the graph below.

 

     The chapter on deforestation reports that the data shows that we can be cautiously optimistic about tackling deforestation. Forests have been restored in many developed countries after vast deforestation in the 19^th century and early 20^th century. She points out that in the past it was coal that allowed some countries to decouple their population and economic growth from deforestation. She notes that the earth has lost one third of its forest since the end of the last Ice Age about 10,000 years ago. When considering palm oil as a driver of deforestation she expected it to be a big one but found out instead through analyzing the data that the problem was more complicated. Estimates from the Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for global tree loss driven by palm oil ranged from 0.2% to 2%. 85% of palm oil comes from Indonesia and Malaysia. Many of the palm oil plots there had previously been logged for wood and paper. She considers recent backlash against seed oils due to their perceived health effects but notes that she found no credible evidence to support those perceived health effects, which result from a perception that omega 6’s are linked with inflammation, which has not been established. Palm oil is considered to be a seed oil. Palm oil is very productive compared to other oils in oil per hectare, 2.6 tonnes per hectare vs. 0.3 tonnes per hectare for olive oil. Yet, due mainly to the media most people perceive palm oil to be an environmentally unfriendly crop.

 

     Deforestation is really mostly about converting forests to agriculture and grazing, which make up to 75% of deforestation. A big part of that is beef grazing, which adds much to the carbon footprint of beef cows. Deforesting to grow foods for oils, the two biggest being soybean oil and palm oil, make up 18% of global deforestation. Her suggestions for solving deforestation include 1) Zero-deforestation policies, not boycotts. 2) Eat less meat, especially beef. 3) Improve crop yields – especially in sub-Saharan Africa. 4) Rich countries should pay poorer countries to keep their forests standing.  In many of these suggestions the details would need to be worked out to the agreement of all parties, no easy task. She notes that cities have magnitudes less impact on forests than does agriculture, and many benefits as well. Plant-based ingredients like soy were implicated in deforestation in Brazil in the 1990’s and early 2000’s but the vast majority of soy is actually used in animal feeds and should be attributed to animal agriculture. A mere 7% of soy production goes to vegan products like tofu, soymilk, and veggie burgers. Most of the soy that humans consume is in the form of soybean oil. Most of the animal feed is used to feed chickens, See the graph below.

 

     In the food chapter, she disses catastrophic predictions about food availability as nonsense. The data clearly support her position here. While issues like soil depletion and degradation are real, they are regional and the data show that soil is degrading in some agricultural areas while improving in others. She goes through the human history of farming. Farming has always had environmental impacts, and this continues. She recounts the development of the Haber-Bosch process for making fertilizer and reminds me of one of the Our World in Data graphs that was very impactful to me. Shown below, it shows how many people are supported by synthetic fertilizer vs. how many are not. The other technological advancement in food in the 20^th century was the selective breeding of food crops as best exemplified by the developments of crop scientists like Norman Borlaug. It was Borlaug’s Green Revolution that sunk biologist Paul Ehrlich’s extremely pessimistic predictions of massive global starvation. Not just animal feed but biofuels as well consume significant amounts of our food production, as shown below.

 

Ritchie points out that meat is an inefficient way to get calories. Smaller animals are more efficient than larger ones, but the amount of energy, water, and food inputs far exceeds the output in terms of calories. Just comparing feed inputs to caloric output, the graphic below shows the size-efficiency relationship.

 

She points out that food is related to many of our environmental problems. Freshwater resource scarcity, deforestation, biodiversity loss, water pollution, soil erosion and degradation, fertilizer runoff, and more implicate our food systems. Livestock agriculture is the biggest source of many of these issues. She says that land use and managing inputs like water and fertilizer are the two biggest problems with farming. She rightly points to agricultural intensification as one of the best and most beneficial environmental improvements. Increasing yields saves land, habitat, and resources. She considers that we may be close to peak agricultural land (including animal agriculture). She analyzed the data and concluded that peak agricultural land occurred around 2000. Breaking it up though, she thinks that we have long passed peak grazing land but have yet to pass peak farmland (plants only).

