Hope Is A Verb - Hannah Ritchie - Not the End of the World

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

Meet Hannah Ritchie, a data scientist and author of Not the End of the World, a book that makes the radically hopeful argument that we may be on track to create true sustainability for the first time in history. This is data driven, qualified optimism at its best! Find out more: https://ourworldindata.org/ https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/ (Photo credit: Angela Catlin) This episode of Hope Is A Verb was hosted by Angus Hervey and Amy Davoren-Rose. The soundtrack for this podcast is "Rain" composed and performed by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠El Rey Miel ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠from their album "Sea the Sky." Audio Sweetening by Anthony Badolato- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ai3 Audio and Voice⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.You can contact us at: [e-mail]

Welcome to Season 2 of Hope is a Verb, a podcast that explores what it takes to change the world through conversations with the people that are making it happen. I'm Amy. I'm Gus, and these are the unknown heroes who are mending our planet, stitching together a better future, and showing us the best of what it means to be human. I think I wish more people knew that 1.5 degrees is not a tipping point. It's not this tipping point where once the world warms by 1.5 degrees, it's the end of the world.

That's the impression that a lot of people have, that we have this 1.5 degree threshold and once we pass the threshold, we can't get back. That's not true. If there's just one thing we know for sure about climate change, it's that everyone has an opinion. Try bringing up the subject of global warming or renewable energy at family dinner and you will realize why it's in danger of becoming one of those topics that's banned from the table. And then throw in a constant loop of headlines about how the world is going to end. It is getting harder and harder to see the forest for all the trees. One tool that helps us navigate the climate noise is relying on the facts. And that's something

that data scientist Hannah Ritchie has dedicated her career to sharing. We're huge fans of Hannah's work at Our World in Data and on her Substack blog. And now she's published her first book, Not the End of the World, which makes the radically hopeful argument that if we zoom out from the headlines, we'll find a very different picture of the world and that we may, as a species, well be on the track to achieving true sustainability for the first time in history. Hannah, welcome to the podcast. It's really lovely to have you here. Thanks so much for having me.

We like to kick off with the same question with all our guests. Is there a news story that is giving you hope right now? I mean, my background is environment, so I'm going to pick an environment one. So last year, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell by 50%. So it halved over that one year. And I think that was really significant. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon kind of peaked in the early 2000s. And then we actually saw like really rapid reduction in deforestation.

So it fell by 75% under a leader called Lula da Silva, who is now in power. And then it regressed a lot under Bolsonaro. So deforestation started to go up again. And this was Lula da Silva's first year back in office and deforestation halved. When you look at the numbers, Brazil's president, Lula, has made a massive impact. Are there any specific reasons for this?

I mean, I think a big part of it is just really rigorous monitoring and policing. The leading driver of deforestation there is agriculture, so cattle ranching or soy production. So there is always demand for deforestation and it's really about watching it closely, which we can do really well with satellite technology. Our methods of being able to monitor it are now really, really good. And it's about policing it properly and punishing illegal deforestation. I'd love to hear a little bit more about deforestation. It's something that we cover a lot in our newsletter.

From your research, how has the global picture changed over the past few decades, and in particular in the past few years? And where are things at now? I mean, the overall story of deforestation is that people tend to cut down forests for fuel so they cut down forests for wood and then by far then the primary driver of deforestation is expansion of farmland so we basically expand farmland and we cut down forests

the global picture has changed over time so go back some centuries and it was most deforestation was in temperate zones so kind of Europe, North America we cut down our forests a long time ago now since then those forests have started to rebound and now the primary area of deforestation globally is in the tropics. Now how that looks on a global picture deforestation probably peaked in the 1980s the data on this is is hard to form a really, really consistent long time time series. But if you look at UN figures, we think global deforestation peaked in the 1980s. And it has been slowly falling, but it's still at a very, very high level. The goal is to end

deforestation by 2030. And I think that's a very, very ambitious goal. We would need to cut deforestation a lot to get there by 2030. But we know that's a very, very ambitious goal. Like we would need to cut deforestation a lot to get there by 2030. But we know that change can happen quite quickly. Brazilian Amazon deforestation halved in just one year. So it is possible to change this quite quickly, but it will take a lot of political will to get us there. Listening to you speak about deforestation and the depth of knowledge that you have. This topic of climate change is something that you've spent a lot of your life immersed in. But can you remember the first time you heard or registered the idea of climate change? I mean, I think I was pretty young. I

