Book Review: Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie
An essential guide for a sustainable future
Read any books lately that made you question your daily habits or the systems shaping our world? This week, we’re flipping through the pages of Hannah Ritchie’s “Not the End of the World” with guest writer Levi Rokey, who reflects on how the book challenged his choices and assumptions.
Levi offers a thoughtful review, exploring Ritchie’s use of data from Our World in Data, an organization funded primarily by Effective Altruism. While the book’s numbers-driven approach provides a clear, evidence-based view of sustainable food systems, it also raises important questions: Can we rely solely on data to guide us? What nuances might be overlooked? How might Indigenous knowledge or other lived experiences be left out of the equation?
While you read, we invite you to consider how this data-centric perspective aligns—or conflicts—with other approaches to sustainability. What books have inspired your thoughts on food and sustainability? How do they connect to or challenge the ideas presented here?
Guest writer Levi Rokey is a humanist passionate about sustainable food production and climate change mitigation strategies. He received his MA in Food Studies: Policies for Sustainable Production and Consumption from The American University of Rome and has consulted with farmers in Italy, South Korea, and the United States on adopting new technologies to balance economics, efficiency, and sustainability in food systems. You can follow him on Twitter, LinkedIn, or his personal blog.
Now, let’s dive into Levi’s take on the book and what it reveals about potential pathways to a more sustainable future!
Hannah Ritchie, Deputy Editor and Researcher for Our World in Data, has penned a top-level, concise, and essential guide for anyone interested in creating a more sustainable world, mitigating human environmental impacts, and taking action. She will open your eyes to current ecological problems (it’s not as bad as you think), painting a picture of a planet well on its way toward a more sustainable future, but only if we continue progressing toward the most effective solutions.
Richie shares how her anxiety and resignation over environmental issues, fueled by negative media, shifted after encountering Hans Rosling’s data-driven perspective on improving global well-being. Inspired, she now takes a broader, data-focused approach to humanity’s challenges, arguing that sustainable development can balance human well-being and environmental preservation. While progress in human health and prosperity has often harmed the environment, Richie emphasizes that simultaneously achieving both goals is possible. Her book explores key sustainability topics through chapters that debunk media myths, analyze current trends, propose solutions, and highlight reasons for optimism.
Our food system impacts almost every environmental issue (see below ⬇️), a fact not lost on Ritchie, who argues that “food lies close to the center. It really is at the nexus of sustainability.”
Below, I’ve summarized key chapters where Ritchie believes global food system practices must evolve, including the problem and her solutions.
Climate change?
Stemming world temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels may be impossible (recent news confirms this), but 2°C, or a limit close to this, is possible. This won’t be accomplished if our food system is ignored. To achieve this, she argues that we should eat less meat and dairy, adopt the most efficient farming practices, reduce overconsumption and food loss and waste, and close yield gaps in agriculture.
Deforestation?
Half of the world’s habitable land is used for food production. This is a land-use problem caused by agriculture, driven primarily by livestock production (see below ⬇️).* Again, she suggests the importance of shifting our diets away from meat and dairy (especially beef and lamb) and improving crop yields (especially in sub-Saharan Africa).
Biodiversity loss?
Land conversion for agriculture is responsible for 75% of all extinctions since 1500. Today, livestock accounts for almost two-thirds of the total mammal biomass on Earth (see below ⬇️). Again, she repeats the same point: eat less meat and dairy, especially red meat.
Overfishing?
Aquaculture is essential to feeding humanity while reducing pressure on wild fish stocks. We must continue to improve the efficiency and environmental impact of fish farming, eat less fish, and, when we do, eat sustainably caught fish with a low-carbon footprint. We must also implement better policies and create more marine sanctuaries.
Food production?
We may have already reached peak land use and fertilizer use for agriculture. Solutions should center on reducing the amount of land used for farming, including:
Improve crop yields worldwide. Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and crossbreeding are OK.
Reduce food loss through improvements in food supply chains, including plastic crates, refrigeration, and better storage in developing countries.
Eat less meat, especially beef and lamb (see a pattern?). Adopting a plant-based diet would reduce the amount of land used for agriculture by up to 75% (see below ⬇️).
In terms of “things to stress less about”, I suspect this is where she gets the most pushback:
Eating local? What [emphasize added] we eat matters more for an individual's carbon footprint than how far it traveled to reach you, and sometimes it’s worse for the environment if food is grown where it shouldn’t be because it’s more inefficient. A better rule? Eat food grown where conditions for it are optimal (i.e. bananas are grown in tropical climates for a reason.)
Organic systems aren’t always better for the environment because they use more land and can be worse for the pollution of rivers and lakes than conventional farming. Here, she points out the trade-off between farming intensively using less land or organically using more land.
Plastic food packaging is not as impactful as what you choose to eat, ensuring it’s consumed and not wasted. Ritchie points out that “the carbon footprint of the plastic packaging is negligible compared to the footprint of the food wrapped inside it.”
Key takeaways
Generally, I agree with Ritchie’s solutions to the most pressing challenges facing our food system. Some may argue that these solutions are too simplified (i.e. eat less meat), lack nuance, or do not include detailed, concrete action plans towards achievement, but that’s not the point. She aims to make you aware of the problem, why it matters, and what’s the most impactful solution. It’s up to all of us to decide how best to get there.
Some common themes emerge from the book as a whole. First, in the same vein as research from Vaclav Smil and Stephen Pinker, she uses data to enforce her main points and dispel the most common counterarguments. Second, her anecdotes help humanize this data and make things relatable. The prose isn’t poetic, but that’s not the point. Third, we no longer have to choose between protecting the environment and economic growth. We can have both, primarily due to technological innovations, which should be funded, advanced, and adopted. Finally, it’s easy to get lost in the negativity of death, wars, and disasters of the 24/7 news cycle. Focusing on breaking news stories, without zooming out to see the larger picture, blinds one from the story of human progress. Each chapter highlights instances where the media incorrectly overstates a problem using sensational language.
In that same vein, Ritchie's book blends environmentalism, humanism, and techno-optimism, offering data-driven realism to balance progress and sustainability. It concludes with actionable advice: vote for sustainable leaders, support eco-friendly solutions, pursue impactful careers, and collaborate with like-minded individuals (see below ⬇️).
Ultimately, we could all benefit from inspiration on how to build a more sustainable future, which Richie aptly provides as a how-to guide in this book. Beyond shifting your mindset about human progress, it will challenge you to rethink the future and empower you to build it.
*Note from the Editors: We also want to point out that palm oil and soybean production are also significant causes of deforestation.
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