     She also sees peak fertilizer on the horizon. It peaked in rich countries long ago, beginning to peak in the U.S. back in the 1970’s. All these examples show that we can and have improved our environment and that we continue to be more efficient and to do more with less. Fertilizer use decreased also due to being used more wisely by wasting less, better targeting, and better timing. Ritchie’s recommendations for building a more sustainable global food system include the following: 1) Improve crop yields across the world (Africa is lagging here and needs to be prioritized). 2) Eat less meat, especially beef and lamb. She states: “We would cut emissions, land use and water use by much more if half the population went meat-free two days a week than we would from increasing veganism by a few percent. It’s a good idea in theory but I have my doubts. 3) Invest in meat substitutes: building burgers in the lab. 4) build a hybrid burger. Meat substitutes, of course, have a much lower emissions footprint than meat. 5) substitute dairy with plant-based alternatives. 6) Waste less food. Apparently, studies show that we would waste less food if people had more containers, ie. “Tupperware.” Increased refrigeration from farm to market would also be helpful in keeping produce fresher and making it last longer. 7) Don’t rely on indoor farming. While it can increase yields the energy inputs are very high relative to outdoor agriculture. It is only good for a few crops at present. They won’t feed the world, she says. She also points out that the benefits of eating local are usually less than not eating local. It’s a myth, she says. However, she also notes that most people think erroneously that eating local has more environmental benefits. She provides some good graphical evidence showing that vast majority of emissions come from local delivery via roads rather than from rail, ships, or planes, which are more efficient ways to deliver food. She also points out that eating organic is often or at least not always better for the environment. The main reason is lower yields which leads to higher land use. She also mentions the disaster that occurred in Sri Lanka when the country banned synthetic fertilizers which caused food production in the country to plummet, and the policy had to be rolled back. Vandana Shiva should take note. Studies have shown that pesticide levels in food are at very small levels with the majority of foods (75%) having pesticide levels at just 0.01% (one 10000^th) of the limits given for harming human health. Another thing she notes is that the detriments of plastic packaging are often overhyped.

     In considering biodiversity loss she notes that the metrics used to measure it are often tricky. She even recounts an event in the past where she misinterpreted the statistics of one study that erroneously depicted the decline of the world’s animal populations. She considers why we value biodiversity, and that some species are more needed by us and ecosystems in general than others. She notes our history of causing biodiversity loss beginning with hunting out of the megafauna in many places around the world by our much less numerous ancestors. The 1^st graph below shows human-caused extinctions all over the world in our prehistoric past. The 2^nd and 3^rd graphs show the loss of large mammal biomass due to humans and the current mammal biomass dominated by humans and their livestock. I found this one a bit shocking. The 4^th graph shows the changes in time of both.

 

The graphs above do not include wild birds or poultry, but the story is similar with our biomass of just chickens twice as much as the biomass of wild birds.

     She also considers the studies that suggest an “insect apocalypse” are overhyped and the problem is not nearly as bad as often depicted. Decrease in insect populations are occurring in some places but they are increasing in other places. She also considers the catastrophists that say we are heading for a sixth mass extinction. While extinction rates have indeed increased, they are nothing like the event-caused mass extinctions of the past. She also points out that wildlife has returned to some places where it had declined, through human conservation efforts. She shows graphs that prove this. She states that: “Overhunting and agriculture have been responsible for 75% of all plant, amphibian, reptile, bird, and mammal extinctions since 1500.” That remains concerning, of course.

     She points out that we often have selfish motivations for environmental improvement. Preventing respiratory problems is a motive to mitigate air pollution and preventing skin cancer was a motive to fix the ozone layer are examples.

