We can build a sustainable planet

Hannah Ritchie , a research fellow at the University of Oxford's Global Development Programme, is deputy director and head of research on the Our World in Data project, which brings together the latest data on the world's biggest problems and makes it accessible to the public . She is therefore used to working with the complexity of numbers that must be analyzed and compared in order to understand the phenomena in a non-trivial way.

From an experience of this type was born " It's not the end of the world " (Aboca edizioni, 2024, pp. 456, also e-book), a mine of data that provides us not only with a guide for the future, but also the The most important ingredient of all against the anxiety of our time: hope.

Ritchie's volume is therefore presented as an easy-to-read guide to "fix" our planet, starting from the awareness that we have the right tools to do it and that we have already managed to achieve something. For example, per capita carbon emissions have decreased, deforestation peaked in the 1990s, the air we breathe today is cleaner than it was a few decades ago. We may actually be the first generation to leave the world in a better state than we found it.

To do this, however, we must broaden our gaze and reconsider almost everything we have been told about the environment and the climate crisis, challenging the commonly accepted idea that the first human beings lived in a sustainable way as opposed to the contemporary lifestyle, considered intolerable due to its impact on the ecosystem. Overturning some false myths on which we have built our environmentalist conscience - from the exaltation of zero kilometer food and life in the countryside, to the demonization of overpopulation, plastic straws and palm oil -, It is not the end of world provides us with the tools to understand what we urgently need to focus on in order to deliver a sustainable planet to future generations.

As Ritchie demonstrates, data in hand, a better future for both people and the planet is possible and achievable. The important thing is not to give in to sensationalism and find pragmatic solutions that take into account the needs of a humanity made up of more than eight billion individuals. People who not all have the possibilities of us Westerners, even when it comes to sustainability.

A book, therefore, not a denialist of the great problems we have, but a denialist of a certain catastrophism, which takes us nowhere and which, above all, we cannot afford if we want to do things well.