Hannah Ritchie

That's maybe not a dietary change, but we could multiply our impact by showing our concerns and show the things that we changed because of these reasons.

One of the points that this reminds me of is on a previous conversation I talked with Hannah Ritchie, who published a lot of data around this.

And one of the things that was surprising maybe to many people is one point she made was that certain things, for example, like buying produce locally as opposed to one that may be imported.

People may rank that as a much more important thing from an environmental perspective than it necessarily is in all situations.

So in this project, we partnered with the Institute for Progress, who's been a grantee in other contexts and kind of shares our values on, on having better, more open information and sees the, sees the worth in that.

And also with Hannah Ritchie, who is this, a brilliant data scientist, uh, data scientist-

She's been on this show.

Yep, known to this audience, known to many audiences for her books-

Sometimes the plots are out of date.

They're, they're only for very narrow cross-sections of the, the data they have.

And especially with the advent of new AI tools that make it easier to plot things, and having kind of seen what people like Hannah Ritchie had done at the website Our World in Data, we thought it's really a travesty that US policymakers, practitioners, industry actors don't have access to the, you know, a, a, a kind of a ready click.

If they're not the sort of people who like to dive into a bunch of zip files and Excel sheets, they don't really have access to this absolute treasure trove of data.

You know, in this conversation, I've generally had a bit more optimistic take on things than we're used to hearing, especially on AI safety.

So maybe in keeping with that, I really like Hannah Ritchie's book, Not the End of the World.

She has a newer book, but this one's from twenty twenty-four, and I still like it very much.

The subtitle is something like How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet.

At best, the picture is mixed.

Hannah Ritchie on the website, um, Our World in Data, has surveyed analysis of conventional and organic farming as regards their impact on carbon emissions, water pollution, biodiversity, and land use.

A note first on what organic agriculture means.

Ritchie describes it as, quotes, "The farming of crops of livestock without the use of synthetic inputs.

I mean, I mainly champion nonfiction.

So I interviewed an amazing data scientist called Hannah Ritchie.

whose book is essentially about all the things that are happening.

And she always says, you know, two things can be true at the same time.

In terms of absolute numbers, it's, it's arguably bigger than it ever has been, right? 'Cause the energy system is bigger.

So if you go back to the 20th century, you know, back in the '50s and '60s, Hannah Ritchie had a great Substack on this recently.

Um, you look back at the '50s, e-e-electricity, of course, the grid was newer, growing at 5, 6, 7, 8%.

The '60s still at about 5%, the '70s maybe around 3%, um, uh, if I got my numbers right.