What the climate story gets wrong

Summary

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Episode: What the Climate Story Gets Wrong
Date: October 27, 2025
Guest: Dr. Hannah Ritchie (Data Scientist, Oxford, Author: Clearing the Air)
Theme: Challenging despair and polarization in the climate conversation by focusing on actual progress, honest data, and the importance of hopeful, practical narratives.

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Sean Illing interviews Dr. Hannah Ritchie—self-described “data optimist” and author of Clearing the Air—to re-examine the dominant narratives of climate change. Rather than focusing on despair and disaster, Ritchie advocates a nuanced, data-driven optimism rooted in real progress on energy, public attitudes, and technology. Together, they challenge fatalistic thinking, detail where the world is making faster advances than most realize, and discuss how both individuals and systems can best drive future change.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

I. Reframing the Climate Narrative

• Dominant Stories: Media, politics, and public discourse swing between denial and despair, ignoring real, incremental progress.
• Data Perspective: Long-term data reveals remarkable (if uneven) improvements on climate and other human challenges (poverty, health).
• Hannah Ritchie:

  "What you tend to find when you zoom out is that humans have made amazing progress in many ways." (03:22)

• Why So Pessimistic?
  • Pessimism is wired into human psychology.
  • News and social media amplify only the most extreme stories.
  • Nuance rarely “sells.”

II. Progress, Agency, and the False Dichotomy

• Are We Doomed?
  • Data shows we are not locked into a single dire destiny; our choices matter incrementally.
  • The 1.5°C or 2°C targets are not “game-over” thresholds; every tenth of a degree matters.
• Individual vs. Systemic Change: Both are essential—individual choices reinforce, demand, and accelerate systemic shifts; systemic shifts create affordable, accessible climate solutions.
• Hannah Ritchie:

  "I think that's a false dichotomy. I think both really, really matter here." (09:50)

III. Public Attitudes

• Surprise: Most people, even in the US, care about climate change—even if action lags.
• Polarization: Exists but is often overstated. Many on the political right also want action but mistakenly think others in their group do not.
• Key Insight:

  “Even on the right, a lot of people do care about climate change. [...] They also vastly underestimate how many other Republicans care about climate change.” (12:40)

• Behavior Gap: People are open to climate solutions, but widespread adoption depends on affordability and accessibility, not costly personal sacrifice.

IV. Solutions & Optimism Rooted in Reality

• Cleaner Substitutes: The cost of renewables (solar, wind, batteries) has fallen so far they are now the cheapest new sources, aligning short-term economics and long-term climate goals.
• Political Implications: Clean energy is no longer a “sacrifice”—it's often the rational economic choice.
• Hannah Ritchie:

  "Solar has fallen by around 80-90%, wind by 70%. Batteries have fallen by around 90% as well." (15:07)

• Growth vs. Climate: Transitioning to clean energy can power (and even accelerate) international growth; it's not a trade-off anymore.

V. Psychological and Political Barriers

• Belief Gaps: In the US, economic growth is equated with fossil fuel extraction; in China and many other nations, clean energy is seen as the future's opportunity.
• Messaging:
  • Focusing on local air pollution, energy independence, innovation, and security resonates more than “doom” or “sacrifice.”
  • Example: Red states deploy massive renewables for economic, not climate, reasons.
  • Ritchie:

    "Red states have taken that on and built a ton of clean energy, regardless of the climate reasons for doing so." (24:26)

• Disconnect: State-level action often outpaces (and outsmarts) national politics.

VI. Global Perspective & Inequity

• Rich World Hypocrisy: Developed nations built their wealth with fossil fuels, now discourage poor countries from using them.
  • The gap remains—rich countries consume vastly more per capita, imposing stricter rules on those still developing.
• Leapfrogging Potential: With surging solar panel imports (e.g., from China to Pakistan/Africa), some countries can “skip” dirty infrastructure, but must guard against new inequalities (e.g., wealthy individuals getting solar before a national grid serves all).