can't give an exact age, but I think I started to hear about it when I was pretty young probably under the age of 10 I'd say it started coming on my radar a bit I remember really distinctly in high school when I must have been around 12 or 13 we had to give like a talk to the class it was like a kind of English speaking assessment and you could pick any topic you wanted and I think people were picking like basketball or football kind of hobbies and I remember picking climate change because that was like a really big concern for me at the time and I just I remember standing at the front of a class with like sheets of paper about like what the world would look like at two degrees and three degrees and four degrees and five degrees and you just saw the sea level rise the coastlines getting

swamped and cities drowning and I think that was me presenting the future to the class of 12 year olds. So I remember even at that age, it being really on my mind and a really big part of my thinking and about my future. I mean, that is literally carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders at such a young age. And I'm older than you are. So I didn't grow up with that mindset. I didn't grow up with that weight. Climate change wasn't something that I started to register until I was a little older. I mean, I think it evolved over time. I mean, I don't think necessarily when I was, you know, eight years old, I was in despair. I think it built over time and it built over time because I had a growing awareness of it.

I had a growing awareness of the potential impact. And then I also mixed that with the anger, which has only grown for me over time, but also very clearly other people, about the lack of people taking notice of it. So like I remember, and this was very unfair on my classmates at the time because they were 12. I remember really distinctly just like not getting why no one else was in the state

that I was in like why was no one else seeing this and being really really upset and angry about it you had a really long period of just being very angry very angry that it seemed to me that no one else was looking no one one else was preparing. And I think that was a really defining emotion at the time. So is this what led you to study environmental science? Yeah, so I studied environmental science and that kind of came out of, one, just being really interested in general science, but like specifically on environmental topics.

At the time when I was deciding, you know, what I would do at university, I kind of had two paths in mind. I kind of wanted to be a science writer. I've always loved books. I've always loved writing. So I was going back and forward. Do I do writing and journalism or do I do a science path? And I chose the science path.

And I think, yeah, I think that was a big driver of why I chose that. You know, it was something I was really, really passionate about. We'd love to hear a little bit more about your road to Damascus moment. Who is Hans Rosling and what did his work mean to you? Hans Rosling was a Swedish statistician. He was first a doctor, health practitioner, and he did a lot of work in a number of low-income countries looking at Ebola and various other infectious diseases

and trying to improve health outcomes there. And then he did a bit of a switch to doing statistics. And specifically, he looked at big data on how the world was changing. And he would do these amazing talks. I mean, you can just Google him and you'll find a bunch of amazing talks where he often tried

to break down people's misconceptions about the world. What his stuff clearly showed is that if you ask people really, really basic questions about the world, like is extreme poverty falling or rising or questions about the share of kids that get vaccinated or the share of girls that get to go to school, Nearly everyone is too pessimistic about the world. They don't understand how rapidly human progress has happened and especially happened for many of the poorest in the world. He had a massive impact on me because I was also getting all of the questions wrong. And part of my pessimism about the world at the time was that I thought every metric in the world was getting worse.

Like poverty was getting worse, hunger was getting worse, child mortality was getting worse. And he really changed my perspective on a lot of that. In 2017, you started working with Max Rosa and the team at Our World in Data. And I actually remember when your name first started appearing there, mostly in connection with food and agriculture. Can you talk about what it's been like to actually work there and how that work has changed your view of the world? So we use data and research to understand the world's largest problems and how to solve them. So we set this bridge between academia and research and the general public, journalists, policymakers. And we basically try to translate

what the research and data says into a language or visualizations that people can understand and then implement. Researchers do amazing work and they do make fantastic discoveries and things that would help us understand the world and these problems, but often doesn't reach the people

that then implement it. It's often written for an audience of 100 people and their peers in the field. So what we wanted to do was to bring out the data and the research to reach a much broader audience. In terms of how it's changed my perspective, I mean, over the years, I've worked on a lot of topics, not just environment topics, but also health and various other ones. I think it has given me a much broader perspective on the scope of these problems but also a lot of the progress that we've made. I think it's very easy to fall into the trap especially on environmental topics to just assume that everything's getting worse and many of the trends are still getting worse and we

are in a bad position but there are lots of signs of progress and the question is how do we use that knowledge and that understanding to build on them and do more. At Our World in Data you have this fantastic koan which is that all three of the following things are true at the same time. The world is awful, the world is much better and the world can be much better. Yeah, so I think the hardest part arguably of our work

is being able to convey that all of these things can be true at the same time. People just look at the world this awful bit and forget the other two bits. You look at climate change, for example. We're currently headed for a world between two and a half to three degrees. That's awful because that's well above our targets

and there are extremely large impacts at that level of warming. We have brought that trajectory down. I mean, it seems hard to believe, but we were talking about warming of four degrees, maybe even just a decade ago. So we have started to bend that trajectory and we are making some progress and the world can be much better. I mean, we know often, we often know how to decarbonize and reduce our emissions. Many of the technologies that we need are now there.

They're now affordable. They're now cheap. We can build them at scale. It's very, very clear to see how we could bend that trajectory further and get on a much better path. And I think all three of those things are true at the same time. Now, Hannah, you have a book. It's called Not the End of the World

can you tell us what this book is about and how you can justify a title like that with all the bad news coming out about rising temperatures, climate disasters, fossil fuels? Yeah so the the book is called Not the End of the world and i think the way that you say it is really important i think it's not intended to say oh it's not the end of the world or or to dismiss any of these problems that's an indignant no this is not going to be the end of the world we are going to solve these problems these are big and urgent problems the the impacts are potentially huge i mean some of the impacts are already huge. The number of people that die currently from air pollution is in the millions. They're

really, really big problems. But we often have the solutions and we know how to do this. This is just about driving action and implementing them. So what I've tried to do with the book is to show across seven different environmental problems, where we've come from, how we've got to where we are today and looking at the current situation. And often where we are today is not good, but also looking at signs of progress and how we can take that further. So it's very much a book focused on solutions and what we need to do next. I really love the subtitle, which is how we can be the first generation to build a sustainable planet. Now, for a generation that has grown up feeling like

the world is doomed, this is a really empowering message. Like it's almost a call to arms. Can you chat a little bit about this idea of sustainability and why we now have the means to build a sustainable world? The way sustainability is framed in the book, and this very much comes from a kind of definition of sustainable development, is that sustainability there has two halves. So there's the half that as an environmentalist, I would always look at, which is having a low environmental impact to protect future generations and other species. But I think there's another half to that, another dimension that we need to fulfill, which is to reduce suffering for people that are alive today. Now, that gives our equation there are two halves.

And if we don't achieve either half, we've we've failed in terms of achieving sustainability over human history many of our ancestors achieved the second half so they did have a low environmental impact but often many of the human dimensions were poor so for example child mortality child mortality rates were extremely high now over the last few centuries we've made amazing progress, as Hans Rosling very clearly showed us, on the human dimension. So, child mortality is down, maternal mortality is down, extreme poverty is down, hunger is down. Many of the human well-being metrics have got a lot, lot better, although we've still got a way

to go. But that's came at the cost of the environment. So, we've burned fossil fuels for energy that has driven that progress. We've expanded farmlands and cut down forests. So the scales have tipped the other way. And the argument I make in the book is I think we are in quite a unique position to achieve both things at the same time. I don't think it's incompatible to increase human well-being and reduce suffering while also reducing our environmental impact at the same time.

I think in the past, often these things were quite incompatible, but I no longer think they are. It's not inevitable that we achieve this, but I think we have quite a unique opportunity to do both at the same time. This idea of sustainability as a two-part equation not only makes a huge amount of sense, it changes the dynamic from people or planet to people and planet. And while there's no denying that more needs to change,

and quickly, taking the conversation out of this binary scenario, it feels really important. What I love about this kind of data-driven qualified optimism is that it opens up more possibilities. It expands the scope of what we think is possible. It drives solutions. It gives us agency to create a sustainable future. I mean, it's really easy to throw up your hands and say, it's all doomed and to wait for the collapse. But renewal is active. It always has been and is part of our wiring.

This is a pretty recent phenomenon, isn't it? This kind of opportunity that you're talking about here, this opportunity to achieve sustainable development. If you look at the possibility of reducing fossil fuel usage, that came with some pretty heavy trade-offs until fairly recently. But what's happened, especially in the last few years, I think, is that the technology has advanced so quickly and that the economic and political decision-making apparatus around

energy has transformed so dramatically, things suddenly look a lot rosier than they did even a few years ago. What's interesting with climate change, there's this weird paradox where people who've been following it for the longest have kind of almost never felt more hopeful. And yet those people who are coming to the problem for the first time have never felt more despair. It's such a difficult thing to reconcile. Yeah, I think it's true. I think often people oversimplify how easy it would be to just switch to low carbon energy

