Why it makes sense to be optimistic about the environment | Hannah Ritchie
- Consumer demand for electric vehicles, solar power, and meat substitutes is expected to signal market needs that drive global investment, lowering cost curves to eventually make these technologies the default option for low-income regions.
- In sub-Saharan Africa, where 40 percent of the population lives on less than $190 a day and three-quarters of the deepest poor are farmers, global extreme poverty is projected to persist in the region through 2030 without significant gains in agricultural productivity.
- Current labor productivity in sub-Saharan Africa is estimated at half the global average and up to 100 times lower than in the US or UK, while land productivity is roughly half of India's average and four to five times lower than in rich countries, with some nations requiring ten times the land for equivalent yields.
- If crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa do not increase, land expansion is expected to encroach on forests to feed a population projected to grow significantly over the next 50 years, a scenario where researchers model significant deforestation by 2050.
- Achieving attainable yields using existing technologies could triple crop production in sub-Saharan Africa, potentially placing the region slightly above India's average and reducing habitat loss to zero by meeting food demand through yield increases rather than land expansion.
- Low-hanging fruit solutions for increasing agricultural productivity include irrigation, fertilizer subsidies, and agritech investment, though these may require early government subsidies or high discount rates, with governments expected to subsidize inputs or alter trade tariffs to incentivize investment.
- Approximately 20 percent of people in sub-Saharan Africa currently face daily calorie insufficiency, a figure expected to worsen without improved yields amidst population growth, as extreme poverty remains concentrated in the region.
- Air pollution is identified as the current largest environmental issue by human impact, causing an estimated seven million deaths annually globally, with indoor air pollution projected to kill between two to three million people annually despite halving deaths since 1990.
- China reduced emissions of some air pollutants by two-thirds in less than a decade driven by citizen-led demand, and middle-income countries are expected to leapfrog high-pollution phases if rich countries make low-carbon technologies cheaper than fossil fuels.
- The costs of electric vehicle batteries dropped from approximately $1 million in 1990 to around $13,000 today, while solar panel costs fell by more than 90 percent in the last decade, making renewables economically competitive in many cases.
- China is expected to continue rapidly adopting renewable energies and electric cars, with projections indicating that more than half of new cars sold there might be electric within the next three years.
- Norway serves as a model where nearly all cars sold are electric, supporting the expectation that the transition to electric vehicles has become an economic opportunity for companies to avoid being left behind.
- Biodiversity is expected to be declining overall and quickly, with restoration efforts contingent on solving deforestation, climate change, and overfishing, though reintroducing species like the Eurasian beaver and European bison has shown positive effects.
- Food production is responsible for between a quarter and a third of greenhouse gas emissions and 70 percent of freshwater withdrawals, with livestock using three-quarters of global agricultural land.
- Eating less meat, specifically beef, is expected to reduce deforestation, tackle climate change, and lower biodiversity loss simultaneously, while reducing food waste and losses is expected to significantly cut emissions as roughly a quarter of food emissions are attributed to wasted food.
- Optimized fertilizer use could reduce amounts without impacting yields, whereas eliminating fertilizers entirely would cause crop yields to decline so drastically that forests would need to be cut down to produce enough food.
- The ozone layer is expected to take until 2080 to fully recover to pre-1980 levels, a recovery process that demonstrates environmental progress can be implemented relatively quickly if political will and market incentives align.
- Energy security is expected to become a growing argument for transitioning away from fossil fuels, particularly in response to volatile markets and geopolitical conflicts such as the invasion of Ukraine.
- The rebound effect where efficiency gains lead to increased consumption is not expected to occur significantly in most rich countries, where energy consumption is decreasing or stable.
- Microplastics are expected to be ubiquitous, yet evidence regarding their detrimental impacts on human or animal health remains unconvincing, with the primary solution to plastic pollution anticipated to be better waste management in middle-income countries.
- Air quality in many rich countries is expected to be the cleanest it has been in centuries, driven by reducing fossil fuel burning and installing pollution limits, while the "environmental Kuznets curve" for air pollution is expected to fit data showing pollution peaking in middle-income countries before falling as nations get richer.
- Individual actions such as purchasing electric vehicles are expected to create collective market signals that benefit low-income countries by lowering costs, and the fear of skin cancer is expected to have been a key incentive for wealthy nations to take early action on the ozone layer.
- The author expects that the transition to electric vehicles is now an economic opportunity, and that optimism combined with concern is a more sustainable motivator for action than pure pessimism.