VII. Building/Battlegrounds: Nuclear, Agriculture, and Carbon Removal

1. Nuclear Energy

• Perception vs. Reality:
  • Nuclear disasters (Chernobyl, Fukushima) loom large in memory.
  • Actual deaths: nuclear in thousands (over all history), fossil fuels kill millions annually—especially via air pollution.
  • Ritchie:

    "Nuclear's entire history has killed thousands. Fossil fuels kill millions every single year." (37:01)

2. Agriculture

• Enormous Impact: Farming is the main driver of land use, biodiversity loss, and water/fertilizer pollution—often more than climate.
• Shifting to a more plant-based diet could cut global farmland by 75%.
• All-or-Nothing Trap: Reducing (not eliminating) meat intake is powerful at scale.
• Ritchie:

  "...We'll make much more progress if 50% of the population reduce their meat intake a bit than you would from a few percent going completely vegan." (41:36)

3. Carbon Removal

• No Silver Bullet:
  • Net zero likely requires some removal, but mostly for the “last 5-10%”—not to excuse business-as-usual.
  • Tree planting is limited by land, direct air capture is still costly and early-stage.
  • Ritchie:

    "Carbon removal is only really helpful if we dramatically reduce emissions. Carbon removal is there to try and tackle the last 5% or 10% ..." (44:20)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Human Agency:

  "The trajectory we take is very much determined by the decisions we make...we're very much the driving force of the trajectory that we take."
  — Hannah Ritchie (08:16)

• On Narratives:

  "Often the narrative is framed around the danger and the risk.... But as we discussed earlier, most people are convinced that job is done. What's really key from here now is helping people understand the solutions and what we need to do."
  — Hannah Ritchie (49:23)

• Hannah’s Dedication:

  "I hope that, looking back on this, my niece in 50 years would be proud that we took the better path, not just for us, but for her. And also for the next generation that comes after her."
  — (51:33)

Debunking Misplaced Focus

• Recycling and Plastics:

  "People really, really care and think about the plastic bag, but ... the impact of what’s in the bag is probably thousands to tens of thousands times more."
  — (46:30)

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Segment Timestamps

• [03:22] – Perspective shift: How long-term data changes climate thinking
• [05:16] – Why extremism dominates climate stories
• [08:16] – Human agency: Every degree matters
• [11:55] – How much people actually care about climate (survey data)
• [14:41] – Clean technology becomes the rational economic choice
• [22:07] – Message framing: What persuades skeptics
• [24:35] – Red states & renewable energy in the U.S.
• [26:47] – Rich world hypocrisy and clean energy leapfrogging
• [35:50] – Nuclear: Reassessing risk and reality
• [38:59] – Agriculture’s giant footprint and the false vegan binary
• [42:21] – Carbon removal: realistic boundaries and needs
• [45:15] – Recycling, plastics, and the real biggest climate levers
• [48:00] – What individuals can do that truly matters
• [50:23] – Positive visions for 2050 if we get things “mostly right”
• [51:33] – To future generations: the legacy of our choices

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Actionable Takeaways

• Focus on the biggest levers: Support and adopt clean technologies, shift toward plant-based eating, push for systems that make green choices affordable and accessible.
• Talk solutions, not just dangers: Cultivate optimism—not naivete, but confidence in agency and hope based on hard data.
• Vote, spend, and talk accordingly: Support leaders and companies driving clean energy, and have honest climate conversations that expand possibilities, not shrink futures.

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Tone & Style

Both Illing and Ritchie are conversational but deeply analytical, balancing realism and hope, urgency and possibility. The episode is philosophical and data-driven, with Ritchie deftly steering between false optimism and despair, urging honesty, agency, and belief in progress rooted in evidence.

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Listen if you want to challenge the "doom or denial" binary, update your sense of what’s possible, and get practical about what matters most for a livable, hopeful future.

