What are you reading, Mr Panetzky?
For weeks, I've been carrying Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet around the Max Delbrück Center, telling everyone I meet: “You must read this!” And not because the book provides universal solutions to today's crises, but because it inspires optimism.
In “Not the End of the World”, Hannah Ritchie offers a compelling introduction to sustainability and environmental protection. Drawing from solid statistics, the author presents an overview of the most urgent ecological challenges we face: climate change, species extinction, and resource scarcity. Readers are often left both stunned and upset: Did you, for instance, know that each person in Germany produces almost 180 kilos of plastic waste annually and that over 36 percent of the plastic in our oceans originates from the Philippines? Or that around elven percent of cereals grown in Germany, and a staggering 33 percent in the USA, are turned into biofuels? But at the same time, I find some of Ritchie's ideas quite controversial: When she depicts nuclear energy simply as a “sustainable” solution for the energy supply of the future, for example, I would have preferred a more nuanced analysis that not only looks at CO₂ neutrality, but also reflects on other aspects such as the dangers of radioactivity and the unresolved nuclear waste problem.
But “Not the End of the World” is not a book that delves into the causes and consequences of man-made environmental changes down to the smallest detail. And, for those looking for in-depth scientific analyses, I would recommend academic literature or discussion with colleagues from climate, energy system and environmental research at one of our Helmholtz Centers.
We are getting better
The book encourages hope, showing as it does, that we are not simply heading straight for climate apocalypse. It's more complicated than that: Yes, we are far too slow as a society when it comes to sustainable transformation. Yes, striving for structural change in a world obsessed with economic growth sometimes seems pointless. Yes, a substantial part of the world's population is already directly impacted by climate change and environmental pollution in their daily lives. However, be it air pollution, deforestation, or the use of chemical fertilizers – in some of the most critical fields, we have already passed the “peaks”. In other words, we are getting better. Considering the achievements of global initiatives against deforestation and acid rain in the 1980s and 1990s, or the fact that we now have the lowest infant mortality rate in human history, or that energy from low-carbon sources is becoming more and more the standard, the future no longer looks quite so bleak.
And sometimes we fail to see that. Ritchie puts it in a nutshell: “Many changes that do profoundly shape the world are not rare, exciting, or headline-grabbing. They are persistent things that happen day by day and year by year until decades pass and the world has been altered beyond recognition.”
I therefore choose to remain optimistic. Especially since I have the privilege of working in a research organization where thousands of gifted people are dedicated to building a sustainable and healthier future every day.
Discover more fascinating and sometimes counterintuitive insights and statistics in Hannah Ritchie's blog “Sustainability by Numbers”.
Hannah Ritchie: Not the End of the World. How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet. 352 Pages, Chatto & Windus.
