Ep. 190 - Hannah Ritchie Has Some Uncomfortable Truths About Helping the Planet
SHOW NOTES
In a world drowning in climate headlines, apocalyptic predictions, and ideological shouting matches, Hannah Ritchie has built a reputation for doing something surprisingly rare: following the data wherever it leads, even when it challenges what her own side believes.
Hannah is a data scientist at Our World in Data and the author of two books: Not the End of the World and Clearing the Air, books that have reshaped how many people think about climate change, food, energy, and the future of humanity. What makes her work so compelling isn’t that she tells people what they want to hear; it’s that she often tells them the opposite. She’s written about why local food isn’t necessarily better for the climate, why organic agriculture often uses more land and creates more emissions, why nuclear electricity is safe and clean, and why many widely shared environmental “truths” simply don’t hold up when you actually run the numbers.
But this conversation isn’t just about carbon footprints and food miles. We talk about food, energy, pets, children, and the uncomfortable trade-offs that come with trying to do good in a complicated world.
What I appreciate most about Hannah’s work is that she doesn’t approach environmentalism as a purity test. Rather, she approaches it as a problem to be solved. And that leads to a very different set of conclusions than you might expect.
If you care about the environment, technology, food, or simply how to think more clearly about big global problems, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.
DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE
Hannah’s books: Not the End of the World and Clearing the Air.
Hannah recommends checking out 80,000 Hours and the School of Moral Ambition.
Hannah also recommends reading Range by David Epstein.
Our past episode with CEO Leah Ellis on green cement.
Our past episode with author Mike Grunwald on sustainable agriculture.
Article by Paul: Is organic crop production worse for wildlife than conventional?
Talk by Paul: What Will Future Generations Think of Our Treatment of Animals?
GET TO KNOW HANNAH RITCHIE
Dr. Hannah Ritchie is Deputy Editor and Science Outreach Lead at Our World in Data. She focuses on the long-term development of food supply, agriculture, energy, and environment and their compatibility with global development.
Hannah holds a BSc in Environmental Geoscience, an MSc in Carbon Management, and a PhD in GeoSciences from the University of Edinburgh.
Hannah’s research focuses on the assessment of global food systems and their capacity to address malnutrition and environmental sustainability simultaneously. She also publishes on the global energy system, climate change, biodiversity, and global health.
At the University of Edinburgh she was also a lecturer in Sustainability, Society and Environment, and worked on the development of teaching programmes directed towards interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability. She has worked on a number of sustainability consulting and industry-led projects.
TRANSCRIPT
Hannah Ritchie 0:00
When you run the numbers on this, like it's not close, right? Like when it comes to food miles, so like, all of the food that's moved across the world is about 5% of global food system emissions, right? It's a really, really small amount, and for most foods, it's the minority. The majority of emissions from the food system come from either land use change or production on the farm.
Paul Shapiro 0:23
Welcome to the Business for good podcast where we spotlight people making money by solving some of the world's most pressing problems. I'm your host, Paul Shapiro, author of a nationally best selling book on food sustainability, and CEO of a company in the same space. On this show, I speak with founders, investors and thought leaders who prove that doing good and doing well can go hand in hand. The biggest challenges facing humanity are solvable and are often profitable too. My hope is that this podcast informs, inspires, and maybe even helps repel you to build a business that makes the world a better place. I'm glad you're here.
Paul Shapiro 0:58
Welcome friend to Episode 190 of the business for good podcast, man, did I hear from a lot of you about our last episode with billionaire investor Jim Mellon. So if you didn't hear that conversation, make sure to go check it out, because it certainly was a popular one. People loved hearing from this billionaire investor who was out to end animal agriculture but only do so after listening to what this episode's guest has to say. As a reminder, this show is now available both as an audio podcast on platforms like Apple and Spotify, but also as a video podcast on YouTube. So if you prefer to see people talking rather than just listen, we have got you covered all right before we commence. Here is your wild fact of the episode. Nearly every time I ask somebody, what do you buy organic, they tell me that they either don't like pesticides or they want to help the planet. Well, I hate to break this news, but this episode's loud fact is that organic rules still allow copious application of pesticides to crops, and that organic farming typically uses about 20 to 25% more land to produce the same amount of food. That means, if the whole world switched to organic, we would likely need hundreds of millions of additional acres of farmland, and that would not come from the Moon or Mars, it would come from forests and wildlife habitat not that great for our planet. All right, with that said, on to this episode, I have long been a fan of Hannah Richie, and I've wanted her to come on the show for some time. I've long followed her work and loved her first book and her second book, now out, doesn't disappoint either. For many, Hannah is perceived as something of a global arbiter of facts and data when it comes to the big issues facing the planet, food, agriculture, energy and more, in a world that is drowning in climate headlines, apocalyptic predictions and ideological shouting matches, Hannah Richie has built a reputation for doing something surprisingly rare, following the data wherever it leads, even when it challenges what her own side That is the side of people who care about the environment. Believes Hannah is a data scientist at our world and data and the author of two books, not the end of the world, and her new book, clearing the air. These books have reshaped How many people think about climate change, food, energy and the future of humanity. What makes her work so compelling isn't that Hannah tells people what they want to hear. It's that she often tells them quite the opposite. She's written about why local food isn't necessarily better for the climate, why organic agriculture, as I mentioned, often uses more land and creates more emissions, why nuclear energy is safe and clean, and why many widely shared environmental so called truths simply don't hold up when you actually run the numbers. But this conversation is just about carbon footprints and food models. We talk about food energy, whether we should have pets and children and the uncomfortable trade offs that come with trying to do good in a complicated world. What I appreciate most about Hannah's work isn't that she approaches environmentalism as a purity test. Indeed, she does not. Rather, she approaches it as a problem to be solved, and that leads to a very different set of conclusions than one might expect. As always, here are your three key takeaways. First, what feels good for the planet is often not what actually helps the most. Many well intentioned people obsess over things like buying local or avoiding plastic, but the data show that those are relatively small environmental weavers compared to simply enjoying a more plant based diet, for example. Second, if you want to help the planet, you have to get comfortable with uncomfortable truths and uncomfortable trade offs. There's no perfect solution, just solutions that are far better or are sometimes far worse. For example, it's not that solar power is impact free. It's just that it's a lot better than burning fossil fuels. And third, and finally, this isn't about living a zero impact life, which is impossible. It's about making smarter choices that actually move the needle. Hannah's worldview isn't that about eliminating all impact that's impossible. It's about using data to figure out what actually works so billions of people can lead good lives while reducing environmental harm at the same time. All right, enough for me, if you care about the environment, technology, food or simply how to think more clearly about big global problems. Global problems. I have the real pleasure of bringing you. Hannah Richey.
