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About the video: “You can find examples of really big environmental problems that we’ve already solved.” Climate change is solvable, argues Hannah Ritchie.
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Doomerism about the state of the planet is widespread right now. Many see climate change as an insurmountable problem that we won’t be able to tackle. But the reality tells a different story, says data scientist Hannah Ritchie.
By stepping back to look at the data and at how the world has changed over centuries, you can actually find examples of really big environmental problems that we’ve already solved.
By tracing the evolution of human history, we can see that human progress was often very much in conflict with environmental impact. The more that humans progressed, the more the environment degraded. Ritchie argues that now, we’re in a unique position where these two things are no longer in conflict, thanks to recent technologies that decouple our human wellbeing with our environmental impact.
Timestamps:
0:00 – An ‘insurmountable’ problem?
1:10 – 4 key targets to solve climate change
04:27 – How we reduce our emissions
09:36 – Being an ‘urgent optimist’
Read the video transcript ► https://bigthink.com/series/the-big-think-interview/hannah-ritchie-climate/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=youtube_description
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About Hannah Ritchie:
Hannah Ritchie is a data scientist and science communicator focused on the largest problems that shape our world, and how to solve them.
Ritchie’s work focuses on environmental sustainability, including climate change, energy, food and agriculture, biodiversity, air pollution and deforestation.
Ritchie is a Deputy Editor and Lead Researcher at Our World in Data, and a researcher at the Oxford Martin Programme in Global Development, at the University of Oxford.
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I wonder what the europeans will say when Europe is covered with solar panels to feed the rest of the world with energy (or perhaps it won't be the europeans…)
And i wonder how much more carbon we have in the athmosphere when everyone has bought their new electric car, and all these solar panels and windmills are produced, and so on (also most of the planet's countries want to have a similar material welfare as the industrialized west/global north). What this video doesn't say is that carbon emissions are cumulative, most of it stay in the athmosphere for hundreds of years, which means they will continue to warm the planet. We have to think BIGGER (wider?) than just technological transformation
Former Exxon executives admitted that they knew fossil fuels were causing catastrophic climate change since the late 1970's. In the 1980's, they started pumping money into think tanks and advertising to manipulate the public into thinking climate change might not be real and that recycling was a personal responsibility. The industries get rich and shifted the clean up cost/responsibility over to the consumer and local governments.
I totally agree that if you switch off the news you can get beyond the feeling of doom regarding climate change – and most other issues of our turbulent social climate today. I, too, am sure we will get this solved. But it's going to take a lot of hand-wringing and finger pointing and shouting along the way. That's how humans work. And, the "pay per eyeball" news that we have to live with only makes the situation more contentious. Thanks for the video. Carry on.
Climate change is not a problem that is now “solved”. It is not solved – and we are obviously going past the 1.5 degree increase scientists have already warned about. Regardless of what we’d like to believe, climate change issues are being treated too slowly. But, not to worry: artificial intelligence problems and the (unsolvable) nuclear weapons problem will render climate moot.
For food production-
permaculture, syntropic agroforestry.
Once you know what it is, holisitic management is the only way that makes any sense as far as food production
Thank you
I frequently I can't sleep a night because I worry about our environment. I know a kid who is an amazing pianist. He practices everyday. Does it matter? Will he survive to compose a great movie score? Why bother trying? He doesn't know that I have those thoughts. I keep hoping that we'll get a leader who is as charismatic as Trump but says the things that really need to be said, things that move people to enthusiastically join to make the planet great again. Oh well, it's late at night, well, actually really early morning. I have some ideas. Let's try to save out kids and the rest of mother nature. If things fail, well, at least, we tried.
Humans that believe this are so gross and weird
Love the move to nuclear. If we do that the move to electric cars makes sense. She lost me at reducing car usage (location freedom) and reducing meat consumption (health and sustenance)
As an Oxford researcher you should at the very least know the fundamental basics of percentage calculation.
30% of electricity comes from renewables? Does that mean there's 30% less fossil fuel used? Or does it mean that upon 100x the amount of electricity used the 70% generated from fossil fuel are in absolute numbers still 70x the amount it used to be when renewables were near zero?
The world is literally doing less than nothing, because all the renewable energy built in the world is exceeded by the economic growth of the worlds industry and thereby increasing demand for electricity.
You haven't solved anything at all, you haven't even managed to slow down the increased usage of fossil fuel, because that's still increasing today, despite all the renewable energy, simply because the demand for ever more energy grows faster than the construction of renewable evergy.
I dont have any hope for us. Rerversing climate change would need a mentality shift. Its not about having or not the technology to do so, because we probably already have it. The problem is the system we live in, and that will never change.
I am just curious… rather eager to know that who is sponcering u'r so callef thesis…… If i can call it so. 👌👌
Pls stop manipulating figers at least for the sake of the university.. 👌👌.
Did you read climategate.Tks
Assuming the wind blows constantly and equally and the sun shines constantly and equally every where in the world and that the transmission systems connecting the power producing devices to the rest of the grid are available every where…oh, and that there are no physical constraints between bulk power systems. And I'm only an economist. What would an engineer have to say about this simplicity? Your focus is only on land use.
if all the people on the planet were to share the same standard of living (and why shouldn't we) then that would change the calculation big time.
The presentation also makes no mention about how to go about reversing the 'bad stuff', like the locked-in changes due to the currently sky-high levels of greenhouse gasses.
the data guides thee
if animals have rights than so do i, I must always be allowed to eat meat. its in my nature >:(
The main driver in climate change today are not human emissions. Keep thinking that we are that important. Climate change was always a thing with and without humans. If you actually look at the data, not just from the past few hundred years but as far back as we just can. The earth is warming up naturally, and that is maybe a good thing.
Hopepilled
Fossil fuel executives should be charged with crimes against humanity. To continue to fast track all of us to our doom is inhuman. What will they do in their fallout bunkers when the money they've amassed is worthless and there is no one around to cater to their greed. F**k ExxonMobil, BP, and all the fossil fuel companies for knowing the reality of their actions and using pseudoscience to keep the money flowing into their coffers.
Pure hopium, try to solve feeding 9 billion people without using fossil fuels. You know what are the farming equipment powered by? You know how artificial fertilizers are made? You know how all the goods transported? Show me a scenario where we decarbonize all that. Even if we start the transition today with all means we can, we will still be adding CO2 and other warming gases into the atmosphere, and some tipping points are probably fixed now. But that's not the point, the point is that we wont even try to save the climate
I don’t feel hopeless because these problems are unsolvable; I feel hopeless because the ones in power just won’t fix them, and it’s frustrating to see that ordinary people are left with no real way to hold them accountable. How did we get to a point where those who can make a difference choose not to, and the rest of us are stuck watching, feeling powerless?
Not that good of a comparison you push the data but not looking at all the facts, take your car comparison, electric car costs more limited distance the battery is shot after 7 years not cost effective to replace lots of the batteries not recycled so minerals and chemicals lost also in UK not enough infrastructure charging points power stations ect, both petrol and diesel cars are still running at 20 years old with 200,000 miles on them also they are striped for bits and then recycle most of the metals, 25 to 30 years ago we where told that oil would run out yet China has just opened up the biggest oil fields in the world, water levels would rise and flood all low lands yet we are building at house on coastal and flood plains at fantastic rates, there is to much smoke and mirrors around this subject for it to be a serious topic
The problems around fossil fuels are the greed and power trips of the corporate leaders and Wall Street bankers. We can fix this mess but like Bernie Sanders said, it's going to take political revolution.
And nuclear is definitely not the answer. I was from New Mexico and have seen the problems and waist created. No nukes.
The adoption of a mostly “Clean Energy Economy” needs to go hand in hand with the dismantling of capitalism which naturally incentivizes sourcing cheap exploitative labor esp mining these materials and specifically in the “developing world”
Under capitalism, nuclear sounds great until greedy folks decide to lobby against regulation, worker safety, and environmental impact with storage and disposal
Luckily we can walk and chew gum FREECONGO FREESUDAN FREETIGRAY
The problems are clearly political and systemic and videos that don't address these actual barriers essentially amount to climate denialism. The shallow "urgent optimism" of these pieces contributes absolutely to my feelings of doom, like nothing else.
Godspeed, we otherwise doomed humans
How can the richest earn money on climate change…. That is the question. And they cant, so we will not try to much to solve the problem, because no one will pay. I wouldnt give a dime, I havent done anything wrong. Who will pay? No one but tax payers, but that is not much money, just a fraction of all money, but only these money can be used to safe the planet. Humanty dont bring any good to the universe, so everybody (the rest of the universe) would be best of if we died.
We are doomed. Don't believe the lies!!! The poor will all die!
At 2:40, you begin by saying we have plenty of the key inputs (Lithium, Copper, etc)for an energy transition, yet you don’t mention the fact that although there are plenty in quantity, the inaccessibility of much of it means it will cost more and more energy to access it, and according to many in the mining world, it is getting to the point where the energy needed to access smaller and smaller deposits will exceed the energy derived from such efforts, at which point, it will be futile. You make no mention of fact that all of that mining takes diesel – and lots of it for massive trucks that run 24/7, crushing machines that need to grind rock even finer to access the smaller grains, etc. Lastly, there will be no “net zero” 100% transition to EV’s since, as I said, there isn’t enough ACCESSIBLE copper, etc to ruggedize our grid for all of the new electrical loads (just consider all the manufacturing plants that now use coal, oil or natural gas!)or to manufacture the myriad of industrial products that keep our modern civilization going. It’s fantasy! We need to consumer at the energy/resource levels of the 1950’s. The sooner we do that, and conserve our remaining resources, the better.
And the Pope thinks he is God for pulling that off?
Like the UN which he Holy oversees?
Using the money of nations to finance his global operation?
And the racial mix of nations too?
And the operation of Climate Change?
And the Two-State Solution?
And the Final Solution?
And he selects government elections?
And the distribution of welfare?
And the Medical winners and losers?
And his Democratic kingdom pushes for it, collectively?
And he rules over all of it?
And you pay for it?
(For Joseph.)
No words about reducing aviation? 😅
Instead of thinking that we need alternative methods of transport we need to be re-organising our society and infrastructure so that our primary concern is reducing the need to travel in the first place. While we desire to sustain our present way of life by finding alternatives we are doomed to failure. We have to change our attitude to life at more fundamental levels.
local kinetic energy is the solution
Thanks for your encouraging video! It is true – there are many possibilities to work on and probably solve climate-change-problems. But we all also have to work on social and political problems which are rising with the far right parties in many countries. They deny the accountability of humans on climate change. Such as here in parts of Germany with a growing influence of the far right "AfD" … They just want to stopp all efforts against climate change 😢
Climate change or global warming has been going on since the last ice age and will continue until the future ice age. Before and after this, the earth has had many climate changes. No human or amount of money is going to stop this
She is comparing different types of data and resources, from different ages different with costs, without considering the different efforts required for extraction due to location of resources, production times, or even time required to build nuclear plants, there are not enougth resources for car replacement, and no way at the same price, and of course, the biggest problem is that we don't have replacement for industry/food transport! etc., etc. This video seems self-help.
Every part of this is bs
The part makes me sad is that HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE cry that the planet is dying and don't do anything. The common people I mean. We blame the leaders but we just seat in our couch and outcry but then go back and still do the same mistakes. Then the fatalist and deated; WHY I SHOULD TAKE SHORTER SHOWERS IF NESTLE DON'T GIVE A SHIT… yeah but if we tie together we can do the change we are more! We are way more than the rich; they are rich because of us!