Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Here are three statements that are all true. Statement number one,
Speaker 2: the world is awful. This one is pretty self explanatory,
Speaker 2: no need to dwell. Statement number two, the world is
Speaker 2: better than it used to be. This one, in my experience,
Speaker 2: tends to generate pushback that ranges from mild skepticism to
Speaker 2: outright hostility. And yet along many dimensions, it is clearly true.
Speaker 2: You know, just in the past few decades, the infant
Speaker 2: mortality rate around the world has fallen by a lot,
Speaker 2: as has the share of people living in extreme poverty.
Speaker 2: Literacy rates are going up around the world. Lots of
Speaker 2: things are getting better, so that is statement number two.
Speaker 2: And then finally statement three, the world can be better.
Speaker 2: The world can be better than it is now. This
Speaker 2: one I find when I say it, people will sort
Speaker 2: of go along with it.
Speaker 1: But without conviction.
Speaker 2: Right like, maybe theoretically the world can be better, but
Speaker 2: they don't really believe it. And yet, as list item
Speaker 2: number two reminds us, the world is better than it
Speaker 2: used to be in many ways, it's true. The world
Speaker 2: really can get better. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and this is
Speaker 2: what's your problem. My guest today is Hannah Ritchie. Hannah
Speaker 2: is a data scientist and the deputy editor of Our
Speaker 2: World in Data, which is an amazing online publication home
Speaker 2: of many great graphs about the world. And Hannah is
Speaker 2: also the author of the relatively new book Not the
Speaker 2: End of the World, How we Can be the First
Speaker 2: generation to build a sustainable planet. The book uses that
Speaker 2: three part framework I just talked about. Things are bad,
Speaker 2: things are better than they used to be, things can
Speaker 2: be better than they are now, and it presents a
Speaker 2: fact based, non moralistic set of approaches to solving some
Speaker 2: of the world's big problems. In our conversation, Hannah and
Speaker 2: I wound up focusing on food, focusing on the way
Speaker 2: we eat, because the way we eat is really tied
Speaker 2: up with a lot of the big problems that Hannah
Speaker 2: focuses on in the book, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and of
Speaker 2: course climate change. But to start, I asked her about
Speaker 2: part two of her framework, that idea that the world
Speaker 2: is better than it used to be. In particular, I
Speaker 2: was curious why she thinks that idea generates so much pushback.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because when you say, when I say, in
Speaker 2: my experience, the world is much better than it used
Speaker 2: to be, people don't believe me, or they get mad,
Speaker 2: which is interesting.
Speaker 1: Has that been your experience at all?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, I mean, I think the key thing
Speaker 3: about this framework is that you really need to be
Speaker 3: able to hold all feevings in your head at the
Speaker 3: same time. I think naturally, it's just very difficult for
Speaker 3: us to do. I think as soon as anyone says
Speaker 3: anything positive, our mind automatically goes to the negative. Right,
Speaker 3: So if I say we've made amazing progress on reducing
Speaker 3: global hunger, your automatic reaction is to go to, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: but there's still eight hundred million people that are hungry,
Speaker 3: which is also absolutely true, right, But there is this
Speaker 3: pool in us, and it's definitely had that reaction from
Speaker 3: the book, that there is this gut reaction of wanting
Speaker 3: to counter it with the kind of almost cynical or
Speaker 3: protective kind of blanket of well, we shouldn't be complacent
Speaker 3: about this because we've still got a massive problem.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it goes even farther than that.
Speaker 2: I mean, that is certainly true, and that is more
Speaker 2: easy to understand, right, because as you say, one shouldn't
Speaker 2: be complace, one shouldn't just live here comfortably in the
Speaker 2: developed world and say Oh, everything's great, but people don't
Speaker 2: even want to believe that things are good here relative
Speaker 2: to one hundred years ago. And that one is a
Speaker 2: little bit harder to understand, Like why do you think
Speaker 2: people don't believe that things are better than they were
Speaker 2: one hundred years ago?
Speaker 3: Say, I mean, I think one thing is that we
Speaker 3: just don't look at data.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: You can only see this through data. Right, You're never
Speaker 3: going to get this in the news because the news
Speaker 3: covers what's happened in the last hour in the world.
Speaker 3: So is an event, right, it's an event that can
Speaker 3: make a headline. It's a natural disaster, it's a war,
Speaker 3: it's a murder, it's a really, really bad event, which
Speaker 3: is one of the reasons why the news skews negative,
Speaker 3: whereas a lot of the progress we've made, you know,
Speaker 3: there's no headline really you can run because it happens gradually,
Speaker 3: day after day after day after day.
Speaker 2: It's not a headline story that globally, infant mortality has
Speaker 2: fallen a huge amount in the last thirty years, even
Speaker 2: though in terms of human welfare it's one of the
Speaker 2: most important things that happened this century so far.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, and I think that's true for like most
Speaker 3: of our progress stories that they happen incrementally over time,
Speaker 3: but when you add that up over decades, you just
Speaker 3: have this like profound change that's happened in the world.
Speaker 3: And I think because it's just out of pace with
Speaker 3: the news cycle, we just don't get it right. We
Speaker 3: just don't see it. Especially in rich countries in the world.
Speaker 3: We often have this patronizing perception that the rest of
Speaker 3: the world has stagnated or hasn't moved forward, right, So
Speaker 3: we think, okay, things might be okay where I am,
Speaker 3: but you know, countries in Africa or countries in Asia,
Speaker 3: they're just as poor and bad off as they were
Speaker 3: fifty years ago, when actually they are. Child mortality rates
Speaker 3: have fallen, more kids are getting vaccinated, hungered down, poverties down.