Paul Shapiro 4:47
annah Richie, welcome to the business for good podcast.
Hannah Ritchie 4:49
Thanks so much, Paul. It's great to be here.
Paul Shapiro 4:51
I'm an avid reader of yours, and you're known the world over as like this famous arbiter of truth when it comes to all things climate and environment. But this wasn't always. So in fact, I only recently learned from my from my good friend Jim Laird, the CEO and co founder of enough, or what was 3f bio, that actually you, when you were in university, worked at his company, which is a micro protein company, that you worked in the lab helping to grow mycoprotein. And in fact, while you obviously are more famous than your father now, he's the co founder of the company. Also so awesome. I had no idea that you come from mycoprotein royalty.
Hannah Ritchie 5:26
Yeah. No, that was a, I can forget that I had that face. No, yeah. Like, now, I'm kind of data scientist, and don't get into any of the kind of physical science stuff. But no, like, when, I mean, I studied environmental science at university, and then kind of on a summer, was in the lab, this biotech lab, like, trying to get micro protein to grow and petri dishes. So I was very much this kind of hands on lab scientist for a bit. But, yeah, no, I'm still a big advocate for micro protein, and it's really cool to see how enough has progressed since then. I mean, I was there at the very, very early stages, when we're kind of trying to see, like as a proof of concept, would this work in a tiny petri dish? And now it's grown much more, and you can basically build a whole plant to produce this stuff.
Hannah Ritchie 6:12
Yeah, yeah. They're growing a bit more than a Petri dish. They got like 200,000 liters of fermentation capacity now. So I'm rooting for their success. I work in the same industry, and I'm certainly rooting for their success, because it would be good for the world, and, frankly, good for the rest of us in the space, if they succeed as well. Okay, well, with that out of my system, which is, you know, pretty cool to think about, for me as somebody who devotes myself to the growth of mycoprotein, I have to say, one of the things that I really like about your work, Hannah, is that you are not afraid to tell people why their orthodoxies are wrong. You talk about why GMO technology is actually often good for the environment, why organic may actually have a heavier footprint on the environment than conventionally produced foods. How you know our ancestors, despite us believing that they had these like, great, sustainable harmony related, harmonious relationships with the planet, they were actually engaged in, like, massive, megafauna extinctions on every continent that they went to. I, even you know, was really interested when I was learning from you about how after the Black Plague and after the genocide of the indigenous Americans. There's like, massive reforestation in Europe and America, respectively. And these are things that I would imagine are not that popular in many circles of people who care about the environment, right? Like a lot of people like you, roll in circles where people care about the environment, you're saying things that question the orthodoxy, and yet somehow you still remain popular. Are you not as popular as I think you are? Simply that they just like personally, and they don't mind that you're questioning their orthodoxies.
Hannah Ritchie 7:48
I mean, I don't know what people say behind my back. No, there's certainly people that dislike me and just like what I say in the approach I take and do push back and I mean, that's, that's fine. I mean, I mean the reality of my work and what I'm trying to do is just like, get you often through the use of data and research, like, often question my own assumptions. Like, I think that's a core part of of maybe why, although I say things that are deemed maybe controversial, they don't come across as controversial because I'm not antagonistic in it. I'm actually not explicitly saying, No, you're wrong. You're stupid for ringing this often. I'm coming at these questions with my own expectation, maybe, of what the answer will be, and I'm wrong. It's kind of coming with this sympathetic being of like I have this assumption, is it correct? Let me dig into the data. Let me dig into the research and figure out what the answer is. And the goal of doing that is so we understand these problems better and can actually tackle them in a meaningful way. It's really about like, how do we understand where we are and what we need to do next? So yeah, maybe the my approach to doing this is why people maybe dislike me less than you might imagine that they do.
Paul Shapiro 8:57
Okay, well, first, there's a provocative statement. You suggested that you know you may be wrong on some things. Is there an example of something in the past, Hannah, that you said that you now think that you would revise if you were going back to resay or rewrite it?
Hannah Ritchie 9:10
There's definitely, I think there's things that I've been wrong about, and then there's stuff. There's always, when you're writing a book, or in any form of writing, you have to make choices about what you include and what you don't include, right? And you have constrained space. I mean, one thing from my first book, not the end of the world, that I would have added, and I think was like useful kind of criticism from from some people, is, what is this tension between the environmental impacts of meat and the kind of animal suffering lens of it, right? And maybe we'll get into this. But like when it comes to environmental impact, for someone that's going to eat meat, right, often the best option for the environment is chicken or fish, right? They tend to have a lower carbon footprint than beef or pork or dairy, right? And that's.
