Who Will Power the 21st Century? — with Hannah Ritchie

25:22I thought at that moment he was going to pull up his sleeve and show me a tattoo. But kids do seem to not be placing the same, or at least American kids. There's a dramatic turnaround in terms of their affinity for cars. So let's talk, let's take the lens out a bit. The climate coverage skews pretty catastrophic. And you've spent two books arguing the data tells a more complicated story. What does the average person get wrong? What does the media get wrong about where we actually are with respect to climate change? I think a couple of key things. I think the world to set these ambitious climate targets, you might have heard of the one and a half degree target or the two degree target.

26:04And that's basically targets the world to set on what we're going to limit temperature rise to. And we're very rapidly approaching one and a half degrees of warming. We will pass that. there's no way that we're going to stay below that. And I think maybe what a lot of people get wrong is that they see these targets as these kind of cliffs that we fall off. And once we pass these targets, we hit some tipping, one global tipping point that kind of completely shifts the climate system and there's no coming back. I think people often see it in this very binary, like either we stay below it or we go above it and we're doomed or not.

26:43And that's just not how this works, right? The climate impacts scale with the temperature rise we experience, which kind of means there's no point at which we should just give up, right? Because the hazards at 1.7 are better than they are at 2. And if we go past 2, then it's worth trying to stay below 2.3 rather than 2.5. And I think people don't have that as clear in their head. I think they think once we hit this point, it's over. And that's just not how this works. I think the other challenge that I think people have is that they often view climate impacts and future climate impacts in this very static world around them.

27:30So heat waves are going to increase. Other events are going to increase. There might be pressures on our food systems, right? So that's all true. And that will all happen with climate change. But the point is that there are going to be other dramatic changes happening at the same time, whether that's economic growth in lower income countries, whether that's demographic changes, innovation so that we can produce temperature resistant crops or investments on making people more resilient on systems more resilient to heat. So I think that the challenge people has is that they see climate impacts rising in the future, but they somehow assume that the world is going going to stay as it is today.

28:09And that's just the least likely outcome, right? The world and economics and demographics and all this other stuff is going to change. And I think the, I guess the key kind of statistical view of this is that if you were to look at what's happened to global deaths from disasters over the last century, I think many people would assume they've gone up because we have faced these increased hazards and we have many more people in the world, But actually they've gone down and they've gone down dramatically. And that's because we developed weather forecasting and early warning systems and we knew how to design buildings that are resistant to extreme weather and floods.

28:50So there's all these really dramatic socioeconomic changes that happened at the same time, and that outweighed the increased risk from climate change over that period. So I think that's one of the key things that people maybe get wrong. And then I think the final one is I think people have this sense that we're not making any progress on clean energy or decarbonisation. And I think we are maybe not making as much progress as people would like, or we're not making as much progress to keep us below one and a half degrees or two degrees. But we actually have made substantial progress on many of these metrics.

29:25And I think that's only accelerating and will continue to accelerate over the coming decades. You refer to yourself as a techno-realist. What do you mean by that? Yeah, I mean, I frame myself as that because everyone else frames me as a techno-optimist. and I don't like that latter framing because I think, and I don't think it's true, but I think it insinuates a techno-optimist as someone that just thinks some technology will come along and save us in some vacuum. So we'll just invest in the technology and it will come and it will save us and that's just not my view. I think my view is, I think technology is going to be really crucial in solving these problems.

30:04It's going to be really crucial in us tackling climate change, but that doesn't operate in a vacuum. Like I still think that having the political backing of these technologies is crucial. Having social interventions where societies are willing to take up these technologies is crucial. Reorienting financial markets and investments towards these solutions is really, really crucial. So I frame myself as a techno-optimist because I think technology will be really, really crucial and I'm very pro-technology. But I don't on its own think that it's going to come along and save us. Are there different types of energy or technologies that you don't think are getting the attention they deserve?

30:42I think I still think the electrification piece is just underrated in people's minds. Like I think they know it's there, but I think they underestimate the benefits for people. I mean, that's really where people will save money. When it comes down to money, we might be able to make a unit of electricity a bit cheaper, but not dramatically cheaper. there could be dramatic cost reductions and price reductions for someone switching from a gasoline car to an electric car or whatever the electrification technology is. So I think that's where people could really feel it in their pockets. But then there are just whole other parts.

31:18I mean, this transport part, the electricity part, is in some way the easy part. There are other parts of our emissions or sources that people underestimate and will be much harder. like cement. Cement is 7 % of global emissions. It's like double or triple aviation. Lots of people think about, when they think about climate, think about people flying. They don't think about people building houses and bridges. So there's stuff like cement, steel, fertilizer. The technical term we'd use is like hard to abate sectors where the solutions are not quite there yet, but there are promising ideas or early stage technologies that might eventually make it to commercial scale.

32:06And I think for people, I don't know, with some money that want to get behind solutions that are less well-known, I think those are the areas where I would look. Didn't I read somewhere that ships are a much greater polluter than people give them credit for? Yeah. I mean, I think, again, people, when they think of transport, think of cars and they think of planes ships are also pretty substantial what's also promising there is that a huge amount of global shipping is for moving fossil fuels around so actually if you if you if you were to dramatically shift to a lower carbon energy system you'd also dramatically cut a lot of shipping demand at the same time i mean the start of something like half or two-thirds on a mass basis is basically shipping fossil fuels around the world.

32:58We'll be right back.

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35:16We're back with more from Hannah Ritchie. When I listen to you, Hannah, quite frankly, it just sounds to me, and it feels like any honest economic analysis, runs as an accidental ad for the CCP. I mean, at the end of the day, aren't the Chinese just making more deft investments than the rest of the world? Yeah, I have this problem as well, because, I don't know, sometimes I come across as, I don't know, too pro-China in some way. or people push back. Yeah, but you're just calling it as you see it. I mean, 70 % of EV production globally, China. 80 % of solar panels, China. Batteries, I mean, quite frankly, it just seems like they're moving to where the puck is headed.

35:58I mean, I think it's framed as the kind of China paradox because it's absolutely true that they are, one, they're building huge amounts of clean energy at home. They're adopting electric vehicles extremely rapidly. As I said, more than half of new car sales in China are electric. and they are basically dominating the supply chains of these technologies for exports for the rest of the world. At the same time, they are the world's largest emitter. They do burn a lot of coal. They are still burning coal plants. I think what people maybe get wrong about the coal plant thing is that they see China building new coal plants and inevitably think they're going to burn huge amounts of extra coal.

36:40what china is largely doing there is building new and flexible coal plants because they have much much much more variable solar and wind to integrate into the grid so the way that the us does it and the way that europe mostly does it is we have solar and wind and then we ramp up natural gas up in town to fill in the gaps right what china is doing it doesn't have natural gas it doesn't want to buy natural gas, it's basically doing that with coal plants. So even though China is building new coal plants at actually quite a pretty rapid rate, that doesn't actually mean that they are burning more coal or will burn more coal.

37:20It's more of this kind of adaptive thing. But yeah, it's often framed as a paradox because they are still a huge emitter. At the same time, they are really, really leaning into these technologies, as I said, domestically, but also for export. I think what's really key here, and I think what maybe gets lost, is that this wasn't a very recent, sudden transition or decision, well, maybe that's what we should do over the next decade. This has been part of an industrial strategy that has been going on and been planned for decades, right? So China was experiencing strong economic growth. Its population would eventually want cars and transport.

37:59It doesn't have oil. It doesn't want to have to buy oil. And it couldn't compete with the US and Germany and Europe on building combustion engine cars. What was its way to energy security was to build really good electric vehicles and renewable technologies such that it could serve that demand without becoming energy insecure, like many other countries in the world. So that's been decades in the making, and it's now coming to fruition, but it did take huge investments very, very early on when these technologies were very, very expensive. And part of what China has done, along with other countries as well that invested early, has dramatically brought down the prices for the rest of the world and many other countries in the world will ultimately benefit from that.

38:47There's, I want to get your input on, not a debate, but Americans, especially in the media, especially on the right, are constantly saying things along the lines of, well, the lack of air conditioning in the EU kills more people than guns in the U.S. The non-air, not having access to ubiquitous air conditioning has killed more people than COVID. I mean, air conditioning or the lack thereof in the EU has been, it's become just a constant talking point. Here's to get your views on this debate and if it's been framed correctly. I think the comparison to guns is a bit silly, if I'm honest. I'm not quite sure why we're specifically comparing those, but I've seen the comparisons.

39:33I did check, there was a kind of viral chart and I checked the numbers on the chart. The U.S. deaths from heat were lower than they should have been. And there's a complicated reason for that. The key point being that the US numbers were basically death from heat on death certificates. And the reality is that's not how most people die from heat. I mean, people, when they think of someone dying from heat, they're like, die from a heat stroke or something. When the reality is what heat does is it really exacerbates underlying health conditions. So what it means is that someone with heart disease would die earlier than they would have if they hadn't experienced this rapid heat event.

40:15So the way to quantify that is very different from death certificates. So that brought the US numbers up a bit. But it's still true that Europe has much, much higher heat deaths than the US. And I think a big part of that is air conditioning. I think there is, to some extent, a weird cultural phenomenon in Europe where there has been this reluctance to really invest in air conditioning. There is this sense that it's too much of a luxury. I don't agree with that attitude. and the reason I don't agree with that attitude is because that is not how we treat being too cold or heating. So in the UK, if someone cannot afford to heat their home in winter, we say that person is in fuel poverty.

40:59It does not make sense to me that if someone is extremely, extremely hot, siphling hot in the summer in heat and do not have a way to cool themselves, that's also fuel poverty to me. And the imbalance there doesn't make sense. And I think this kind of long run cultural thing where heating has been really crucial, especially for northern parts of Europe. At the same time, I mean, it's also true that especially for central and northern Europe, the need for air conditioning and cooling has actually been quite recent. Like Europe has experienced pretty rapid increases in temperatures over the last decade or so.

41:44And it just didn't have that before. So part of it is this kind of shock of like, suddenly we actually do need this and we didn't need it necessarily 20 years ago. And that's overlapping with this very long, drawn out kind of cultural sense that our focus is on heating rather than cooling. You're such a clear blue flame thinker. I want to go off script here. I want to ask you to give sort of your top line of the cliff notes on the economy in the UK right now and then drill down on the Scottish economy. My honest assessment is not good. I mean, if you, if you, so often framed, there is this always this debate in climate on, you know, whether economic growth is compatible with, you know, achieving our climate goals.

42:32or do we need what is framed as degrowth? And the kind of quip as well, just ask the UK because we've basically been degrowing for about a decade or two now. When you look at the economic situation in the UK, it's basically been very stagnant and productivity has really, really stagnated over the last decade or so. So I know that's true across the UK. It's also true in Scotland. So I think the overall frame there is not a positive one, and I'm reasonably pessimistic about it. I think it's also quite hard to see where that engine of growth is going to come from. You know, the UK now has a new prime minister, but we've also been through a long series of prime ministers in a very, very short period of time.

43:25And I think part of that is because it's very, very hard to find us. I think we're looking for a quick solution to get out of this stagnation period and people won't be satisfied until they see that engine of growth. But trying to do that in a stage where also there is rising demand on social care and the demographics are changing pretty rapidly, actually, I think genuinely makes us a very hard problem to solve. And we're also quite impatient about giving someone the chance to do it. I mean, I live in London and I'm just struck by, so all the numbers on the UK economy are just, it just hasn't grown.

44:02And I think the easiest culprit is Brexit. At least that's my favorite go-to in terms of an unbelievable own goal, but I'm sure it's more complicated than that. And the thing that just strikes me is that the UK is doing better because amazing universities, fantastic culture. You know, London is a super city. The wealthiest people in the world want to have a second home either in London or New York. It just feels like it has all of the underpinnings of the foundation of what should be a thriving economy. And yet it always seems to steal or snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Other than Brexit, can you point to anything that you would argue is a culprit here or has gotten in the way of the UK kind of recognizing or commanding the space it occupies, if you will?

44:55I think Brexit has had a big impact. I think another big factor is just huge growth and regional inequality, where the UK has been, I mean, it's always been quite London-centric, but I think it has become increasingly London-centric. And if you go outside of London, you know, some economic trends are even worse and the opportunities I think are even worse. And then that creates this kind of agglomeration effect where, you know, if you want to be, there's a feeling if you want to be ambitious in the UK, you have to move to London. And then you have this twine with this problem of very slow at building infrastructure to change that, very slow at building houses in London, very high house prices in London.