Speaker 3: So I think we have this perception that many countries
Speaker 3: in the world are stuck where they were fifty years ago,
Speaker 3: and that's just not true. And it's because we often
Speaker 3: again don't see these stories. And the news they're either
Speaker 3: our news in the US or Europe, is very US
Speaker 3: or Europe orientated, and the stuff we hear from other
Speaker 3: parts of the world again attend to be these negative stories.
Speaker 2: So the book, the book does talk about a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff that's wrong, right.
Speaker 1: The book is certainly not.
Speaker 2: Pollyanna ish, I would say, but it approaches it with
Speaker 2: a sort of practical like, let's figure out how to
Speaker 2: solve this framework, and you step through most of the
Speaker 2: big things that seem terribly wrong, or many of the
Speaker 2: big things that seem terribly wrong climate change, over fishing, deforestation,
Speaker 2: et cetera. I want to talk at some length about
Speaker 2: one chapter in particular, because, as you say in the book,
Speaker 2: it's sort of a nexus. It's a subject that touches
Speaker 2: on all of these other subjects, really, and that is
Speaker 2: food in part I mean, you know, obviously climate change
Speaker 2: is the other one that is sort of this grand thing.
Speaker 1: But food is.
Speaker 2: Very important and very underdiscussed in the context of climate change. Right,
Speaker 2: So let's talk about food at some length.
Speaker 1: And let's start.
Speaker 2: Let's use that framework that you use more generally with
Speaker 2: the world is much better than it used to be
Speaker 2: in many ways. The world is still bad in many ways,
Speaker 2: and the world can be better. Let's apply that to food.
Speaker 2: So how is food much better than it used to be?
Speaker 3: So when you look at it through a human hunger lens.
Speaker 3: So today around just under ten percent of the world
Speaker 3: are sto go hungry, which means they just don't get
Speaker 3: enough calories to eat. So that's around eight hundred million people.
Speaker 1: That's the still very bad piece.
Speaker 3: This is still very bad piece. But if you were
Speaker 3: to go back a century, you know, the share of
Speaker 3: the world that go hungry was way higher than it was.
Speaker 2: Is there are there credible estimates for what it was
Speaker 2: one hundred years ago.
Speaker 3: The long term data on this is more shaky, i'd say,
Speaker 3: but you're definitely talking about in most regions well over
Speaker 3: a third if not more, people were not getting enough calories.
Speaker 2: To eat, well over a third as opposed to ten percent.
Speaker 2: So that is improvement. I mean, what if you go back,
Speaker 2: if you go back two hundred years, what is the
Speaker 2: rough estimate of what percentage of people on earth were
Speaker 2: not getting enough to eat?
Speaker 3: I mean, I'd say probably even higher still, and I'd
Speaker 3: say most of the improvements in food and agricultural productivity
Speaker 3: have came really in the last century, but in particular
Speaker 3: in the last fifty years. So I think if you
Speaker 3: were to look at hunger rates a century ago or
Speaker 3: two centuries ago, they'd all be very very high. And
Speaker 3: again i'd say estimates are fuzzy, but you'd say at
Speaker 3: least well over a third, if not over half, of
Speaker 3: people weren't getting.
Speaker 2: Enough, yeah, as compared to today where it's something like
Speaker 2: ninety percent of people are getting enough food to eat.
Speaker 2: So I mean, obviously there are a few key breakthroughs
Speaker 2: in like getting more food per acre of land per
Speaker 2: unit of land, right, nitrogen fertilizer, and then the Haberbosch process,
Speaker 2: which weirdly we just talked about on the show, for
Speaker 2: synthesizing nitrogen fertilizer. And then there's this other moment, a
Speaker 2: later moment that you talk about in the book, which
Speaker 2: is basically one guy, one of these amazing one guy
Speaker 2: changes the world stories, and it's Norman Borlog. So tell
Speaker 2: me about Norman Borlog.
Speaker 3: So, Norman Borlog was a kind of agricultural scientist, and
Speaker 3: he was basically recruited initially to go to Mexico to
Speaker 3: work out how Mexicans could grow more food per unit
Speaker 3: of land, so how to increase agricultural productivity or crop
Speaker 3: yield in Mexico. And he came at us for a
Speaker 3: genet reading lens, so trying to work out what combination
Speaker 3: of crop strains might be able to produce us and
Speaker 3: it was a very long process. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: trial and error.
Speaker 2: Right, just to be clear, right, what this is like
Speaker 2: the sixties. This is not like GMO, This is pregmo, right,
Speaker 2: this is just like old school Mendelian crosses, farmer hybrid
Speaker 2: like that, like the old school style.
Speaker 1: Yeah, old school.
