When people ask me for a book recommendation on sustainability, I tell them to read Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie (How to be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet). It is truly excellent.
It is essentially a condensed version of the superb Our World in Data, covering the linked problems of air pollution, climate change, deforestation, food, biodiversity loss, ocean plastics and overfishing. Importantly, it also shows us how to fix them.
Other than a map where Denmark is conspicuously absent, I can’t fault it. Or maybe this is trying to tell a story like Familier som vores?1 I can confirm that Denmark is still there, as we’ve driven through it a couple of times recently.
The book is similar in some ways to Factfulness and How Bad Are Bananas?, both of which are also worth a read. I’ll certainly be checking out her latest book. It has the same name as another environmental book that was a great read but the subject matter is different.
Clearing the Air: The Beginning and the End of Air Pollution by Tim Smedley has a lot of overlap with the air pollution chapter of Not the End of the World (including the increasing problem of wood-burning stoves). Whereas, Hannah’s latest book is a Q&A on climate change.
While not a book, I also highly recommend reading the The Electrotech Revolution report from Ember (and their other outputs too). The report is briefly summarised on Hannah’s blog but you should check out the full report (or at least the executive summary).
We’re half-way through a crucial decade and it’s a pivotal year. Electrification is inevitable and there are some opinionated thoughts about this on the blog of Charles Stross. However, insightful as it is, I’ll base my decisions on the facts (and optimism) of the resources linked above.
- You can watch this on BBC iPlayer in the UK. ↩