{"id":17516,"date":"2025-09-12T07:05:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T07:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/17516\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T07:05:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T07:05:09","slug":"clearing-the-air-by-hannah-ritchie-review-practical-climate-optimism-science-and-nature-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/17516\/","title":{"rendered":"Clearing the Air by Hannah Ritchie review \u2013 practical climate optimism | Science and nature books"},"content":{"rendered":"

What are we going to do about\u00a0the climate crisis? As\u00a0extreme weather events become the new normal, we still hear from \u201csceptics\u201d who think the energy transition is unnecessary, a massive leftwing plot. Hannah Ritchie, a global development data scientist and the author of Not the End of the World<\/a>, has followed that work up with a book that addresses 50 objections to the adoption of greener technology.<\/p>\n

To start with, we need some tough love. It\u2019s time, Ritchie insists, to abandon the slogan \u201cKeep 1.5 alive\u201d, referring to an aspiration to limit global warming to 1.5C above preindustrial levels. \u201cThe 1.5C target is\u00a0dead,\u201d she announces flatly. \u201cThe public \u2013 who are repeatedly told that 1.5C is still within reach \u2013 will start to lose trust when we pass that target.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then there is the good news. \u201cSince peaking in 2008,\u201d Ritchie reports, \u201cthe amount of fossil fuels being burned for electricity in the UK has fallen by almost half.\u201d Battery technology has vastly improved and continues to do so. The solar panels China installed just in May of this year would meet the electricity needs\u00a0of the whole of Poland.<\/p>\n

There is similar hope, Ritchie explains, for the prospects of mineral recycling, low-carbon cement, electrified ferries and hydrogen as a fuel for airliners. Meanwhile, most of the objections to increasing our use of solar, wind and nuclear energy are bogus.<\/p>\n

One route to bogosity is to dazzle the reader with large dollar costs for the rollout of greener technology, but Ritchie recommends always asking: \u201cIs that a big number?\u201d Compared with decades of fossil fuel subsidies and the health costs of pollution from coal plants, probably not. Always ask, too, \u201cHow old is the data?\u201d: as Ritchie points out, the cost of solar power has fallen by more than 90% in the last decade. Beware undated graphs on X.<\/p>\n

This is a refreshingly pragmatic and undoomy book, which dismantles a lot of dubious arguments, including those made by deep-green degrowthers. Yes, electric cars take a little more carbon to build than petrol cars, but they pay off that debt quickly. No, nuclear power is not dangerous. No, carbon capture is not going to work on a planetary scale. Don\u2019t wind turbines \u201ckill all the birds\u201d, as Donald Trump has said? Yes, they do kill some, but buildings kill 500 times as\u00a0many just by standing there, and no one is proposing we demolish Trump Tower to save the birds.<\/p>\n

Ritchie is particularly good on air conditioning, which some activists deplore. \u201cIf someone living in heat can\u2019t afford air conditioning, they\u2019re living in fuel poverty,\u201d she argues. Plus, if your air conditioning is solar powered, you are using the sun to counteract the sun, which has a pleasing symmetry. Instead of shaming coolness, we could rethink our other priorities. According to a\u00a0graph Ritchie reproduces, datacentres are forecast to require more global electricity in 2030 than desalination plants \u2013 you know, the things that make\u00a0clean drinking water. Will all the\u00a0AI slop be worth the thirst?<\/p>\n

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It is a shame that she regularly urges\u00a0the reader to consider their own \u201ccarbon footprint\u201d, a concept that was popularised by oil giants such as BP in\u00a0order to deflect responsibility for global warming on to individual citizens. You can go vegan, stop taking aeroplanes and wear a hair shirt for the\u00a0rest of your life in an ecstasy of virtuous self-denial, but that won\u2019t make the slightest bit of difference to the planet\u2019s climate. What we need is collective action.<\/p>\n

Collective action is often anathema to conservatives, of course, and near the end the author does leave an opening for those who believe talk of\u00a0climate action is just a subterfuge for enforcing leftist policies. \u201cThis transition is not a sacrifice,\u201d Ritchie writes, \u201cit\u2019s an opportunity to build a\u00a0better, fairer and more sustainable world.\u201d Wait, I thought we were talking about mitigating risks from global warming, not building a fairer world. Many people might agree that we should smuggle in a more egalitarian politics under cover of environmental concern, but opponents will just point\u00a0to such talk as evidence of a \u00a0greenwashed conspiracy.<\/p>\n

Clearing the Air: A Hopeful Guide to Solving Climate Change \u2013 in 50 Questions and Answers by Hannah Ritchie is published by Chatto & Windus (\u00a320). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com<\/a>. Delivery charges may apply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What are we going to do about\u00a0the climate crisis? As\u00a0extreme weather events become the new normal, we still…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[489,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-17516","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}