     Her recommendations for preventing mass extinction include protecting the most diverse sites from exploitation. Land conservation is an example. She notes that there are different levels or degrees of conservation from strict to loose. More recommendations include: “Increase crop yields to reduce farming land. Bring deforestation to an end. Eat less meat and reduce our need for livestock. Improve our efficiency of, but don’t eliminate, chemical inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides. Slow global climate change, Stop plastic leaking into our oceans.” These are all practical and crucially, achievable goals and several of them are indeed happening. Of course, much more is needed.

     The chapter about ocean plastics points out some debunked catastrophist predictions of more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050. Plastic pollution is a major issue with ocean plastics, microplastics in water, soil, air, and in us, and in freshwater and on land. Plastic does indeed harm many sea creatures, including whales and turtles.

     Ritchie points out the many benefits of plastic: “It’s sterile, waterproof, versatile, and cheap.” It reduces food waste considerably. Plastic makes vehicles lighter and so reduces the emissions of transport. So many valuable things and devices are made of plastic. It is a wonder material, and its green credentials should balance its perceived environmental harms. It also makes our lives more convenient and more efficient in many ways. The great durability of plastic also means it breaks down slower if discarded in the environment. She goes through some of the data on plastic use. People in the U.S, use far more plastic than those in India, for instance. Plastic use is greater in urban areas. Packaging is the world’s biggest use of plastic, about 44%. Buildings, textiles, transport, and other consumer appliances are the other big users of plastic.

     In considering solutions to plastic pollution the important thing to tackle is where plastic ends up as discarded waste. Most plastic waste goes to landfills. Some is recycled, usually just once or twice. Chemical plastic recycling is possible but very expensive. Thus, it will remain limited in use until it gets cheaper. The key to solutions is keeping discarded plastic out of the environment aside from landfills. This is a waste management problem. Many counties have inadequate solid waste management. Open landfills are also problematic and much more likely to release contamination into the surface environment, including plastics. She points out a study that determined that 81% of global plastic pollution entering the ocean comes from Asia, which does hold 60% of the world's population. In other regions coastal plastic pollution coming from rivers is often an issue.

     She considers the issue of whether rich countries are dumping plastics overseas. This was happening on a large scale in China until China stopped accepting plastic waste in 2017. Other Asian countries are following suit. Perhaps we would be better off landfilling here rather than collecting it and sending it by ship to the other side of the world where it often ends up in open landfills and gets blown and washed into rivers and then the ocean. Now Europe has replaced Asia as the biggest importer of plastic waste. The graph below shows the drastic changes:

 

She points out that we really don’t know how the pervasive microplastics in our bodies will affect us through time. She notes that plastic pollution is probably the most solvable problem in the book. Rich countries should stop exporting plastic waste to countries with inadequate solid waste management and we should help them develop their solid waste management capabilities. This requires investment. She notes that while recycling is good and necessary it also has a more limited effect than people realize due to required energy inputs. She also says we should expect more cooperation and innovation from industry. The producers of plastics and plastic products should develop the circular economy by making that plastic and those products more recyclable. Industry also needs to lead on chemical recycling, she says. She advocates for stricter policies on plastics in the fishing industry since plastic fishing nets and other equipment is a major source of ocean plastic waste. She notes progress on cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and other new technologies to gather and capture ocean plastic. She sees plastic straws and single use plastic bags as minor plastic pollution that can simply be managed better, and I agree. To end the chapter, she points out that modern well-designed and well-landfills are probably the best way to deal with solid waste.

     In considering overfishing she points out another catastrophist study that was full of inaccuracies that concluded that global collapse of fish populations would happen at some point in the future due to overfishing. The study was strongly rebutted by other marine scientists. She covers the history of whaling, its global peak in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and its dramatic fall to pre-1900 levels by 1990. She also recounts the history of ocean fishing including the development of steam trawlers in the 1880s. Fishing is now about sustainable management of what’s considered to be an ocean resource. The goal is to fish without lowering fish populations as has occurred in several species in several parts of the ocean. As the graph below shows, about one-third of global fish stocks are considered to be overexploited.