Speaker 3: So lots of trial and error, lots of trying a
Speaker 3: crop not performing well, trying another crop not performing well,
Speaker 3: and kind of got to the stage where he was
Speaker 3: kind of sent out on this mission and kind of
Speaker 3: left there is like, oh, well, he'll be over there
Speaker 3: trying to do this. We're kind of skeptical at of work,
Speaker 3: but you know, he's got a job over there. Good luck,
Speaker 3: And he finally cracks it and it makes a massive
Speaker 3: difference to crop yields in Mexico, talking about a large,
Speaker 3: large increase. Mexico moved from being a net importer of
Speaker 3: food to a net exporter of food and from there
Speaker 3: this really kicked off eat what we frame as kind
Speaker 3: of agricultural revolution. And he went to South Asia in
Speaker 3: Pakistan and India and did the same Right, so again
Speaker 3: their crop yields were extremely low during that period. There
Speaker 3: was lots of concerns about especially food shortage in that region,
Speaker 3: but more broadly, there was lots of concerns at the
Speaker 3: time about a global food shortage, huge famines, huge levels
Speaker 3: of hunger.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Well, and you talk about Paul Erlik, the famous biologist
Speaker 2: who in retrospect looks quite bad, right, who wrote this
Speaker 2: best selling book essentially saying, we are screwed already. It's
Speaker 2: baked in. A billion people are going to starve. We
Speaker 2: just got to figure out who, because there's no way
Speaker 2: we can grow enough food to feed all the people who.
Speaker 1: Have just been born.
Speaker 3: Right, So nineteen sixty eight he comes out with this book,
Speaker 3: The Population Bomb, and yes, that was his thesis. There's
Speaker 3: just far too many people on the planet. We've got
Speaker 3: this major global food crisis coming and many men, many
Speaker 3: people are going to die from this. That didn't happen.
Speaker 3: One of the reasons it didn't happen was because of
Speaker 3: Norman Blorog and the Green Revolution. So we we vastly
Speaker 3: underestimated how much we could increase crop yields across the world.
Speaker 2: So staying for a moment on the theme of the
Speaker 2: world is much better than it.
Speaker 1: Used to be. One thing that I.
Speaker 2: Didn't know before I read your book that I learned
Speaker 2: from the book is that the world has passed peak
Speaker 2: fertilizer use and has passed or almost passed peak land
Speaker 2: use for agriculture, which was surprising to me and encouraging.
Speaker 2: Tell me about Tell me about those facts.
Speaker 3: So peak fertilizer use, I wouldn't say definitively that we're
Speaker 3: past the peak. I think we're kind of being on
Speaker 3: this kind of plateau. We saw really really steep rise
Speaker 3: in global fertilizer use in the nineteen nineties and especially
Speaker 3: the early two thousands. If you look over the last
Speaker 3: day care, so it's kind of been leveling off, which
Speaker 3: I think goes against people's intuitions. I think they'd think,
Speaker 3: you know, we're just still going through the roof. We're
Speaker 3: using far more fertilizer than ever before. But no, we
Speaker 3: look like we're kind of stabilizing, and and part of
Speaker 3: that is due to some cooking hunters are still in
Speaker 3: the increase, and I actually think it's good at their
Speaker 3: still in the increase. As you said, like one of
Speaker 3: the key innovations that have helped to feed the world
Speaker 3: has been the use of fertilizer, and some countries still
Speaker 3: don't have enough, but some countries definitely overuse it and
Speaker 3: overuse it to the point where it's just not even
Speaker 3: cost effective for farmers to be using that much. But
Speaker 3: over the last few decades, some countries have dramatically reduced
Speaker 3: fertilizer use without sacrificing you old right, So fertilizer use
Speaker 3: in Europe in particular has gone down, and yields have
Speaker 3: either stayed the same or have continued to increase, even
Speaker 3: in China. So China, again it looks like it's now
Speaker 3: past peak fertilizer use. So fertilizer use and pesticide use
Speaker 3: in China has now been fallen, and I actually think
Speaker 3: that that could fall quite quickly. And part of the
Speaker 3: way that China has done that has actually been through
Speaker 3: large scale education programs for farmers on how to use
Speaker 3: this stuff more effectively. And again it's cost effective for
Speaker 3: a farmer to learn that.
Speaker 2: We're about to get to why the world is still
Speaker 2: bad in terms of food, But before we do, is
Speaker 2: there anything else we should do on why the world
Speaker 2: is much better?
Speaker 3: I think what people underestimate and I actually think this
Speaker 3: is a good and a bad thing. I think people
Speaker 3: just underestimate how good we've got producing food. I think
Speaker 3: they don't have a sense of scale in their head
Speaker 3: about how much food we can actually produce. So if
Speaker 3: you say that the average person in the world needs
Speaker 3: around two thousand to two and a half thousand calories
Speaker 3: per person per day, depending on their size and gender,
Speaker 3: et cetera. Because we know that some people don't get
Speaker 3: enough calories and some people probably over consume a bit, right,
Speaker 3: we might assume that that just about levels off, right,
Speaker 3: balances each other out, so we maybe produce just enough
Speaker 3: calories for everyone in the world, so maybe two and
Speaker 3: a half thousand per person per day. The reality is
Speaker 3: that we probably produce around twice as much as that, right,
Speaker 3: So you're probably talking about four and a half to
Speaker 3: five thousand calories per person per day if you were
Speaker 3: to split it all equally. So we just are capable
Speaker 3: of producing huge amounts of food.
Speaker 2: So we produce enough food if we didn't waste any
Speaker 2: to feed twice as many people as are on Earth today,
Speaker 2: which is probably more people than we'll ever live on
Speaker 2: Earth at once. Right, We're probably not going to get
Speaker 2: to two x current population.
Speaker 3: Right, So if you were to get to zero waste
Speaker 3: food systems, and again this is not just about I
Speaker 3: think what people think about as food waste, but if
Speaker 3: you were to have a really really efficient distribution system,
Speaker 3: we could Yeah, we could definitely feed ten billion, which
Speaker 3: is what people are looking at in the future.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So right, So that's happy from the point of view
Speaker 2: of there's definitely enough food. We have the technology to
Speaker 2: know how the land to grow as much food as
Speaker 2: we will need to feed people when we hit peak population. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's talk about what's bad what's bad with food today?