45:40So you have this kind of agglomerating problem of this centralisation in a few places, but actually it's increasingly hard for people to move there and take advantage of those opportunities. I think that regional story is a very, very strong one in the UK. I mean, I think the UK is, there are very, very few countries in the world where the economic engine is so central. Even if you look at Germany, France, it's more decentralised than it is in the UK. And certainly when it comes to the U.S., it's much more diversified. And then last thing I want to touch on, because we have a lot of young people who listen to the podcast who are looking or trying to adapt to a new media ecosystem and trying to find interesting ways or options for potentially making a living or bringing greater awareness to the work.

46:29You're, in addition to being a senior researcher at the University of Oxford, you're also a creator. You have a very active sub stack. You have 75 ,000 plus followers. Just curious to kind of give us a behind the music. We have a Substack offering. We're mostly ad-driven, but we're trying to move to or create a revenue stream that's more recurring with subscriptions on Substack. I'm curious how Substack fits into your professional life. Do you see it as just a means to expand your influence footprint? Do you see it someday as being an economic model for you? How do you approach Substack? Yeah, I don't monetize my Substack.

47:07and that's largely because I just have the luxury of having a full-time job and so I don't necessarily need that as a as a source of of income and for me Substack is really this outlet to just it's a more relaxed environment to share stuff I'm interested in or put a bit of personality into my work or so it's like for me I very much treat it more like a blog than I do my full-time job which is also writing but it's more professional um yeah more and more tense in some way so it is like a little bit of an outlet for that for me to share ideas explore ideas test stuff and I and I really really enjoy it I mean I think when it comes to advice for younger people or creators the work I'm doing now I never would have imagined was even a job when I was leaving university like someone would pay me to like make charts and write about them that's incredible so I never saw that as a kind of job and avenue and I kind of stumbled into it I just started doing volunteering at the organization I'm at now and I kind of climbed and grew that into a full-time position and I think part of the reason why I have the space for myself now is not just about honing one particular skill, it's actually about finding the unique overlap of a combination of interests and skills that actually makes that like an unsaturated space, right?

48:41So for me, it's this weird overlap of like, I like writing, I have this kind of environmental data lens and I make visualizations. And that's actually quite a unique combination. Like some people have one or the other, but they somehow don't have all three or four. So my advice to young people would be to try to look at that intersection of skills and interests and build on that rather than honing in on, I'm just going to be a fantastic writer, but I don't know what to write about. And it's a very, very saturated space or the same in any other dimension. What are your sources of inspiration? What are your kind of, I don't know, hacks or cheat codes here in terms of creators and finding interesting data?

49:21a big i mean a big part of it is listening to what other people are saying or what questions they have and that's just a really key source for me is like i don't know when it comes to solar power like what are the questions or concerns that people have about solar power and are they right are they wrong let me look at the data and that's a huge part of the the the kind of um idea engine for me is just listening to people looking on social media about what people are arguing about is like a really big one. And then honestly, just a big one for me is just questions that I have. Like, I mean, I don't come to every question knowing the answer.

49:57Like, I genuinely don't know the answer to this question. I think it's an important question. I'm going to go and figure it out. Oh, and by the way, I should probably just write this up and share it with other people in case they also find it interesting. So I think part of it is engaging with other people and listening to what they have to say, but also just having this inbuilt curiosity to figure stuff up or figure stuff out or just not take someone else's answer for granted. Not because you have a question you want answered, don't necessarily just take some news source and they have the answer.

50:32Also, think about it and go and work it out for yourself. I think that's been a key one for me. Hannah Ritchie is a senior researcher at the University of Oxford and the deputy editor of Our World in Data. Her latest book, Clearing the Air, answers the 50 biggest questions about solving climate change. She joins us from Edinburgh. Hannah, I really enjoyed this conversation. I just enjoy the lens through which you look at the world. Thanks for your time today. Thanks. Really enjoyed the conversation.

51:03This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Genere. Cami Reek is our social producer. Bianca Rosario Ramirez is our video editor. And Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G pod from Prop G Media.

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