 

We also now farm more fish than we catch. Fish have basically become livestock. Aquaculture has gotten much more efficient and plant-based feeds are lowering the number of wild fish used for feed. Thus, those that eat fish need to get comfortable with eating farmed fish. Tuna, cod, haddock, and salmon have become more sustainably managed in the wild. She advocates for better monitoring of fish populations, especially in Asian waters offshore of China and India. She recounts the problem of coral bleaching and how not only climate change but overfishing, sewage dumping, fertilizer runoff contributes to it. Her recommendations for solving overfishing include eating less fish, eating the most sustainable fish, implementing strict fishing quotas, implementing stricter regs on by-catch and discards (less bottom trawling means less discards of fish often injured or killed – discards have been decreasing; more by-catch has been marketed rather than discarded), and don’t be overly optimistic about marine-protected areas.  

     In her conclusion she notes that while progress in sustainability is variable across the globe, every country has improved in education, health, nutrition, and other spheres. She talks about “leapfrogging” fossil fuels to go directly to from more primitive fuel sources like wood to wind and solar as being essential to solving climate change. I disagree, especially in the near-term. Poor countries need affordable energy and reliable dispatchable energy more than they need sustainable energy. That sustainable energy is more expensive, especially when the required reliability and dispatchability become necessary fossil fuel add-ons. At some point we may get there but that time is not now.

     Changing how we eat will be important to improving our global sustainability and these changes often should emphasize simply eating more of what’s sustainable and less of what is not. She notes that being an effective environmentalist often means debunking established environmentalist paradigms of activists. She advocates for systemic change, obviously more potentially effective than small individual changes. At the end she also advocates for joining people headed in the same direction, although that would depend on how they plan to get there.

     I would conclude by reiterating that this a very good book, especially for a younger (I’m old so by younger I mean maybe 20-40) readership. I think it is very important to be practical and realistic about our environmental problems and the best way to do this is to study and analyze the data to arrive at the best conclusions.

Longer Wells Mean More Production from Fewer Rigs: Repost of a Linked-In Post by Ted Cross of NOVI Labs (w/commentary and additional graphs)

Ted Cross of NOVI Labs gave some great perspective in this post about longer well laterals. He also breaks it out into regions, showing that half of the increase is in the prolific Permian Basin as expected. Looking at the data like this shows the great improvements in efficiency as measured by drilling productivity, or production per rig.

"Just how much have oil and gas operators been drilling? While the rig count gets most of the attention, lateral miles drilled is more directly related to production. Viewed this way, operators have been very active over the last few years." 

“In April 2023, Lower 48 operators put 2,144 lateral miles onto production, just short of the previous peaks found in 2018-2019. This is despite the rig count being ~25% lower in 2023, thanks to longer laterals and improved drilling efficiencies.”

“Zooming in, the Permian represented half of this total, putting on 1,088 miles in April 2023. For context, this is about as far as Midland is from Mexico City -- an incredible distance to drill in a month. The Permian has comprised over 50% of lateral miles drilled in Lower 48 in the post-COVID cycle.”

“The Uinta, Haynesville, and Powder River also had impressive runs during the latest cycle, peaking at fresh highs of 94, 141, and 293 miles, respectively. While much smaller than the Permian, those numbers do add up!”

“Looking forward, long laterals and drilling efficiencies will continue to be a major theme in Lower 48 development. With ExxonMobil planning 4-milers in the Permian and Appalachian operators breaking an average of 13,000' (!!), the longer lateral train shows no signs of stopping.”

 

His graph below shows those results. Below that graph, I am adding graphs of rig count and oil & natural gas production over the same time period. I also added a graph of drilling productivity vs. rig counts for the Appalachian region over a roughly similar period. All data is from EIA with EIA utilizing Baker Hughes rig count data: