#160 – Hannah Ritchie on why it makes sense to be optimistic about the environment

"There's no money to invest in education elsewhere, so they almost get trapped in the cycle where they don't get a lot from crop production, but everyone in the family has to work there to just stay afloat. Basically, you get locked in. There's almost no opportunities externally to go elsewhere. So one of my core arguments is that if you're going to address global poverty, you have to increase agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa. There's almost no way of avoiding that." — Hannah Ritchie

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez interviews the head of research at Our World in Data — Hannah Ritchie — on the case for environmental optimism.

Links to learn more, summary and full transcript.

They cover:

• Why agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa could be so important, and how much better things could get
• Her new book about how we could be the first generation to build a sustainable planet
• Whether climate change is the most worrying environmental issue
• How we reduced outdoor air pollution
• Why Hannah is worried about the state of ​​biodiversity
• Solutions that address multiple environmental issues at once
• How the world coordinated to address the hole in the ozone layer
• Surprises from Our World in Data’s research
• Psychological challenges that come up in Hannah’s work
• And plenty more

Get this episode by subscribing to our podcast on the world’s most pressing problems and how to solve them: type ‘80,000 Hours’ into your podcasting app. Or read the transcript.

Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
Audio Engineering Lead: Ben Cordell
Technical editing: Milo McGuire and Dominic Armstrong
Additional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa Rodriguez
Transcriptions: Katy Moore