Hannah Ritchie 9:59
A kind of recommendation I give you know, if you are going to eat meat, that's probably the more environmentally sustainable choice. What I didn't really cover in much detail there is that it's probably the opposite for animal welfare, right? So if you're eating chicken and fish, you're naturally killing more animals in order to provide that meat, because they're smaller, and often the living conditions of those animals are worse, right? So I think looking back on my first book, I wish I'd had more of that kind of animal welfare, environmental impact balance in there somewhere, and then, like, stuff that I've just changed my mind on, or just outright wrong on.
Hannah Ritchie 10:36
I mean, I think I've been, I'm overall, quite an optimistic person in terms of the energy transition and the power of electrification and electric transport, even stuff like the improvement in batteries, so that you can probably just run trucks on a battery, like if you'd asked me a couple of years ago, or probably what I've written, then I just wouldn't have guessed that that would be the case. So I mean, there's been some issues that I've been more pessimistic on than I should have been, and I kind of revised my opinion based on how that's progressed. I mean, I was recently kind of writing about desalination, right and the costs of desalination, and I think we often carry these kind of memes or kind of phrases that are often stuck with us for a really long time, right? So when I was in university, the line on desalination, which is basically making clean water from salt water, you know, really uses loads and loads of energy, and it's really, really expensive. Basically, it's like, you don't do this because it's super expensive and uses tons of energy. And recently I looked at it and ran the numbers, and yes, for agriculture, it's very difficult to do, and it's really hard to get cost competitive. But for drinking water, and kind of people's daily use of water, it's really not and it's probably a pretty viable solution. And I kind of wrote about No, I've changed my mind on that, because I don't know whether the people just weren't looking at the data then, or whether things have progressed substantially. But to me, that kind of meme of, you know, this is just so, so expensive, probably just isn't true.
Paul Shapiro 12:08
Yeah, maybe, I mean, I don't know this is not like something I've looked at, but it could be like just in the way that the cost of EVs and the cost of batteries have come way down. Maybe the technology to desalinate has come way down. I've only learned recently from the Iran war that actually a lot of these countries in the Middle East are getting nearly all of their drinking water from desalination plants and vast numbers of people living there. So obviously somebody's doing it. I don't know how clean the energy they're using to desalinate is, I presume, not very much, but somebody, you know, is still mainstream technology for sure. Okay, let's talk about food. Because I think most people listening to this will already be familiar with some of the topics that you're talking about, in terms of plant based and even the issue you were raising, which when Mike Grunewald, the author of we are eating the earth, was on this show, he and I discussed the very point you were just discussing about chicken and fish very well, because I I believe that Mike is somebody who cares deeply about the environment and does not care sufficiently about the suffering of animals. And I debated with him on this, and I think he's changing his tune a little bit about how much we should give value to the suffering of chickens and fish at the same time, many of the people who are going to be aligned with you on plant based and, you know, you're very clear that eating plant based, no matter what is going to be better for the environment than even chicken or fish, although the difference between that and beef and lamb is less so. But many of them still hold on to what I would consider like, you know, support for mythic culture, right? Like this myth that there are certain types of plant based agriculture that are preferable. Take local as an example. You've written many times like local is not really much better for the environment. In fact, maybe not at all better. And I think that even to the people who are going to say, Hey, I'm with Hannah on plant based, why is it bad for me to go to the local farmers market? What's your what's your argument on this?
Hannah Ritchie 13:58
I mean, I think it's fine for someone to go to the local farmers market and buy their food there. I think there are lots of reasons why someone would want to do that, right. They want to support the local community. They want to see where the food is coming from. I think there are a number of reasons why someone would want to do that, and that's fine. But what I don't think is true is that you know, by doing that, they have, potentially, they have a much lower carbon footprint of their food. I think, I think if someone is solely doing it for the reason that I want to minimize the carbon footprint of my food, that's probably just not very high on the priority list. And I think this is a slightly different audience, because I expect a big part of the audience are plant based already, but where I see this message being, I think, particularly bad in how it's framed is that it's often framed as the contrast between eating local meat and importing soy or some plant based product, right? And the argument is always.
Hannah Ritchie 15:00
Well, of course, my locally produced beef is much, much better than, you know, bringing in soy from Brazil or some other country on the other side of the world. And my point, big point there, is that when you run the numbers on this, like it's not close, right? Like when it comes to food miles, so like, all of the food that's moved across the world is about 5% of global food system emissions, right? It's a really, really small amount, and for most foods, it's the minority. The majority of emissions from the food system come from either land use change or production on the farm. So like cows burping the use of fertilizers or manure or tractors, that's the bulk of emissions. And then food miles are a relatively small amount. So again, I think the tension there is strongest when you're talking to about local meat versus a kind of global plant based diet. But I think it's it still applies.
Paul Shapiro 15:55
Yeah, and just, just to be very explicit, when you say it's not even close, I just want to make sure people are familiar that you're saying a sign, of course, that it is better to eat soybeans grown on the other side of the world than beef that was grown 10 miles from you.
Hannah Ritchie 16:10
Yeah, so the carbon footprint of the Shipton soy is much, much lower than the locally produced beef. I think a big reason for that. And I think maybe where people have this misconception that food miles are really, really bad, as I think they imagine that all of the food that moves across the world has flown, right? And we know that flying has a high carbon footprint, therefore the assumption is, well, of course, this food coming from across the ocean has a high carbon footprint. And it's not that's not true. Most food that moves internationally is shipped because it's cheaper and it uses less energy, so that actually has a relatively low carbon footprint.
Paul Shapiro 16:45
All right, so that's that's local. In terms of organic, you've written that organic oftentimes is not just not better for the planet, but it could actually be worse. So why? Like, I believe that many of the people I know, even like many of my friends and family, they really believe that organic is better for the environment and healthier for them. You argue that may not be. So why?
Hannah Ritchie 17:10
Yeah, so I think that. I mean, there are a range of kind of sustainability metrics you can look at there. I mean, when it comes to carbon footprint, they are like, the research is just very mixed in terms of there's no very, really clear winner. When you're comparing across categories between kind of conventional, non organic farming and organic farming, the big penalty for organic farming is often land use. So when you look across studies, organic farms tend to get a lower yield, and that means in order to produce the same amount of food, you need more land. And I generally like to live in a world that has less land use for farming, right? We use half of the world's habitable land for farming, this huge amount, which has huge implications for biodiversity and habitat loss. So that's the kind of big penalty for organic farming, is the yield and the land use problem. And I think there's often the assumption that organic, sorry, conventional farming that might use synthetic fertilizers, for example, is worse, because it creates much more, much worse kind of water pollution problems. But often in organic farming, you tend to also have similar problems with what we call eutrophication, which is the kind of runoff of nutrients, even if you're not getting it from synthetic fertilizers, you're still using nutrients on the soil from somewhere, right? And you still often have that runoff problem. In some cases it's actually worse, yeah, so I think it's worth underscoring.
Paul Shapiro 18:38
So you know, on average, it seems like organic crops generally need about 20% more land in order to produce the same amount of food. And more 20% more land for farming means 20% less land for wildlife. Is really like a zero sum game, how much land we use for farming versus how much land wildlife have to subsist. And then when you consider the fact that organic also allows pesticides, which is seemingly unfamiliar to a lot of people. Like when I ask people why they buy organic, they say, Oh, I don't want pesticides, without recognizing that organic also allows pesticides, and there's no limit as to the volume of pesticides that can be put on organic crops. It makes me wonder, what are people paying more for? Right? If it's not better for the environment, if it's soils, pesticides, what is it? And you've said, like, it actually may not even be healthier for you. So is it? Are people wrong that organic produce is not more nutritious for them?
Hannah Ritchie 19:31
I think again, the research on this just doesn't show a clear health benefit for for organic food. Yeah, the evidence is just not there that that's that's the case. So, yeah, I think again, the kind of health the kind of paying a premium for health benefits, I think again, it's probably quite untrue. I think to come back to the land use trade off, I think there's like, a interesting debate there between, there's this kind of framework that's kind of land sparing or land sharing, right? So the kind of, kind of the framework there is that you could take a land sparing approach, which says, like, I'm going to go extremely hard on this one small plot of land to get as much as I possibly can, and I might apply loads of pesticides and loads of fertilizer and really, pretty much demolish this field of kind of biodiversity in order to get as much food as I can so I can spare the whole rest of the land for for other habitats, right? And then there's just that's a very extreme example of that. But then there's a kind of land spirit, land sharing argument, which says, I'm going to farm on this land. I'll use more land, but I'll do it less intensively, and maybe some biodiversity can kind of thrive within that system as well. I think there are like merits to that debate of what's what's better. I can completely believe that on an organic farm, the biodiversity within the farm itself is generally better than in the more intensively, the more intensive farm.
Hannah Ritchie 21:06
But then the question is, you're doing that with the kind of downside that the there's some biodiversity loss outside of the farm by the additional land that you're having to use?
Paul Shapiro 21:17
Interesting. I would love to see if that's true. I'm not denying that it's true. I would just love to see like, is it or do organic farms on average? Not, not like a specialty place, but on average, like the places that are supplying the organic produce for Walmart and Costco, is biodiversity lower or higher there? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to see they're they're not using synthetic fertilizer, but they're certainly applying a lot of manure to the land also, which might even have a greater contribution of nitrogen and phosphorus, but either way, I you know, I really admire Hannah, that you have been willing to criticize what I consider some of these like sacred cows of the pro environment and pro sustainable agriculture movement, since you yourself have devoted your entire life to trying to protect the planet, and yet have come to a different conclusion from a lot of the folks who are in these movements. And we're going to get to not just food, but also on issues like energy, which I want to talk about in a moment, like nuclear energy, for which you're an advocate. And I want to get to that, I do want to ask you first, though, because this is like one of the great moral dilemmas of my own life. So I have been a vegan for 33 years, and I'm married to a vegan cookbook author and very publicly associated with the advocacy for plant based eating. At the same time, I have not been able to persuade my dog, Eddie, of the moral benefits of consuming a plant based diet. He is very, very stridently opposed to this, and just will not listen to any reason on this, numerous reports suggest that our pets are actually quite a significant contributor to meet demand, and that rising pet keeping is actually increasing per capita of meat demand. In fact, USDA, when they do the numbers on per capita meat demand, they're not even looking at solely what is consumed by humans. It's just they're taking the amount of meat produced and then dividing it by the number of people. But a lot of it is actually going to our pets who are eating a lot of human grade meat these days. So my question for you, I couldn't find any evidence that you've written about this before. This before, and I'm wondering, have you thought about this? How big of a problem is it that we have these 10s of millions of pets in America and more beyond, who are virtually all of them meat eaters? Is this an environmental concern? Should people who are concerned about the planet have smaller pets who are eating less meat, or should we be having rabbits or rats instead of dogs and cats? What's the Hannah Richie argument on pet keeping?
Hannah Ritchie 23:46
Yeah. I mean, I have this dilemma as well, because I have cats, so I'm more morally superior to you, but not as good as the rat owner, I guess. I mean, it's a challenging one, like the there's no question that having more pets in the world increases demand for me, and in some sense, drives some carbon emissions and drives some climate change like that's just the reality. But I think it's useful to put that in some sense of perspective from your own carbon footprint, right? So there are a range of estimates for kind of what the carbon footprint of keeping a dog for a year is, and it's probably somewhere in the range of like half a ton to a ton of carbon dioxide. Now that's a relatively large amount, but to put it in context, I mean, the average American probably has a carbon footprint of somewhere between 15 and 20 tons, right? So your dog is probably adding a 10th to a 20th to your carbon footprint. So it's not nothing, but it's also just not the largest lever that you have in order To live a more sustainable life, like getting rid of your dog.
Paul Shapiro 25:02
I haven't thought about euthanizing him for this for a reason yet, but I'll talk with my wife about that. But I mean, so Hannah, I look at you as somebody who is, you know, who provides me with advice through your writing on how I can live a life that you know, minimizes the harm that I'm doing right. And of course, I do believe the argument that public policy is going to ultimately be the most critical factor here. But I do think about my own footprint, even so much so that, literally, when I pull a paper towel at the bathroom out of the thing, I remember you wrote about taking one instead of two, and the impact that has compared to using a dryer. And I think I, you know, I should only use one because of Hannah. So I think by that, like, if a dog is really five to 10% of my footprint, that's, you know, dramatically more important than the number of towels one takes in the bathroom, obviously. And so I do, like, I do think about this, like, is it better to have, even if you're gonna have a dog, a smaller dog, or, you know, is it better to I mean, I there may be other animal welfare Reasons to Adopt rather than buy, but you know, at least in that case, you're not adding new dogs to the world when you adopt, as opposed to buying from a breeder. But I, you know, I do think it would be interesting to for a our world and data chart or article on the paw print of our pets like this is, you know, you know, as fewer people have kids and more people have pets, I presume that the footprint of a pet is smaller than that of a human child, not only because they're a lot smaller and they live a lot shorter time, but, you know, these are only my guesses. Like, it sound like I've ever looked into this, I just have read these articles.
Hannah Ritchie 26:38
Yeah. I mean, I think on the paper towel thing, my explicit, my explicit point I was trying to make there was, like, not to fret about the paper towel, because it's so, so minor in someone's overall carbon footprint. I know, but it's like asking me not to envision the white elbow. I know I get it.
Paul Shapiro 26:54
How can I not think of it? When you say Don't think of it.
Hannah Ritchie 26:57
I mean, I think, I think the way, the way I view thiskind of moral dilemma is that, like, you can absolutely take these things to an extreme right where, like, the way that you would, like, you know, get rid of as much emissions from your life as humanly possible is just to do nothing, eat, barely nothing, like not have life, right? And that's just not what I'm advocating for. Like, a big part of my kind of overall kind of ethos, or what I'm trying to promote is like to try and live this kind of develop this kind of compatibility, where people, 8 billion people, 9 billion people, can live a good life, and they can do that in a relatively environmentally sustainable way. That doesn't mean the impact is zero, but in a much more environmentally sustainable way than we've been doing for the last 50 years or 100 years. And I think that's completely plausible, but you we just won't get that impact to completely zero, which then presents the challenge of like, what impacts can what what impacts is? It really hard for us to kind of substitute in and find us substitute in and find a solution for and what impacts aren't right? And having a pet is probably one that you just can't right. There's just no okay, you could not have the pet, but if you do have a pet, then, then that's just a part of your emissions that I think you just have to take. I mean, you brought up the kind of dilemma of, like, more and more people don't have kids, and instead they have a pet. But my kind of advice on this would be the same. And I'm often asked, you know, is it irresponsible for someone to have a child because they might have a carbon footprint? And my my answer to that, again, is is no like from for a lot of people, like having a child is just a huge and important part of their life. And there are ways by which having a kid now their environmental impact will actually be very, very low. So my advice to someone that would really, really want to have a child again is not to not have a child because they'll have some carbon footprint. And I think a similar approach applies to having a pet.
Paul Shapiro 29:02
So let me ask you then, I was actually having a conversation with a friend of mine recently, and she had made the decision that she does really want to have a kid, but she was concerned about procreating, not because, you know, of the concern that some people have all the you know, it's such a bad world. I don't want to bring a kid into a bad world. Indeed, I agree with you. It's the best time ever to be human like this is the best time ever if you're going to be born, you want to be born now, not any time in the past. But her solution to this was just to adopt a kid. There's so many kids who need homes, and she thought, I'm going to adopt, and she's she really wants to raise a kid, so she's going to adopt. If somebody said to you, Hey, is it better not Should I do it? But is it better to adopt than to procreate? Would you say, Yeah, that's better, or would you just have no answer to or say it's equal, one way or the other?
Hannah Ritchie 29:46
I mean, from a purely environmental perspective, sure, it'd be better to adopt, right? But people have other values that they care about, right? Some people be extremely happy to adopt. Some people would want to have a child of their own. I mean, this comes down to an argument over values.
Hannah Ritchie 30:00
And, I mean, I just don't, it's just not up to me to decide for someone what their value should be, because people just value different stuff.
Paul Shapiro 30:07
But, but people don't look to Hannah Richie for those type of values. They look to Hannah Richie for like, what do you say is best for the environment, right? Like, I think that I at least my guess. And I mean, I'm not suggesting this become like some cause of yours. And I know in your first book that you wrote that you specifically took out the having one less kid option from one of the charts because you thought that it wasn't accounting for future carbon emissions, right? And so I got the sense from that that you had a position on this, and it's interesting you brought it up here, but yeah, I mean, I think as far as my friend was concerned, for her, like she just wanted a kid. She didn't care if the kid shared her genes or not, right? And I think there may be more people like that, but I don't know. Maybe just people really want to replicate their genes, and that's really important for them. I certainly know people for him. That is true, but my guess is that, from an environmental perspective, that what you're saying is true, that it would be better to do it now again, there may be other reasons why you want to do otherwise, but I feel like, you know, even not, that I'm acquainting, you know, my dog with with human children. But I will say, like, you know, I you know, if you adopt a dog, it does seem like you may not be adding that new meat demand because the dog was already alive similarly
Hannah Ritchie 31:18
I mean, when it comes to pets, I'm like, definitely on the like, it's makes more sense to adopt than than to basically breed. My take was, the world has enough dogs and the world has enough cats, right? And I love both. But I wouldn't be sad if there weren't more of them, if we kept the population level was stable. We were recently, like, a kind of crazy stat on this, like, which is not really necessarily about carbon footprint or but just puts the kind of dog population into perspective. So we're working on some work on biodiversity. And there was this new paper had came out, and the kind of estimate there was that the biomass of the global dog population. So basically, the number of dogs times their weight was equivalent to the mass of all wild mammals combined.
Hannah Ritchie 32:14
Just the world has huge number of dogs, and I'm totally fine if we don't have more dogs in the world,
Paul Shapiro 32:21
and there's a lot of unwanted dog., so presumably, be better to have a smaller portion of a smaller proportion of them, yeah, and I would imagine that's not even taking into account the weight of holy animals who are farmed for those dogs too, by the way, yeah, that's just purely dogs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's pretty sobering, I guess. You know, I don't want to belabor this one topic, because I doubt that it's on the mind of most listeners here, but I will ask so you wouldn't be sad if there weren't more dogs. I totally agree with you. In fact, I think there should probably be fewer. With 8.3 billion of us now, of humans, and we're projected to go to around 10 billion or so in the next few decades, if we remained where we are, like, 8.3 billion people? Would that sadden you? Or do you think we should go higher? Or do you do you think like, if you don't, if you're wouldn't be sadder with fewer dogs? Is the same true here also? Or No,
Hannah Ritchie 33:11
No, I think it's slightly different, not from the perspective that I think there should just be as many humans in the world as possible, but I just view a bit differently, in the sense that I think just humans have got so much to contribute and contribute to each other and contribute towards solving problems and making each other's lives better. And for the parents bringing for that really want a kid, bringing them like happiness, and maybe not happiness all the time, but I'm bringing them a sense of purpose, which, which to me seems stronger than than and I have pets, and I love my pets, but I think the potential kind of value add of humans I would think is higher from my perspective. So I don't think I I'm not the perspective that we should have as many humans on the planet as as as possible. But I think in general, I do think it's quite sad that humans are now kind of viewed often in environmental discussions and environmental way, as just being really bad, just really bad for the planet. And we should have as few as possible, and we should get rid of billions, and it would be an optimal world if there were only 1 billion of us. And I don't, I don't buy into, I don't buy into that mentality like I think humans are flawed, but I think we also have a ton to contribute.
Paul Shapiro 34:35
Yeah, I have the attention, in my own view, on this and that. Again, there's never been a better time to be born human. It is by far the best time ever to be born human, even if you're not a rich American or Brit you know, like even no matter where you're born, it's probably better than in the past, almost true across the across the world. But that's certainly not true for animals, right? Like there does seem to be.
Paul Shapiro 35:00
Like, more humans means more animal suffering, generally speaking. And there's probably never been a worse time to be born an animal than now, given the hundreds of billions of them who were farming in really bad, horrible conditions. And given, you know, if even wild animals who have eking out an existence in this mass extinction event. And so, like, I have this tension, because I have some allegiance to humanity, given my membership in the species and my also my preference. I like people. So, you know, I like having friends and family and all that, but I do worry about the impact on animal suffering, and I take this comes back to the issue that you were saying, like, you know, what do you value? Like, how you know, how much value do you put on the suffering of animals? Because I do think there may be, at least now and maybe not in the future, when we have more advanced animal free meats available to us, whether from mycoprotein or cultivated meat, etc. But at least for now, there does seem to be a scenario where more humans generally means more animal suffering. Do you think I'm wrong on that?
Hannah Ritchie 36:01
No, I think you're right on that. I think if we are to look out to 2050 or 2060, or 2070, and we're just eating more and more meat with a growing population like I think, I mean, I think we will, I mean, in general, we will look back on this period and just see it as a kind of crazy moral feeling. That's my sense. Like I'm often asked, then, what will we look back on past generations and make Wow, that was crazy, that that was happening, right? And I think future generations will probably look at, look at what's happening right now to other animals and the pain that we collectively inflict on them, and we'll think the same, that that's just crazy that we were we were doing that so so I know I agree, and I think a big part of my mentality here rests on, I guess, the hope, or the expectation that things shift in the coming decades where people do move to less animal intensive diets
Paul Shapiro 37:02
Well, maybe it'll be your earlier work at enough slash 3f bio that helps emit that transition, so we'll find out. Time will tell. Okay, we've had some hot button issues here, from organic to procreation. I also want to go to what I consider like a third row issue, at least for many people I know, which is, oddly this issue of nuclear electricity. So when I talk to people about nuclear energy, the things that always come up are Chernobyl and Fukushima and Three Mile Island. You say that these, this is not what should be coming up in our mind, and that this is actually the safest and land friendliest way to produce electricity. So let me ask you, Hannah, why is nuclear so good for producing energy for us, and why are all of these environmental groups in Greenpeace on down who campaign to ban nuclear, wrong?
Hannah Ritchie 37:53
So nuclear is particularly good in terms of land saving, right? So if you basically calculate the amount of electricity you can generate on a plot of land, nuclear comes out on top, and that's comparing to fossil fuels, and that's comparing to renewable technologies. So coming back to the kind of land question we had earlier, if we want to minimize the amount of land we're using as humans, nuclear is a very excellent choice. I mean, when it comes to safety, and for many people, safety is the big issue, and often why it's been so unpopular.
Hannah Ritchie 38:26
It is a is a pretty safe energy technology, like it's comparable to renewables, and it's way, way, way, way safer than burning fossil fuels, right? And you brought up the kind of three big events, nuclear disaster, events that have happened throughout its history. So female Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and the fact that you can name those is actually the reason why public perception of nuclear is so bad, especially relative to fossil fuels, right? So when people think about nuclear, they can think about a specific event that hit the headlines that everyone remembers is in the history books. You can make best selling drama series about it, and everyone watches it. And the reality is that that's just not the case with burning fossil fuels, right and the health impacts of burning fossil fuels. So to give some perspective here. So if you add up the number of people that have died from those free, big disasters, no one died in Three Mile Island. No one died in Fukushima, right? You had a tsunami hit the nuclear power plant, and no one died from that disaster. I think there are some people who died in the in the evacuation, sure, but not from the actual, not from the actual. There was no kind of nuclear kind of leak, or people died directly from it, and then from Chernobyl, people died. The range of estimates, kind of ranging from hundreds to maybe 4000 is probably the kind of upper.
Hannah Ritchie 40:00
Bound on that which, which is obviously tragic, but across those three huge disasters, for 50 or 60 years, you've had a couple like 1000s of deaths, and the low 1000s of deaths at most. Now compare that to the number of people that die only from air pollution from burning fossil fuels every year, which is several million, at least, right? So you've got several million dying from fossil fuels every single year, and you have 1000s dying from nuclear over decades. And you know, calculate that per unit of electricity generated and nuclear is just like hundreds or 1000s of times lower than burning fossil fuels. The challenge there is, is the fact that the the bad stuff that happens with nuclear is a one discrete event that everyone can see and everyone can point to where there's the damages from fossil fuels are very much, much more diffuse.
Paul Shapiro 40:53
Yeah, so a lot to unpack there. So first off, you know, I do a test with people sometimes, and ask them, how many people died from Chernobyl? And inevitably, there are hundreds of 1000s, millions, you know. But as you said, the answer is, either you know, and from 100 to a few 1000, which, of course, very bad, but nowhere near what people think happened. And I loved that HBO series, by the way. I thought that I got like, Oh, I was like, telling people, Oh, my God, you got to watch this. It's so good.
Paul Shapiro 41:24
But I think, like, you know, if you were to talk to the like, people you and I care a lot about the environment, you're making an excellent argument that nuclear is better than fossil fuels. But if you talk to the people who really care about the environment and oppose nuclear, they would say, sure, but you know, we're talking about renewables, and we want to go to solar and wind and geothermal and so on. Not nuclear. They're not arguing for fossil fuels, even if that's the effect of banning nuclear. But that's not their argument. But you know, when I ask people, what's the worst by human death toll, what's the worst energy related disaster of history? Inevitably, inevitably, they say Chernobyl and I asked him, Well, you know, have you ever heard of the bank Cal dam failure in China, which is like in the 1970s it killed like a quarter million people one dam failure? Like, literally a quarter million people in one dam. And no one has ever heard of it. Like, you know, no one has ever heard of this extraordinarily atrocious event where a quarter million people died, and nobody's out there calling for bans on dams unless they maybe they're care about fish forever, but they're not thinking about it from a human safety perspective. And when you look at the land use needed to build a nuclear power plant compared to how many solar panels are needed to produce the same amount of electricity, I mean, it's not just like one or two times more. It's like 50 or more times. In fact, in Sacramento, where I live, we recently had a public outcry over a solar farm that was approved and then got canceled because people were concerned about all the deforestation they were going to have to commit to put all these solar panels up. And I'm not arguing against solar obviously. In fact, I have solar panels on my roof. It's simply that the the environmentalists, the people who share the same worldview that you and I do, that we should protect the planet, who are so concerned about nuclear, it may not be just that it's better than fossil fuels, but is it better than renewables? And it seems to me like the implication of your argument is that it actually is safer and cleaner for the planet. Is that wrong? Do you think it's equal or better than like wind and solar, for example?
Hannah Ritchie 43:26
I think this is the wrong argument. And actually, I think this is where I dislike the false dichotomy that often the kind of environmentalist that you just brought up pose right where it's we shouldn't have nuclear because we could just have renewables instead, and then that often goes one or two directions, right? Often it's we should only have nuclear and because that's much better than than than renewables. And I think this is just a false dichotomy. Like all of these sources, solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, are all extremely good energy sources. They are clean, they are safe. Even solar. Solar uses more land than nuclear in relative terms. Solar just doesn't use that much land. I think that's just also a myth, right? And I think the my kind of mentality on this is all of the above, right? And each individual source can play a key role in this energy transition. And to me, the kind of push should be nuclear and renewables as a replacement for fossil fuels, not renewables or nuclear or fossil fuels. I think, I think we're often shooting ourselves in the foot by creating that kind of false dichotomy. I think the reality is, I think the pushback against nuclear has been very negative in many ways, like, if you go back to the kind of 60s, 70s, 80s, many countries were building nuclear power extremely quickly, right? And if the world had really leaned in to nuclear power, it.
Hannah Ritchie 45:00
In the aftermath of that, we might not be in the position we are in today, where we still have a very, very fossil fuel dominated energy system. You have countries who, on the surface, look very, very pro environment, have very, very strong climate targets, and, and, and one strategy there is to close existing nuclear plants while continuing to burn coal. I mean, from environmental and a human health perspective, that's just, to me, just a crazy, crazy decision to make.
Hannah Ritchie 45:33
So I think, I think, yeah, my kind of message on that is this, we need to stop the nuclear versus renewables. They all have advantages and disadvantages, but they're all very good, clean, low carbon energy sources that we should be deploying quickly.
Paul Shapiro 45:48
All right. Fair point. Fair point. Well, I I'm certainly in concert with you on that, but anything that helps get us away from fossil fuels seems like a good step in the right direction. Is there something that you wish somebody Hannah would look at starting their own company for so right now, you've written about how the cost of batteries has plummeted, how the cost of solar panels has plummeted, the cost of UVs has plummeted. And this didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened because smart people started companies where they did R and D, or academics did some R and D to figure out, how can we actually bring these types of technologies to scale in ways that they can undercut the cost of fossil fuels? Is there something that you think is still needed right now, that you hope that somebody listening may think, oh yeah, I would start a company to try to solve that problem.
Hannah Ritchie 46:37
I mean, I think, I mean, maybe you stepping away from food and some of the kind of conventional energy stuff we've been talking about, like renewables or nuclear or batteries, I think I love, would love for more people to work on all of the above. And I think there's, like, loads more progress to be made there. But I think some of now the biggest levers are in stuff that people don't think about as much like I think one example there is cement, right? So I think people don't realize that cement is around seven or 8% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, and it's a very, very tough sector to tackle. It's really hard to make cement without generating huge amounts of greenhouse gasses. And I think this is where the kind of inspiring stories can come along, where actually now the leading approach, although it's still very, very small scale, hasn't been been brought up to any magnitude, kind of emerge from someone question, oh, why don't we just do this in a completely different way from the kind of conventional thinking on this, and that's probably might now be one of the the leading solutions for this. So I think there are a range of of kind of hidden problems within the climate pie, which is not electricity, which is not even transport, which is not food, that are somewhat neglected. And I think people could make really, really good progress on I think another key, key challenge, again, which bridges the kind of energy, climate challenge and the kind of human flourishing or health challenge is actually air conditioning, right?
Hannah Ritchie 48:11
So air conditioning is already essential, and many people across the world that can't afford it would benefit hugely from having air conditioning, especially in very hot climates. But that problem is only going to get worse, right? And most people across the tropics do not have air conditioning because they can't afford it. And part of the challenge there is that the air conditioners that we currently have are relatively inefficient. They're very bad at dealing with humidity, which, if you are in very, very humid climate, which many of these countries are, it just uses huge amounts of of energy and people just can't afford it. I mean, that's one area where kind of innovations in that space would make a huge difference for energy and climate, but also make huge strides for human health and well being as well. I mean, there are lots of examples like that.
Paul Shapiro 49:00
Very cool. We've we've covered green cement on the show before. We'll link to that in the show notes of this episode at business for good podcast.com but we haven't covered air conditioning. I said good on I will look into what companies are trying to address that. Thank you. Finally, Hannah, are there resources, aside from your great books, which, again, are not the end of the world, and your newer book clearing the air both of which I recommend reading. I really think they're great books to look at if you're concerned about the future of the planet and what you can do to help make it better. But aside from your books, Hannah, are the resources that you recommend that folks should check out if they want to learn more or get more involved to try to help resolve this very vexing problem for humanity.
Paul Shapiro 49:39
I think there, there are a couple of kind of organizations that often will publish a book, which I think are kind of useful for kind of getting the mentality of taking on large problems right. So one organization is called 80,000 hours, and basically their kind of approach has been getting.
Hannah Ritchie 50:00
Okay, so the average person will work 80,000 hours in their life, huge number of hours. How can you do the most good in the world? Or, like, how can you use your skill set and your qualities to really take on a big problem and actually make make a big impact? And I think it's quite crazy, like coming from school, I think naturally, most of us just kind of fall into some role, like, we're so young when we make that decision, and we never put a lot of thought into it. So that's the kind of organization. They try to give advice and resources, and they offer kind of sessions to kind of think more carefully about, like, where you could apply your skills to do that. In a similar vein, there's the book moral ambition by rotger Bregman, where he has a kind of similar ish message, which is very much we should just be more morally ambitious, and we should just be be more forthright and taking on big problems that we're facing.
Hannah Ritchie 50:55
And then I think there's a couple of books I maybe recommend more for, I guess, kind of developing a useful skill set in these areas. I think one of my favorite books is range by David Epstein, and he basically makes the case for generalists. And I think that, I think that's really, really useful for kind of finding problem solvers and people that can work across multiple areas, which is often what you need to do when you're starting a company or trying to scale a company. I think my one caveat to that is that you need that to be complemented with very, very specialized people, right? So I think on a business, it's probably useful to have a mix of generalists that can do, put on many hats, and can see the kind of bigger picture, but I don't know if you're making micro protein, you just need someone that knows a lot about micro protein and really knows how to make that in an industrial plan or in a petri dish, right? So I think there's, like, some some mix there.
Paul Shapiro 51:53
Yeah, I very firmly believe, as the founder and CEO of a micro protein company, that the best thing that I've ever done is just hire people who are a lot smarter and more knowledgeable, without a doubt, like I am a dumb person who pretends to be smart by listening to these smart people and then regurgitating what they say. But having people actually are specialized in that very helpful. We'll definitely link those resources, the books and others in the show notes for this episode. And I certainly believe that you're going to work more than 80,000 hours, you seem like the token. Hours. You seem like the toe person. Yeah, I think I've already worked more. You need to throw your own 160,000 hours show. So let me just conclude then, Hannah with one of my favorite lines you've written. I'm going to quote you here. You say you're talking about your vision, and you say, not only can we slash our carbon emissions, but we can also free up land for forests to regrow, let wildlife return to old habitats so and suck carbon out of the atmosphere, we can undo some of our environmental damage. We just need to be realistic about things that can make a difference. So I'm grateful to you, Hannah, for being a realistic voice of reason in these debates about what we can do to try to protect the planet, and I wish you great success with your new book, and don't any ones that you might do in the future.
Hannah Ritchie 53:03
Thanks so much. Paul really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.
Paul Shapiro 53:05
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