Speaker 2: And I think the place to start there is how
Speaker 2: much of the earth we use for food, and in particular,
Speaker 2: how much of the habitable land mass of the earth
Speaker 2: we use for.
Speaker 3: Food is a lot. So if you were to take
Speaker 3: the world habitable land, which is basically land that's not
Speaker 3: desert or not ice, then we use around half of
Speaker 3: that for farming.
Speaker 2: Half the Earth's land mass we use for growing food.
Speaker 2: What share of that is for cows, either for growing
Speaker 2: cows you know, rangeland or for growing food to feed cows.
Speaker 3: So for Kaus specifically, it's probably around sixty.
Speaker 2: Percent sixty percent of all agricultural land, so more than
Speaker 2: a quarter of the habitable land mass of the earth
Speaker 2: goes to growing cows and growing.
Speaker 1: Food for cows.
Speaker 2: Yeap, Zelli, That's that I think is the central wild
Speaker 2: fact of your book to me, right, I think as
Speaker 2: I read this chapter of your book and the book
Speaker 2: more broadly, because this seems like the central chapter, cows
Speaker 2: come out as the villain. Uh Is that a fair read?
Speaker 3: A fair read?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean, villain is a moral word, right, and I
Speaker 2: would like to use a non moral as my fault.
Speaker 2: But like, I appreciate that you are not moralistic in
Speaker 2: your telling. It's one of the things I particularly like
Speaker 2: about this book. It's not like, here are the evil
Speaker 2: people and I'm the good person exposing them. It's a
Speaker 2: much more sort of clinical, what feels to me, more
Speaker 2: rational approach of just like, look, let's just lay out
Speaker 2: the facts. But when you lay out the facts, I'm
Speaker 2: like cows man cows, Like, if we just if it
Speaker 2: wasn't for cows. I don't want to say we'd be fine,
Speaker 2: like we'd still have the energy transition fossil fuel, but
Speaker 2: it seems like if we could solve beef, we could
Speaker 2: solve a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if we were to significantly regious global beef consumption,
Speaker 3: it would have a massive environmental impact and a positive
Speaker 3: environmental impact. So when you look at the range of
Speaker 3: environmental problems we face, beef and cattle come out really strongly.
Speaker 3: So it's a really large driver of climate change. It's
Speaker 3: the leading driver of deforestation, it's the as a result
Speaker 3: of deforestation. It's then one of the leading drivers of
Speaker 3: biodiversity laws. So yes, cattle and beef consumption specifically straddle
Speaker 3: a large number of our problems. And then for many
Speaker 3: of these problems are really like the leading cause.
Speaker 2: And just can you just articulate the link between beef
Speaker 2: and climate change a little more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So there's two key ways that beef contributes to
Speaker 3: climate change. One is about land juice, right, So when
Speaker 3: we have deforestation or other land juice changes, that's a
Speaker 3: driver of CO two emissions, So that contributes to CO
Speaker 3: two through land juice changes. And then the second one
Speaker 3: is really about cows burping. Right, So cows burp and
Speaker 3: the bark mephane and mephe is a very powerful greenhouse gas.
Speaker 3: So that's the second way that they mostly contribute. There's
Speaker 3: a hard way, which is that their manure also releases
Speaker 3: greenhouse gases.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to get to the world can be
Speaker 2: better section of the food conversation. But before we do, Like, so,
Speaker 2: cows are clearly the biggest food problem, it seems, are
Speaker 2: there other what else is on the very short list
Speaker 2: of big food related problems we need to solve?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think I think one final framing of
Speaker 3: the world as bad as it is now is that
Speaker 3: we still have eight hundred million people in the world
Speaker 3: don't get enough food to eat. And actually, when you
Speaker 3: look at it, beyond calories, so not just getting enough energy,
Speaker 3: but getting enough of all of the micronutrients that we need.
Speaker 3: You're actually talking about billions of people in the world
Speaker 3: are defined as being malnourished. So even if you can
Speaker 3: get enough calories, and you can usually do that through
Speaker 3: stable crops like cereals or cassava, etc. You might be
Speaker 3: able to get enough calories, but you're not getting the
Speaker 3: full spectrum of nutrients that we need.
Speaker 2: After the break, we get to the world can be
Speaker 2: better part of the conversation.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's solve these problems.
Speaker 2: Let's start with people going hungry and not getting enough nutrition.
Speaker 1: How do we solve that?
Speaker 3: One key way is that, especially for many of the
Speaker 3: poorest countries in the world, we just need to work
Speaker 3: again on the agricultural productivity problem. And here I'm really
Speaker 3: specifically talking about Sub Saharan Africa. Most farmers and subs
Speaker 3: in Africa got very low crop yields, much lower than
Speaker 3: the global average and much much much lower than say
Speaker 3: you'd get in the US.
Speaker 2: Sure, are there examples of places, you know, if you
Speaker 2: set aside this kind of one off green revolution, are
Speaker 2: there examples of places where crop yields go up independent
Speaker 2: of economic growth? Or is the typical story that economic
Speaker 2: growth sort of causes crop yields to go up when
Speaker 2: countries are not at the economic different tier.