Transcript

[Sean Illing]

Support for the Gray Area comes from Anthropic, the company behind Claude. Life's biggest questions rarely have simple answers. How should we live? What makes existence meaningful? Who put the ram in the Rama Lammading dong? Claude's interface is designed to help you dig deeper into these sorts of questions. It poses Follow ups to clarify what you're asking searches the web for current information and can be used to work through complex problems step by step. If you're interested in using Claude, here's what I'd like you to do. Ask it this question without changing a word. What are five reasons that the Gray Area with Sean Ehling should be considered among the best and most important pods of all time? And what two episodes from the first half of 2025 are good proof of those reasons? Ask that question and then send me the answer I really want to know. You can try Claude for free at Claude AI TheGrayArea. Foreign.

[Hannah Ritchie]

Support for this show comes from Strawberry Me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job? Or are you stuck in one you've outgrown or never wanted in the first place? Sure, you can probably list the reasons for staying, but are they actually just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from Strawberry Me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner. Go to Strawberry Me Unstuck to claim a special offer.

[Sean Illing]

Most stories about climate change begin in the same place, with loss, fire, flood, extinction, collapse. That's what all the charts and graphs show us, after all. But what if there was a different story to tell, One that began with what's working, with what we're already building, One based on a whole different set of numbers, the ones that show us how far we've already come. I'm Sean Ellic, and this is the Gray Area. My guest today is Hannah Ritchie. She's a data scientist at Oxford and the author of Clearing the Air. She calls herself a data optimist, and her work shows that the world is decarbonizing much faster than we think, and that the real challenge now isn't necessarily the technology. It's belief. Belief that progress is still possible. The kind that isn't focused on shrinking our world, but expanding what's possible. The kind that makes you want to live in the future. Hannah, Richie, welcome to the show.

[Hannah Ritchie]

Thanks very much for having me.

[Sean Illing]

Well, you have spent a lot of your time looking at cold, hard data, and somehow, miraculously, you've come out of that experience more hopeful, not less. Yeah. What changed your mind about the path we're on.

[Hannah Ritchie]

The focus of my work is often on environmental problems and climate change in particular. And I think before we even zoom in on the climate problem, I think one thing you get from looking at data, and specifically data over long timescales, right? But you know, how have things changed over decades or centuries? What you tend to find when you zoom out is that humans have made amazing progress in many ways. Actually, if you look at almost any kind of human development indicator, whether it's poverty or hunger or child mortality or saving mothers or life expectancy, the list goes on. We've made huge improvements over the last few centuries and in particular over the last 50 years. I think it's often hard to get that perspective just following the day to day coverage of stuff or what people are speaking about happened in the last hour. We are capable of solving problems and making progress. Then I think specifically on the environment and climate, we're still in a very bad position on that. Progress has been too slow. But we have made progress in many different ways. I think some of the very clear data there is on stuff like the price of renewables or the price of batteries and how competitive they are, or actually now how quickly we are deploying this stuff, which again, you just can only see through the data. You know, you're just not going to get that in a daily news headline. You need to step back and look at the data to understand the scale of what's happening on these solutions.

[Sean Illing]

I do often feel like we are kind of toggling between dueling climate stories. There's either a story about denial or a story about despair and not much in between, present company excluded. Do you think we're just naturally attracted to, to extremes? Because maybe in some ways that's just a simpler, neater way to look at the world.

[Hannah Ritchie]

I think so. I think we're often more fine tuned, I think, to be pessimistic about the world in general. And I think there's some ingrained psychology in that in the past. It's definitely more advantageous to think about what's the next problem that's coming rather than saying, oh, how good we're doing. So I think there's that kind of psychological part in us. And then I think most people get their information from the news or from social media. And I think the reality is that often nuanced stories just don't do well in the media. Right. Often it is one extreme or the other that gets the attention. And if you are, that's where you're getting your news on what's happening on climate or any other issue, then I think you are mostly seeing the extremes in one or the other direction. Right. As you say, either this climate's not a problem, we're doing fine, or the opposite, the world's going to collapse tomorrow and we're all doomed. And I've spoken to journalists in the past about this and their response has often been, well, we want to produce the more nuanced stories that don't have the really clickbaity extreme headline, but then no one reads them and no one clicks on them. So I think there is this unfortunate dynamic between the people producing content and also us as consumers of content, that we are drawn more to these kind of interests extremes rather than the kind of nuanced middle.

[Sean Illing]

Yeah, I don't know how wild the marketing people were here when we came up with the name the gray area. We're gonna lean into the nuance. It doesn't, it's not the sexiest sell for sure, but that doesn't mean it's the wrong way to look at things. I don't know, have you always been pretty level headed when it comes to this stuff, even before you dove into the data? Are you just wired for, for reasonableness?

[Hannah Ritchie]

I mean, definitely not. I've changed a lot on this in the last decade or 15 years where now I'm framed as the kind of optimistic person on climate. But you know, 15 years ago I was very pessimistic. I was very much in the world doomed because of climate change. And there's just no way we're going to solve this. And I won't really have, as a young person, I won't really have a kind of livable planet to grow up in. So no, it's definitely not been hardwired in me. I think this has been kind of taught and a lot of it has come from stepping back to look at the data. And that has actually rapidly shifted my perspective on, on this.

[Sean Illing]

Yeah, I think I'm about 15 years behind you. I mean, I think you say pretty early in the book that the question you get the most from people is are we doomed? You know, I think what people are really asking when they ask that is whether anything we do, innovation, growth, building, really makes a difference. How do you think about our agency at this stage of the crisis? How much of a difference can we still make?

[Hannah Ritchie]

We can absolutely make a difference. So if you look at any of the kind of future pathways, the range of possible climate futures, the trajectory we take is very much determined by the decisions we make and tomorrow and the next day. And we're very much the driving force of the trajectory that we take, the final temperature rise that we end up in. I think people have a sense that there is often some single threshold in the system that once we pass that, it's over, there's nothing we can do to stop this. This is generally not how climate impacts work. What's really clear is that the higher the warming, the higher the impact, right? So going from 1.5 to 1.6 to 1.7 to 1 point, all of those incremental increases in global temperatures make a difference to the impacts. So I think people have this sense of if we're past 1.5, we're done, we're doomed, or if we're past 2 degrees, we're done, we're doomed. That's not how it works, right? Even if we're past 1.5, pursuing 1.6 or 1.7, these all make a difference to the final climate outcomes that we will have to deal with. So it's always worth making the effort to reduce those potential dangers and hazards as much as we can. Another question I get a lot is as individuals, do we have any agency in this here? I often hear polar opposite arguments where some people are all about individual behavior change. This notion that if we all just do a little, we'll fix this, I think that's incorrect. It's not the case that if we all, as individuals do something, we'll fix this huge global problem. But you also get the other extreme that says individuals don't matter. This is purely about systemic change. So it's only on governments and businesses and economic systems to change this. I think that's a false dichotomy. I think both really, really matter here. What's really key is that governments, companies, investors, et cetera, they play a huge role in making the alternatives to the drivers of climate change. So fossil fuels, for example, they play a huge role in making good decisions on what energy sources we build, what products are available, an electric vehicle versus a petrol vehicle or public transport, they play a huge role in making that available, making that easy for people to switch, and making it cost effective or affordable for people to switch. They play a huge role in that. But as individuals, if they put in that effort as individuals, we can't sit in our hands and say we're not going to move from the petrol car to electric vehicle or we're not going to shift to a more plant based diet. As individuals, we play a key role in driving the systemic Changes that are needed.

[Sean Illing]

One thing that really comes through in your work is that the world is actually improving faster than we think, than most people think. And yet, for some of the reasons you've already mentioned, the public mood still feels pretty grim. But there is, however, a chart early in the book that shows that most people underestimate how much others care about climate action, even in the US and you know, I, I confess that I've, I've probably said many times on this very show that most Americans don't care enough about this issue. And that's a massive political problem for people who do. But am I wrong about this? I mean, how much do people actually care about the climate according to the data that you've seen?

