A data scientist rebuts 50 arguments against green technology with lively pragmatism and authority
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hat are we going to do about the climate crisis? As extreme weather events become the new normal, we still hear from “sceptics” 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, has followed that work up with a book that addresses 50 objections to the adoption of greener technology.
To start with, we need some tough love. It’s time, Ritchie insists, to abandon the slogan “Keep 1.5 alive”, referring to an aspiration to limit global warming to 1.5C above preindustrial levels. “The 1.5C target is dead,” she announces flatly. “The public – who are repeatedly told that 1.5C is still within reach – will start to lose trust when we pass that target.”
And then there is the good news. “Since peaking in 2008,” Ritchie reports, “the amount of fossil fuels being burned for electricity in the UK has fallen by almost half.” 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 of the whole of Poland.