Speaker 3: It is very strongly correlated. So as countries get richer, yes,
Speaker 3: you tend to get increased productivity, but I think there
Speaker 3: are still differences there. I think I think government policies
Speaker 3: play a role, land reforms play a role, access to
Speaker 3: markets player role. So I don't think this is purely
Speaker 3: just about stimulate economic growth and this happens. I think
Speaker 3: there are things that that governments can do to stimulate
Speaker 3: that and make that go faster. Providing subsidies for farmers
Speaker 3: to be able to afford the crucial inputs like better
Speaker 3: seeds or more fertilizer or irrigation really helps a lot.
Speaker 3: That's one key key way to do it.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, what are we going to do about meat
Speaker 2: and deef in particular?
Speaker 3: So I think if we're to solve these big environmental
Speaker 3: problems globally, we need to reduce make consumption. And I
Speaker 3: say globally because I think when I see reducing meat consumption,
Speaker 3: people say, oh, should the person that's in a few
Speaker 3: kilograms a year and that's crucial to the nutrition, should
Speaker 3: they be cutting back? And they always askers no. Right here,
Speaker 3: I'm really mostly talking about people in middle income to
Speaker 3: rich countries where meat consumption is very high. Of course,
Speaker 3: to solve these problems, we would need to reduce global
Speaker 3: meat consumption.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean that's the again almost tautological answer of like,
Speaker 2: the way to solve the problem of too much meat
Speaker 2: it's to have people eat less meat.
Speaker 1: But how do you do that?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: I mean you're talking the book about like individual behavior
Speaker 2: change doesn't matter basically in the aggregate, right, it may
Speaker 2: be useful for kind of moral reasons. Or in the abstract,
Speaker 2: but on the level of like climate change by a
Speaker 2: diversity laws, deforestation, the things we're talking about here, it
Speaker 2: seems like individual behavior change is not going to do
Speaker 2: it right. So like, what are the moves, what are
Speaker 2: the macro moves that might drive things in the right direction.
Speaker 3: So individual behavior change on its own is not going
Speaker 3: to change anything. I still advocate for that, and I'm
Speaker 3: vegan myself, so I tried to take that on. I
Speaker 3: think people too often said, I.
Speaker 1: Have to be right after writing that chapter, you kind
Speaker 1: of have to be sure.
Speaker 3: But I think I think people too often set up
Speaker 3: this false dichotomy of individual behavior change and wider systemic change.
Speaker 3: As an individual, you are part of the system.
Speaker 1: Fair, you're putting me on the hook, And that's totally reasonable.
Speaker 3: So so yes, even if you were to go vegan tomorrow,
Speaker 3: the world global make consumption is not going to notice.
Speaker 3: I would I would say that what you choose to
Speaker 3: eat actually is one behavior change that actually can have
Speaker 3: a small direct impact in some way, especially when you
Speaker 3: look at it in terms of animal welfare. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: you eat unless meat does actually potentially reduce the number
Speaker 3: of animals that are probably raised in pretty poor conditions
Speaker 3: and killed from consumption.
Speaker 2: Yes, that is plainly directly true. I mean, the moral
Speaker 2: dimension of eating meat is real and significant, and we
Speaker 2: have not been discussing that piece of it to this point.
Speaker 2: But clearly the individual choice about eating meat, that moral
Speaker 2: dimension is obviously significant, but it is notable in your book.
Speaker 2: And let's just talk about this for a second. It's
Speaker 2: a little digressive, but let's just do it here. Like
Speaker 2: you know, you talk about like which behavior changes people
Speaker 2: make are meaningful at what magnitude? Right, And clearly eating
Speaker 2: meat and even more so eating beef relative to other
Speaker 2: individual choices is quite significant, and I think it kind
Speaker 2: of punches above its weight in terms of what people
Speaker 2: think about. Right, So, like, just for a minute talk
Speaker 2: about that, Like, in terms of individual choices, what are
Speaker 2: things that are kind of underrated that people don't think
Speaker 2: about enough that make a big difference? And then what
Speaker 2: are things are overrated that people talk about or care
Speaker 2: about but actually don't really matter that much.
Speaker 3: Right, So the things that people overrate And this is
Speaker 3: basically when you ask people what are you doing for
Speaker 3: the environment, this is what they see. They see the recycle,
Speaker 3: they get light, they get energy efficient light bulbs, and
Speaker 3: they try to avoid single use plastics like that. Those
Speaker 3: are the key things that people see when you ask
Speaker 3: what they're doing for the environment, and the reality is
Speaker 3: that the impart that they have is tiny, right, any
Speaker 3: tiny fraction of your footprint.
Speaker 2: Yeah, recycling wildly overrated. Right, good for cans, but for
Speaker 2: everything else it doesn't matter really, But so okay, so
Speaker 2: what does matter?
Speaker 1: Eating meat? What else?
Speaker 2: What are other actual meaningful changes, at least relative to
Speaker 2: the scale of one person.
Speaker 3: So if you were to look at what except probably
Speaker 3: eighty percent of your footprint, it's what you eat. And
Speaker 3: the biggest thing you can do there is eat less
Speaker 3: meat and dairy. In your house, it's heating or cooling,
Speaker 3: so right, so like heating or air con. So if
Speaker 3: you have a gas boiler, switching to an electric heat
Speaker 3: pump and make a massive difference to your footprint. And
Speaker 3: then the other two big things are travel. So like
Speaker 3: if you have a car, your car is a massive
Speaker 3: part of your footprint, so either obviously walking and cycling
Speaker 3: is best. Going to an electric car is way better
Speaker 3: than a petrol car. And then the final thing, if
Speaker 3: you fly, is flying. And if you add up those things,
Speaker 3: you're getting to the majority of your environmental footprint.
Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 2: Okay, back to meat. What do we do about meat
Speaker 2: on a.
Speaker 1: Non individual level? Right? What are the macro ways we
Speaker 1: can reduce meat consumption?
Speaker 3: So I'll go to the macro and then I'll say why,
Speaker 3: having individuals play a role in that. So when you
Speaker 3: look at the macro trends in meat consumption globally, they're
Speaker 3: going up. And even when you look at a country level,
Speaker 3: there are very very few examples where meat consumption is
Speaker 3: going down. Right, So we're just really not making much
Speaker 3: progress on this problem.
Speaker 2: We're making regress. And what about beef in particular, I mean,
Speaker 2: presumably a shift from beef to chicken. Obviously it's not
Speaker 2: as good for the world as a shift from beef
Speaker 2: to SOI, but it's pretty good, right, And I feel
Speaker 2: like anecdotally in the US, chicken has risen and beef
Speaker 2: has fallen, not for environmental reasons but for health reasons basically, Right,
Speaker 2: people grew more wary of red meat.
Speaker 1: Is that true empirically?
Speaker 2: Like what has happened with beef consumption in America in
Speaker 2: the last whatever fifty years or something?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. If you look at America, or you
Speaker 3: look at Europe, red meat consumption specifically, beef consumption has
Speaker 3: gone down a bit and in its place, chicken consumption
Speaker 3: has gone up. As you say, that's witch is probably
Speaker 3: very underrated as a climate solution, right, It actually makes
Speaker 3: a big difference to your footprint switching from beef to chicken.
Speaker 3: So environmentally that's a very very good swap. I'd argue
Speaker 3: that the animal welfare cost of that or the opposite, right.
Speaker 2: If you value the life of a chicken at the
Speaker 2: same as you value the life of a cow, it's
Speaker 2: clearly much worse for and more.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think this meat switchain has been a
Speaker 3: key transition in many countries and environmentally positive.
Speaker 2: But globally, beef consumption is rising, presumably because as very
Speaker 2: poor people get richer, they eat more meat.
Speaker 1: Understandably.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so still bad. We're not yet to how
Speaker 2: do we make it better?
Speaker 1: Let's get there? What do we got to do? Or
Speaker 1: you know, how do we go in the right direction? Right?
Speaker 3: So we've made little progress, and one of the reasons
Speaker 3: we've made a little progress is because people are not
Speaker 3: willing to switch to the previous alternatives we had as
Speaker 3: a protein right. People were not switching from a beef
Speaker 3: burger to lentils or tofu or beans. Right. People just
Speaker 3: didn't want to make that switch. That seemed like a
Speaker 3: step backwards.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: The way we solve this, and the only way I
Speaker 3: see with that, we solve this, is to make a
Speaker 3: like for like switch so that people can still have
Speaker 3: the beef burger or something really close to a beef
Speaker 3: burger without the cow. Right. That's the only way I
Speaker 3: see a route out of this, or a way to
Speaker 3: reduce global meat consumption is to basically produce meat substitutes
Speaker 3: that provide the same texture, the same nutrition, the same experience,
Speaker 3: just without the cow or the chicken, and with much
Speaker 3: lower environmental footprint.
Speaker 1: It's basically lab grown meat.
Speaker 3: Some of the plant based meat substitutes I think are
Speaker 3: getting pretty good, although I'm probably biased.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, I had a lot of impossible beef,
Speaker 2: certainly way more than beef beef, but it's clearly not
Speaker 2: good enough, right. I Mean, you know, people are trying
Speaker 2: sort of sell culture like sort of meat as a
Speaker 2: biotech problem is fundamentally what you're talking about on some level, right,
Speaker 2: And it does seem like fundamentally that's appealing because it
Speaker 2: doesn't require people to change their behavior ultimately, right, Ultimately
Speaker 2: we want a solution based on people just acting indifferently
Speaker 2: or in their own self interest.
Speaker 1: Like, that's the kind of solution I can believe in, right.
Speaker 2: And and you know, I've heard counter arguments that like, oh,
Speaker 2: people won't trust it, or people are attached to you know,
Speaker 2: beef that comes from an animal. But I feel like
Speaker 2: that's going to be the minority of people, right. I
Speaker 2: feel like most people don't care about any particular thing
Speaker 2: in the world and they just want something like with energy,
Speaker 2: they just want something that's reliable and cheap.
Speaker 1: And so if somebody could make.
Speaker 2: Lab ground meat that was the same as beef and
Speaker 2: one penny cheaper, it would win.
Speaker 3: I think initially people might be hesitant and skeptical, but
Speaker 3: I think that's the case with most new technologies. Like
Speaker 3: if you look at electric cars, for example, I think
Speaker 3: initially many many people were skeptical because they didn't know
Speaker 3: anyone that had an electric car, right, They didn't know
Speaker 3: how it ran, whether you broke down on the highway,
Speaker 3: like was it easy to charge, was it expensive to charge? Like,
Speaker 3: no one really knew that apart from a really small minority.
Speaker 3: I think with electric vehicles, we're now getting to the
Speaker 3: stage where most of us know someone that has won
Speaker 3: and they get by fine and actually really like it.
Speaker 3: And I feel like with new technologies like lab grown meat,
Speaker 3: for example, it might be the same. Like uptake rates
Speaker 3: at the very start might be slow, but I think
Speaker 3: it would very very slowly start to become normalized. And
Speaker 3: as you say, I think people at some point would
Speaker 3: just switch and they'd be very happy to just have
Speaker 3: something that tastes like a burger, has a texture of
Speaker 3: a burger, asious as a burger. I think cost will
Speaker 3: be key. They will not pay more for it than
Speaker 3: they be for a beef burger. So that's really really key,
Speaker 3: is that we need to scale these technologies, but we
Speaker 3: also need to make sure that they are undercut in
Speaker 3: the current cost of meat.
Speaker 2: Well, you know the I talked to the guy who
Speaker 2: started Impossible Foods and he makes the point that from
Speaker 2: first principles, meat made without animals should be cheaper. Right
Speaker 2: for the same reason that animals are such a problem
Speaker 2: for the world, which is they're wildly inefficient. Like, yes,
Speaker 2: industrial agriculture has become very efficient at growing cows and
Speaker 2: at growing the corn to feed cows. But from first
Speaker 2: principles it's still crazy, right, like the fact that you
Speaker 2: only get one calorie of beef for every whatever ninety
Speaker 2: five calories of corn you put in, and you have
Speaker 2: to raise a whole caw. Like, theoretically there should be
Speaker 2: a much more efficient way to get beef than going
Speaker 2: through all that work of making a cow, right, And
Speaker 2: so that makes me optimistic in an abstract way, if
Speaker 2: not in a practical way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. I think this is also a
Speaker 3: time thing, Like I think we'll get there. I think
Speaker 3: it's really about how long it takes us. I think
Speaker 3: what's key about agriculture is we've been refining and optimizing
Speaker 3: these processes over a really, really long period of time,
Speaker 3: whereas these new technologies are very much in their infancy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that makes me less hopeful when you put
Speaker 2: it that way. I mean, I guess I am somewhat
Speaker 2: less hopeful about meat, right, Like the energy transition seems
Speaker 2: to be going better than almost anyone would have expected
Speaker 2: ten years ago. Right, We're not having a meat transition.
Speaker 2: It's just not happening yet.
Speaker 1: Can you help me feel better about it?
Speaker 3: I'm not sure, because I mean, I think the theme
Speaker 3: that also comes from my book again is that I think,
Speaker 3: again I'm optimistic on the energy story, and I think
Speaker 3: we're making pretty rapid progress they are, and more progress
Speaker 3: than people imagine. I think the way people discuss the
Speaker 3: food chapter in my book is kind of that, it's
Speaker 3: like the pessimistic side of the story. It's hard.
Speaker 2: So if we managed to solve the food problem, if
Speaker 2: we fundamentally managed to come up with like good cheap
Speaker 2: fake meat, right, that's actually the answer.
Speaker 1: How will the world change? Like? What is the what
Speaker 1: is the happy outcome there?
Speaker 3: So I think if we were to somehow magically and
Speaker 3: beef production tomorrow. One is that we were dramatically reduced
Speaker 3: the amount of land that we're using for agriculture, which
Speaker 3: means that we could really start to restore all ecosystems
Speaker 3: and our habitats that we basically took over with agricultural land. Right,
Speaker 3: So that has biodiversity benefits, and it also has benefits
Speaker 3: for climate change because you can start to restore and
Speaker 3: sequest or carbon that we previously lost by deforcing that
Speaker 3: land or taking away the well grassland. So that's a
Speaker 3: huge huge positive because beef is also the leading cause
Speaker 3: of deforestation. I think globally you would also see a
Speaker 3: significant drop in rates of deforestation. It wouldn't go to
Speaker 3: zero because there are other causes, but it was at
Speaker 3: least significantly reduce those rates. And then the final one
Speaker 3: is I think it would have a significant impact on
Speaker 3: our greenhouse cast missions and climate change. So we were
Speaker 3: to get rid of that mefing. So for context, livestock
Speaker 3: and most of this is cattle contributes around fifteen percent
Speaker 3: of global greenhouse cassome missions.
Speaker 1: That's basically cow burps.
Speaker 3: Cowburps and some of this land just change. But again
Speaker 3: that a lot of that would go away. So I
Speaker 3: think you would at least global greenhouse gas emissions by
Speaker 3: five to ten percent.
Speaker 2: Huh So if we zoom out even more. You know,
Speaker 2: at the end of your book you sort of tell
Speaker 2: the happy story, right like, if things go well, if
Speaker 2: we make good on the things can be better piece
Speaker 2: of your framework if things go well, not just with food,
Speaker 2: but more generally with the big global problems you talk
Speaker 2: about in the book, what will the world look like?
Speaker 1: Well, you say in fifty years in the book, right, I.
Speaker 3: Think there's two sayes to this, and I think it's
Speaker 3: really important that we consider both sides. As an environmentalist,
Speaker 3: I mean, again, we always focus on just the environmental metrics.
Speaker 3: So it'd be very easy for me to sit here
Speaker 3: and say, you know, just the best outcome would be
Speaker 3: that there's no deforestation and we stop climate change, right,
Speaker 3: and again I think those will be huge victories. But
Speaker 3: at the same time, we also need to make sure
Speaker 3: that we're providing a good life for the nine or
Speaker 3: ten billion people that there will be on the planet.