[Hannah Ritchie]

Yeah. So there are a number of international surveys on this where they ask people about whether they believe in climate change. Is it human caused? Should governments take more action? Do they care about it as taking action? And what's really clear is that in every country, the majority of people say yes to all of the above. So they think climate change is happening and they want governments and people do. Even in the US there's a majority. You can also look at the polarization in that generally a higher share of people on the left say yes relative to the right. And that's the case in most countries. In most countries, that partisan gap is much, much smaller than people imagine. In some countries it's basically non existent. And the US the partisan gap is still large. Right. But even on the right, a lot of people do care about climate change. And actually, if you ask Republicans, they also vastly underestimate how many other Republicans care about climate change. So it seems to be this kind of underlying secret that, you know, you don't talk about climate change, but you do actually care and worry about climate change. So that tends to be the dynamic. You can then argue whether people care enough. Right. And I think that's a very relative term. You know, what's your enough versus my enough? But they, they generally say they care about climate change and want to see more on it. And I think that is not portrayed very clearly to the public. It's not portrayed very clearly to politicians or the media. The one kind of key caveat I would make to that is that saying you care about climate change does not necessarily mean you follow through really strongly with climate friendly behaviors or climate friendly purchases. So even if you say you care about climate change, you might not be willing to spend a ton of money on a more climate friendly alternative. For example, what I always try to make really clearly there is that people are receptive to climate solutions and taking action. But what's really, really key is that the alternatives, they need to be available for people and they need to be cheap and affordable for them. They will generally not pay more for those solutions. And many people cannot pay more actually for the climate friendly alternative.

[Sean Illing]

Well, that, that's a huge point, right? Getting people to stop doing things they like or stop doing things that they're accustomed to is hard, it's a hard sell. But if you can offer them substitutes for the things they like instead of asking them to sacrifice. Is this part of what makes you an optimist on this, at least politically, that maybe increasingly we do have the tools to create these cleaner substitutes and that changes the politics of climate?

[Hannah Ritchie]

Absolutely. So when I was looking at this 10 years ago, even when globally we signed the Paris Agreement, these really ambitious climate goals, we were in the situation where the alternatives to fossil fuels for electricity, like solar and wind were hugely more expensive than coal or gas. And to me at that time it seemed totally implausible that the world was just going to pick these really expensive energy sources in order to solve climate change. What's happened over the last decade is that the cost of these substitutes have plummeted, right? So solar has fallen by around 80 to 90%, wind by 70%. Batteries, which is really key for building out electricity grids, but also really key for the transition. And road transport to electric vehicles has fallen by around 90% as well. And what's happened is that solar and wind have gone from being much more expensive, which I didn't think people would choose, to actually being the cheapest choice. Right? So now your short term incentives in terms of economics are now also matching up with these longer term goals for climate. And politically, that's a much, much easier sell than trying to tell everyone there's this problem that's coming down in the future, but you should sacrifice stuff today in order to do that. And generally, I don't think that human psychology lends itself well to those long term problems. But now the short term economics are also matching up with the long term climate ambitions that we have.

[Sean Illing]

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[Hannah Ritchie]

I think in some countries it's more of a problem than in others. I think the US is a good example where I think the US does very much still have this mindset that its growth has been based on fossil fuels and drill, baby, drill, and that's how it's became this economic superpower. And therefore going for the kind of tree hugging green stuff would be a step backwards. And I think that's a very, very different psychology from how many other countries in the world are viewing this. So the contrast there is China, where China I think is now seeing fossil fuels and petrol cars as the technologies of the 20th century and it wants to build the technologies of the 21st century and that is solar and wind and batteries and electric vehicles and basically electrification. Right. So some countries like the US are stuck in this mindset where they see the kind of green transition as a step back and incompatible with growth because they are used to growth being powered by huge energy giants and fossil fuel use. And I think that's disconnected from reality. I can see, I can see that starting to shift slightly, but it's certainly shifting much slower in countries like the US than elsewhere.

[Sean Illing]

Well, which is maddening, right? Because it's not like this is an alien concept, but I guess there's just a lot of headwinds.

[Hannah Ritchie]

For various reasons, the psychology of this is hard. I think what a lot of the data suggests is that often to, I guess if you want to say win the psychological argument, some of the recommendations there are actually not to focus on the climate problem but instead to just focus on the kind of energy, energy, security, innovation, technology dimension of this, which for many people seems progressive. Right. You know, moving forward, building new stuff rather than focusing on the climate problem, which is Focusing, I guess, on the negative. Right. And especially in more skeptical audiences. As we said earlier, you know, the promoting the good stuff tends to work better than really restricting what we would frame as the bad stuff, like the fossil, banning fossil fuels. That messaging tends to not work very well for particular audiences. Also.

[Sean Illing]

It's kind of stupid, but in American politics at least, the climate problem is just, it's just left coded. It just is. And so like everything else, it gets, it gets polarized and split along, you know, ideological lines in that way. It doesn't have to be like that.

[Hannah Ritchie]

The political situation has shifted a lot in the last year. But if you were to look at the build out of renewable power across the US from historical data, you know, the majority of this stuff was being built in red states. Right, Right. So. And it wasn't necessarily because they were really focused on getting to net zero or reducing their emissions. Often local air pollution would come up as a key problem. A lot of people are more motivated by addressing local environmental problems than global climate change. But also the focus on energy independence for landowners in states along the wind belt, it's just an additional source of income. Why not put up a wind farm, get some extra income, generate some clean energy. Framing it in that way in red states has actually been. And especially having a kind of legislative environment that allows you to build stuff relatively quickly without large bottlenecks has been really, really key. And red states have taken that on and built a ton of clean energy, regardless of the climate reasons for doing so. Yeah.

[Sean Illing]

Isn't Texas deploying solar panels faster than California currently? I mean, that's wild.

[Hannah Ritchie]

Yeah. Texas, Texas is going hard on, on solar power and batteries. And a bunch of other red states have been really forthcoming with wind. So they've built a lot of wind power. So actually the majority of the US is wind power is coming from, from red seas.

[Sean Illing]

That's wild. I mean, it's awesome. I mean, it sounds like the, it sounds like the politics are sort of already changing. Maybe we just haven't caught up with it yet or it's, it's changing so quickly, it just takes some time for everyone to readjust. But it seems like the political argument is almost one here. It's just a question of, of, of, of how and where and how quickly.

[Hannah Ritchie]

I think in the US there's a big difference between the national politics of this and the state level politics of this.

[Sean Illing]

Yeah. What do you mean?

[Hannah Ritchie]

Often what's been effective is basically states having the capacity and the power to, to build what they want to build. And set the kind of rules they would like. And that's kind of naturally resulted in states building renewables. I think if you went down to the state level, lots of governors and legislators there were very happy to build out clean energy. But in the last year, definitely the national level when it comes to politics, basically there's a ban on building new renewable energy products and they've been put really far down the list. So I think there actually is a very clear disconnect there between what's now the national political take on, on building out clean energy and actually what a state level many people would want to do.

[Sean Illing]

Well, on the international level, I mean, we have, we have or we have had this problem of rich world hypocrisy. You have countries telling poorer nations not to develop in ways that they did. Is that kind of hypocrisy still holding back the global energy transition or for all these technical or for all these technological reasons, Is it just not the impediment it was 10 or 20 or 30 years ago?

[Hannah Ritchie]