and why haven't we done it already? And the reason is that human development has been driven by energy. And until very recently, we just didn't have economic substitutes, right? Humans are going to demand energy and they're going to pick the cheapest one. And that has for a long time been fossil fuels. I think the really dramatic change we've seen,

and one of the key reasons I feel hopeful about our ability to tackle this is that the cost of alternatives have plunged and they are often undercutting the cost of fossil fuels. Now what that means is that people will just pick these technologies regardless of whether they care about climate change or not. No one's going to pick an expensive energy source, they're going to pick the cheapest one and that cheapest one is probably going to be solar or wind or some of the other low carbon technologies. But you're right, there is a paradox there. Again it comes back to being able to hold two thoughts in your head at the same time, where I think many people that have worked in this for

a long time are, on the one hand, maybe the most scared they've ever been in terms of climate impacts and what the future could look like, but also the most optimistic they have been about our ability to tackle it. We need to always keep in mind what's at stake and the potential impact that we're looking at. That gives us the urgency to act. That drives us towards these solutions. But we also need to keep in mind that we are in a very good position to tackle this, arguably the best position we've ever been in. I am a huge fan of your writing and your work

and you've got a really fantastic newsletter called Sustainability by the Numbers. And I think in the last 12 months, you've done a lot of work on kind of issues that go beyond what's immediately on the surface. I'm thinking specifically here around some of the work you've done on the differences between primary energy and final and useful energy

and also some of the research that you've done on the minerals for the clean energy transition. On both of those areas, there are huge reasons for optimism. When we look at a graph of global energy production or consumption, we're often looking at a graph of primary energy. And basically that is the amount of energy, so coal, oil, gas gas that you're burning now the issue of that is that most of that energy is wasted so around two-thirds of the energy that is wasted as heat when you burn

fossil fuels so actually a really small amount of it actually goes towards like powering the stuff that you actually need that's what we would call final energy or one step further like energy services like moving from a to b in a car or the amount that you actually need out the plug socket or the energy that it takes to boil a kettle but we're currently having to produce much much more energy because we need to produce that amount plus all the waste that comes from fossil fuel burning now what will happen as we decarbonise is that that primary energy use will go down a lot. And it will go down a lot even if we don't change our demand at the end of the chain.

So if we don't change how much we're driving, if we don't change how much we're powering or heating our homes, if all of that stays the same, energy use will still fall. And that's because we will get rid of the inefficiencies of fossil fuel burning. And as we electrify sectors, so as we electrify cars, for example, or electrify heating, we'll get massive efficiency gains there. So I think it looks really overwhelming when you look at the big stack of energy that we're currently burning and you assume we have to replace all of that with renewables but that's not true we'll have to

replace a smaller amount than that graph would show i think i always like to kind of really simplify which is that a clean energy economy just doesn't need as much stuff yeah a simple example there is when you have a petrol car it's got an efficiency of around 20 so for every dollar of fuel you put in 80 cents is wasted right, right? You're just throwing that away. And only 20 cents actually goes towards moving you from A to B, so like turning the wheels. And if you go for an electric car, it's almost the opposite.

You get like 70 to 80 cents is used for turning the wheels and maybe like 20 to 30 is wasted. Now what that means is that to travel the same distance, you need three to four times less energy in an electric car than you do in a petrol car. So just that simple switch without changing behavior.

I mean, behavior change is also useful. But even if you take behavior change out of it, you still see massive efficiency gains. So yes, we will just need less stuff. Yeah, and I think that's just such a hopeful message, isn't it? That efficiency gains trump behavior change anyway. So there's a lot of reasons for optimism. I still back lifestyle changes. Like in my book, I've got

a list of lifestyle changes that would make a big difference. But I also recognize that behavior change is really hard. So I think it's really useful that we've also got this other lever we can pull where we also make massive gains. This is really interesting Hannah because I feel like the climate movement did a really good job of getting our attention by telling us how bad things we're going to get but the problem with this approach long term is that we can be paralyzed by fear. So like what do you think is the power of optimism in driving agency for people? Yeah, I mean, I agree.

I think the climate movement has done an amazing job of waking people up to these problems. I mean, that's part of the reason I got into the field that I'm in is because many of these voices coming through and that's what got me engaged in the first place. I think the challenge there is if you only tell people what the problem is without giving them a path out, then they can become paralyzed. Only telling people the problem without telling people the solution

then just leaves them with an unsolvable problem. The key for the data-driven optimism there is not to undermine the message that the problems are big. That's what drives us to act on them. But to use data to show that things can change, like progress is happening. We're not in the situation that many people think we're in where we've been working on this for 30 years

and made absolutely no progress whatsoever. I think if that's the kind of understanding that you have, it can lead to paralysis because, you know, why would it change now after 30 years? But I think the key thing is that you have, it can lead to paralysis because, you know, why would it change now after 30 years? But I think the key thing is that we have made progress. It's just not fast enough. But by looking at that progress, you can often learn lessons about how we can drive more of it.

In many senses, you're putting your head above the parapet on this one because I think you only have to look at the comment sections on any of your recent profiles to see how difficult it is to get this message of data-driven, qualified optimism across. Why do you think so many people are convinced that it is the end of the world and how does their quite visceral reaction to your work make you feel on a personal level? In many ways, I associate with the way that many people feel about this because I was definitely in a very, very similar mindset a decade ago.

And I think it took something quite special, i.e. Hans Rosling, to help me out of that a little bit. Even then, it wasn't like a linear process that suddenly, you know, I felt amazing and the world was amazing. I think it was a very gradual learning process. But yeah, it will be controversial. I'm kind of prepared for that. It doesn't make me feel amazing

to see people slagging me off. But it's part and parcel of sticking your head above the parapet. The criticism will come from both sides. I think there's a very denial side, which I've experienced a lot before. I think I'm used to now, I'm just not bothered by.

I get more bothered by pushback from environmental left, part of because I just also see myself as part of that crowd in that community. It's almost like getting criticism from within your tribe. So I think that's probably harder for me. I think it's hard for me when some of the criticisms is that my message is dangerous, that it'll stand in the way of change and hinder efforts. I mean, that's

completely the opposite to what I'm trying to do. I take these problems very seriously and I'm trying to drive change, not take away from it. It's going to be an interesting ride. You strike me as someone that's quite private and yet here you are open to public attack. Are you nervous or do you think about that at all? Oh yeah, I'm extremely nervous. Like I haven't slept for a week. Yeah, no, I'm very nervous about it. It feels like a huge risk and yet it's one worth taking, isn't it? I think so. I want to see positive change. Part of this also comes from speaking to people that are in a really dark place and they've they're in that dark place because they feel so doomed about these issues and I want to stick up for them and say no

this is not the way it has to be like there is a a more positive future here and we can build it and prepared for the backlash but I'm also willing to take that risk. Was there anything that really surprised you while writing this book? Was there a story or a piece of data that maybe you weren't expecting? One of the key ones that's maybe underappreciated is the amount of decline in local air pollutions in many countries. Now, air pollution globally is a massive problem. We have millions of premature deaths every year, but especially in rich countries. Now, air pollution globally is a massive problem. We have millions of premature deaths every year. But especially in rich countries over the last 50 years or so,

there has been a really, really dramatic decline in local air pollution. And that was brought about by very stringent air quality standards and government policies. And they've been very, very successful. Many fewer people are dying from air pollution in those countries. Again, it's holding those three thoughts in our head at the same time. It's very, very clear that we can make more progress. There are solutions that we know are implementable that would again

reduce air pollution and save many more lives. Yeah, and that's really exciting, isn't it? I mean, air pollution, by some estimates, kills something like up to nine million people a year. So if you get to a world with dramatically lower air pollution, you're talking about saving more people than are killed by diseases and more people than are killed by war just as a result of what sounds like policy changes maybe at the local and national levels around the world. Most of that burden today is in middle and low-income countries.

Again, this is why it's useful to highlight progress in rich countries, not to say like, oh, things are fine and there's no problem. What we should be pushing for is that middle and low income countries manage to reduce air pollution far, far faster than they might have in the past. And one of the ways to do that is to look at how did the UK do this? How did the US do this? What was the key policies? What was the biggest driver of emissions declines?

And then you can start to see how do you fast track that in middle and low income countries so that you save more and more lives faster and faster. This book, Hannah, it's about a lot more than climate change. You've just spoken about air pollution,

but you cover a number of other topics, things like deforestation, food, biodiversity loss. Is it true that we're in the midst of a sixth mass extinction? And are there any reasons for hope? I think biodiversity loss is by far the most pessimistic chapter. I think part of the reason is that it's often driven by a mix of all the other chapters. So kind of all the impacts of the other chapters is what's driving biodiversity loss, which means you kind of have to solve them all before you can

solve the biodiversity loss problem. In terms of whether we're in the midst of a sixth mass extinction, if you look at rates of extinction of known species over the last few centuries, for example, the extinction rate is higher than it was in any of the five previous mass extinctions so if you just look at the rate by which animals are going extinct today yes you would say we are on course for a sixth mass extinction now the key point there is that in order to have a sixth mass extinction you would need this rate to continue for a really long time like we would need need this rate to continue for a really long time. Like we would need to keep continuing this rate for a very long time.

Now what's different compared to the previous five mass extinctions is that they rolled on because there was no handbrake. And the key point I want to make is that we are the handbrake. Like we are the primary driver of these extinctions, which means we are within our control to slow that down and stop that rate. So on biodiversity loss, no, we're on a very, very bad path. But often by solving many of the other problems, so solving the way we produce food, by solving deforestation, by solving climate change, we will massively relieve a lot of the pressure on animals. I love in your message how interconnected all of these things are,

because I think we've also fallen into a bit of trap of siloing some of these problems. But what you're saying is the solutions are all a bit of a domino effect. Yeah, exactly. I think often why people feel that these problems are so insurmountable is that they assume you need 50 solutions for problem one and 50 solutions for problem two so you end up with like 600 different solutions or something to solve all of these problems and that's not the case i think for most problems actually there are five key key solutions that make a massive massive difference and often they overlap so by addressing one you often have knock-on positive impacts

on several other problems. So I think the number of solutions that we need to implement is often much, much smaller than people would imagine. I think we'd be in a really, really terrible position if these problems had really strict trade-offs, right?

If somehow by solving climate change, you would make deforestation much, much worse. Or I think if you had the really, really inherent trade-offs, we'd be in a really bad position, but that's not the position that we're in. What is one thing you wish more people knew? I think I wish more people knew that 1.5 degrees is not a tipping point. It's not this tipping point where once the world warms by 1.5 degrees, it's the end of the world.

That's the impression that a lot of people have, that we have this 1.5 degree threshold, and once we pass the threshold, we can't get back. That's not true. 1.5 degrees is a target. There's no magic switch that forces us into this catastrophic pathway that we can't get back from. We need to fight for 1.6 degrees and 1.7 degrees

and 1.8 degrees and 1.9 degrees. And I think that really changes how you view the problem of climate change. I think if you view it as a binary, either we fix it or we don't fix it, then you can get into this kind of paralysis mindset, because it's very hard to envision that we would be able to reduce emissions in time to stay below 1.5 degrees. But when you look at it more as a spectrum, every 0.1 degrees is worth fighting for, which means your actions really matter and what we do collectively really matters in terms of the climate trajectory that we end up with. If you could go back to yourself as that 12-year-old girl who was at school and so deeply concerned about the planet. What advice would you give her now?

The world is not doomed. These are big problems, but they're solvable problems. What I advise my younger self is to surround myself with people really focused on trying to make a positive difference. I think that makes a massive difference to your mindset. I think that makes a massive difference to your mindset. I think it makes a massive difference to how you feel and the standards that you set. If you are in a more optimistic crowd,

you'd probably tend to be more optimistic. And if you're in a more pessimistic crowd, you'd probably get stuck in a more pessimistic mood. I hope that we can bridge that somewhere. Maybe I'm too optimistic and maybe I need a little bit more pessimism. But I hope maybe that groups can start to gel. But yeah, my general advice would be to find people that are really passionate

about understanding and solving these problems. Hannah, one final question for you. What does the word hope mean to you? I think it's the ability to see a much better future that we have to create through human effort. I often get framed as like an optimist, but I like to be very clear and differentiate between passive or blind optimist, someone that just sits back and assumes that the world is going to be better. The world only gets better if we make it so. So for me, it's about this more active optimism or active hope where you can

envision a much better future, but it inspires you to get working on actually building it. Active hope is what this podcast is all about. And the power of this conversation is in finding that intersection between data and possibility of holding those three truths at the same time. The world is awful, the world is much better, and the world can be much better. If you want to find out more about Hannah, check out our show notes. Her book, Not the End of the World, is now available, and you can go to her website, Sustainability by Numbers, for more information. We'd like to thank our paying subscribers for making conversations like this one possible

If you want to find out more about becoming a paid subscriber check out futurecrunch.com This podcast is recorded in Australia on the lands of the Gadigal, Wurundjeri and Waiwurrung people There are a lot of podcasts out there It means a lot to us that you chose this one If you chose this one. If you enjoyed this episode and you would like to support Hope as a Verb,

please subscribe and leave a review. And if you want to reach out directly, email us at hope at futurecrunch.com.au. Thanks for listening.