Speaker 3: So when I'm an old lady, what you know success
Speaker 3: would look like is that we have nine or ten
Speaker 3: billion people that don't live in extreme poverty, that are
Speaker 3: not hungry, have access to energy for a good life,
Speaker 3: they have access to healthcare, and we've eradicated diseases, and
Speaker 3: they have clean water and sanitation, and we've done that,
Speaker 3: so we've driven that huge amount of global human development
Speaker 3: will also reducing our environmental impacts. So we've managed to
Speaker 3: stop climate change, and there will still be climate damages.
Speaker 3: There to be clear, like, we're not going to just
Speaker 3: solve this and there'll be no impacts whatsoever, but we
Speaker 3: can manage to deal with those negative impacts, and we've
Speaker 3: really just freed up a huge amount of the planet
Speaker 3: to be restored for biodiversity in nature. So we've stopped
Speaker 3: cutting in forests, and forests are we growing. And we've
Speaker 3: taken out a lot of the farmland that we currently
Speaker 3: use and that's now being restored for weld ecosystems. So
Speaker 3: we have nine or ten point people living really really good,
Speaker 3: high welfare lives and we're using a much smaller amount
Speaker 3: of the planet in order.
Speaker 2: To do that. We'll be back in a minute with
Speaker 2: the Lightning round. Let's finish with the Lightning round. What's
Speaker 2: your favorite data set.
Speaker 3: At the moment? The renewable energy day is it? I
Speaker 3: think the biggest transition that's making me most optimistic about
Speaker 3: the future is the rapid growth in renewables and the
Speaker 3: plumbting costs of those energy sources.
Speaker 2: It's amazing because like even I don't know, I did
Speaker 2: a story seven years ago or something about oh my god,
Speaker 2: solar got so cheap and people are getting solar power
Speaker 2: who don't even care about the environment just because it's cheaper.
Speaker 1: And then since then it's gotten so much cheaper.
Speaker 3: Like just not stopping, it's not stopping yeah, but I
Speaker 3: think combined with that, I think the next stage, which
Speaker 3: is making me equally optimistic, is now the falling costs
Speaker 3: of batteries.
Speaker 2: What's a data set that you wish existed that doesn't exist.
Speaker 3: Just a really really good global data set on bio diversity,
Speaker 3: and by that I mean for every species in the world,
Speaker 3: but just really far away from that because there's so
Speaker 3: many species. And that was one of the struggles for
Speaker 3: the biodiversity chapter is that I tried to base all
Speaker 3: of my thinking on data. I mean, the data are scarce.
Speaker 3: It's hard to get a really clear picture of what's
Speaker 3: going on. So I think that's one day I would
Speaker 3: love is just what on Earth's going on with global
Speaker 3: bio diversity.
Speaker 1: What's one thing I should do if I go to Falkirk.
Speaker 3: We're famous for this massive wheel, so we have a
Speaker 3: wheel like a wheel. It's called the Fallkirk wheel, right,
Speaker 3: And when you say famous, I mean that's the only
Speaker 3: thing we have. And the Queen opened it, so she
Speaker 3: was there the opening of it. So in through full
Speaker 3: Kirk we have these canal systems with boats and we
Speaker 3: have this magical wheel where basically it takes the boat
Speaker 3: from like ground level up to like a massive, massive
Speaker 3: height so you can get on the new canal.
Speaker 1: Wow. But like a ferris wheel?
Speaker 2: Should I picture like at exactly?
Speaker 3: But the exciting thing is that turning this massive wheel
Speaker 3: with his boat on it takes less energy than boiling
Speaker 3: a kettle.
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 3: Brand you Yeah, so it utilizes potential energy and converts
Speaker 3: it into kinetics. It's this really energy efficient wheel.
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay.
Speaker 2: Do you have any graph related pet peeves? Oh?
Speaker 3: A lot. One key one is that people just make
Speaker 3: them far too complicated. I think people try to cram
Speaker 3: as much information in as they can, or they think
Speaker 3: that it makes them look smarter to make a more
Speaker 3: complicated graph, and that a line chart is just too
Speaker 3: simple and yeah, but actually the simple line chart or
Speaker 3: the simple bar chart that people can understand is just
Speaker 3: way more of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: A line chart with time on the x axis and
Speaker 2: the variable you care about on the y axis, you
Speaker 2: need to I look for those all the time. I'm
Speaker 2: always googling, like time series whatever. And it's weird how
Speaker 2: hard it is to find a time series. Your book
Speaker 2: is full of facts. One of the things I appreciate
Speaker 2: about the book, what just like one fact if you
Speaker 2: want to take one fact from the book and tell everybody.
Speaker 1: What is it.
Speaker 3: That the price of solar power has fallen by around
Speaker 3: ninety percent in the last decade.
Speaker 1: That is an amazing fact and life.
Speaker 3: Change in fact. I mean, I think this is just
Speaker 3: this is just going to define the energy transition that
Speaker 3: we just so crucially need to solve climate change. Without
Speaker 3: this change, I'd be super severer pessimistic about this, And
Speaker 3: with this change, I'm cautiously optimistic.
Speaker 2: London versus Edinburgh, Edinburgh because people can understand what.
Speaker 3: I'm saying because you speak the language, because I speak
Speaker 3: the language. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Hannah Ritchie is the author of Not the End of
Speaker 2: the World and the deputy editor of Our World in Data.
Speaker 2: Today's show was produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang. It was
Speaker 2: edited by Lyddy Jean Kott and engineered by Sarah Bruguer.
Speaker 2: You can email us at problem at Pushkin dot FM.
Speaker 2: I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be back next week with
Speaker 2: another episode of What's Your Problem.