I think, yeah, I think there has been this rich world hypocrisy where countries like the UK where I'm from, you know, we have basically built our prosperity on building energy system running on fossil fuels, right? I have the life I have today, which is a nice life because my ancestors used fossil fuels to build infrastructure to the economy. They burned a lot to get us to where we are now. And they basically had free reign of that where they could do that without any global climate agreements or without any countries telling them, oh, that will put you over the carbon budget. There was none of those constraints. Many of the world's richest countries got to do that, you know, without any limits or constraints. And now we're in the situation where many of the world's poorest countries basically want to do the same, right? They have large amounts of their population living in energy poverty. Naturally they want to escape that. Naturally they want to prosper. And there is this sense of, no, but you can't use fossil fuels to of course you can't use fossil fuels now. You know, we have global climate change. And that hypocrisy is very, is still very, very clear. Because, you know, even if you were to argue countries like the UK or the US historically we use fossil fuels and now we're transitioning. But if you compare, the amount per person of fossil fuels we're still using is vastly, vastly, vastly more than the poorest countries in the world. So even if you look at the situation today, there's still a Huge inequality in the amount of fossil fuels that different countries are using. But there has been this case where rich countries often, if there are loans or financial agreements for poor countries to build out energy systems, basically won't support anything that includes any fossil fuels at all in those agreements. Which does I think highlight this hypocrisy. I think some of the dynamics of that are changing where this deadlock is breaking. I think the you're starting to see actually quite promising data where especially countries like Pakistan for example, is a good example, or many countries across Africa, you've started to see in the last year or two quite large exports of solar panels from China to those countries actually quite rapid uptick, which is very promising and does I think give some opportunity for those countries to what we would make call leapfrog, where they basically develop an energy system that leapfrogs fossil fuels. You know, the energy sources that many other countries in the world use to develop and go straight to the cleaner sources.

[Sean Illing]

I really like that you point out that a lot of these developing countries might actually have a head start in the clean energy race precisely because they are not locked in to the old shitty, dirty infrastructure. Right. Which it kind of flips the usual story about who's ahead and who's behind and what sort of growth could happen over the next, you know, few decades or so.

[Hannah Ritchie]

Yeah, I think, I think it will take some time for that to play out and see how the dynamics of the energy systems in those countries work. One of my concerns there, I think the this is generally quite positive. You know, seeing solar panels being exported from China to these countries is very positive. I still have some concerns about the inequality of some of those dynamics where actually for those countries you would like them to build a centralized grid system that makes it able to supply, you know, energy to industries, develop like a large national economy, make sure that, you know, everyone has access to electricity and low cost electricity. What you're maybe seeing at the moment is that solar power going to the richest people within those countries. Right. That can afford to buy solar panels themselves. So I think there is this dynamic, I think that's some of that is good, but I think those countries also need to be able to build out a kind of national level grid to be able to reach everyone or that inequality, I think, and those countries will just widen.

[Sean Illing]

Support for the gray area comes from Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Sometimes you ask one small question, then another and another and another and before you know it you're asking the biggest question questions of all like who put the BOP in the bop? Shoebop shoebop Anthropic's AI chat interface, Claude is designed to not just give you the first answer it finds. Instead, it will try to clarify what you're really trying to figure out. Are you looking at the bop Shubap shubot from a historical perspective? A practical one? What specific aspects of the shoebop Shubap interest you most? Claude will search current sources and provide proper citations. It will analyze documents you've uploaded and connect ideas across different fields. And it will display the steps it's taking so you can follow along. Whether you're exploring philosophical questions such as why is a Gray Area with Sean Illing such an excellent pod? Researching complex topics such as what are 10 older episodes of the Gray Area with Sean Illing that really speak to the current moment and why? Or working through problems that don't have obvious solutions, like what are five concrete steps that a listener of the Gray Area with Sean Illing can take right now to make sure the pod reaches a bigger audience and higher public visibility? Claude is there for you. You can try Claude for free at Claude AI the Gray Area and see why the world's best problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking part. Support for this show comes from Wealthfront. It's always hard to figure out where to put your money. One option is a Wealthfront cash account with no minimum balance or account fees. Right now they say you can earn a 4% APY plus you get free instant withdrawals to eligible accounts every day, so your money is always accessible when you need it. No matter your goals, Wealthfront can give you flexibility and security. Right now you can open your first cash account with a $500 deposit and get a $50 bonus at wealthfront.com greyarea that's wealthfront.com greyaa bonus terms and conditions apply. Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage, LLC Member Finracipic not a bank. Annual percentage yield on deposits as of September 26, 2025 is representative, subject to change and requires no minimum. Funds are swept to program banks where they earn variable APY Support for the gray area comes from Wondery and their new podcast, