Post by asadul4986 on Feb 20, 2024 1:58:34 GMT -5
In a recent global survey of young people about how they feel about climate change, half told researchers that they believe “humanity is lost.” In other words, they do not believe that the needs of the current generation can be met without undermining those of the next. They doubt that life as we know it is not sustainable. Data scientist Hannah Ritchie used to believe the same. As a teenager, she feared that humanity's devastation of the planet - in all its forms from climate change to deforestation and extreme fishing - posed a series of insoluble problems. His career studies, begun at the age of 16 at the University of Edinburgh, only seemed to confirm those concerns. “She used to be convinced that there was no future to live for,” she writes now at age 30 in her first book, Not the End of the World .
Advertisements Today, Ritchie thinks differently. She remains concerned about the path the world is on, but she believes there is hope that humanity can reverse course. As deputy editor of Our World in Data (a scientific journal analyzing global issues based at Oxford University) and a researcher at Oxford University, she highlights developments and statistics that tell a more positive story, from improving air quality to increase in the sale of electric vehicles. Ritchie spoke to BBC Future Planet about how his thinking changed Costa Rica Mobile Number List why the world could be reaching its “pollution peak”, and ways he could ensure a more sustainable future. What made you change your mind about the future of humanity? And why do you now believe that “catastrophic” forecasts do not inspire action? Climate change has always been part of my life and has always worried me, even as a child. That got worse when I went to university, because I studied environmental sciences and all the trends were definitely going in the wrong direction. At that time I felt a lot of anxiety, hopelessness and that these problems were completely insoluble.
The key turning point for me happened when I discovered the work of the Swedish physician and statistician Hans Rosling. As a student, he assumed that all measures of human well-being, such as global poverty, mortality and hunger, were also worsening along with environmental ones. But Rosling gave TED talks where he showed, through data, that the world had changed for the better over the last few centuries. So I asked myself: can we do both at the same time? Can we continue to improve human well-being while reducing our impact on the environment? And, over the past 10 years, according to environmental data, there have been signs to be cautiously optimistic. It is not certain that we will achieve it, but I think we have the opportunity to do it.
Advertisements Today, Ritchie thinks differently. She remains concerned about the path the world is on, but she believes there is hope that humanity can reverse course. As deputy editor of Our World in Data (a scientific journal analyzing global issues based at Oxford University) and a researcher at Oxford University, she highlights developments and statistics that tell a more positive story, from improving air quality to increase in the sale of electric vehicles. Ritchie spoke to BBC Future Planet about how his thinking changed Costa Rica Mobile Number List why the world could be reaching its “pollution peak”, and ways he could ensure a more sustainable future. What made you change your mind about the future of humanity? And why do you now believe that “catastrophic” forecasts do not inspire action? Climate change has always been part of my life and has always worried me, even as a child. That got worse when I went to university, because I studied environmental sciences and all the trends were definitely going in the wrong direction. At that time I felt a lot of anxiety, hopelessness and that these problems were completely insoluble.
The key turning point for me happened when I discovered the work of the Swedish physician and statistician Hans Rosling. As a student, he assumed that all measures of human well-being, such as global poverty, mortality and hunger, were also worsening along with environmental ones. But Rosling gave TED talks where he showed, through data, that the world had changed for the better over the last few centuries. So I asked myself: can we do both at the same time? Can we continue to improve human well-being while reducing our impact on the environment? And, over the past 10 years, according to environmental data, there have been signs to be cautiously optimistic. It is not certain that we will achieve it, but I think we have the opportunity to do it.