Are We Doomed?

Don’t think too hard.  What’s your first reaction to a book entitled,“Not the End of the World:  How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet.”?   My first reaction was curiosity and skepticism. What’s yours?

I found the book in our local library just before Christmas. I picked it up, read a bit of the Intro, and decided to take it home.  This book provides an alternative narrative to the story many of us live with (at least in our lower moments) – that we’re doomed as a species and there is no hope.  The author, Dr. Hannah Ritchie, felt doomed and hopeless when she finished her Environmental Geoscience degree from the University of Edinburgh about 10 years ago.  In university she learned about all the world’s unsolvable problems from global warming to annihilation of the world’s ecosystems.  She left the program planning to get any job rather than one in her field.  A chance online encounter with Hans Rosling, a Swedish physician, statistician and public speaker, changed her mind and her worldview.  Now she is Deputy Editor and Lead Researcher at Our World in Data.

Dr. Ritchie studies global trends.  This has taught her that three things can be and in fact are true at the same time: “The world is awful,”“The world is much better,” and “The world can be much better.”  She is neither a climate change denier, nor a Pollyanna.  She’s studying things that have been done to make the world a better place, like lower infant mortality and better maternal health, longer life expectancy, less poverty and hunger.  Her research even shows that there are fewer deaths from natural disasters now than there were 100 years ago.  She states clearly that this doesn’t mean that natural disasters aren’t happening with grave regularity related to climate change, but that humans have already begun to adapt in real and meaningful ways.  And people have already begun creating and implementing policies to slow the rate of warming.  The book includes a lot of data and oodles of graphs to support her claim that “all is not lost” even though huge challenges remain.  While a lot more work is needed, the graphs show that change in many right directions is happening.  This is the book that she wishes someone had given her when she went to a very bleak place in her early 20s.  She’s in her early 30s now and wants to reach out to anyone who is feeling helpless and hopeless.

I am not writing this so we can debate her research and conclusions.  I am writing this because, clearly, the stories we live by matter.  If our only story of the world comes from endless doom-scrolling and relentless news feeds that unfortunately remain more focused on tragedy and drama than what is actually the norm for most people, and we’re reminded daily of “the endless shame of our ecological sins,” as real as those might be, then it is hard to remain hopeful for our world and community.  How do we balance honest assessment of real-world challenges with real evidence that humans are also resilient, resourceful, adaptable, courageous, problem-solving and compassionate? The people Hannah Ritchie describes in her book are working diligently on the ground and in the background of many organizations with little recognition of their work.

Thanks, Dr. Ritchie, for showing us that this work in the background is charting new paths.

We at Rise Above Guest House want to spend 2025 finding these people, supporting these people and, when possible, “being” these people.  Let’s do this together.

written by Marilyn January 17th, 2025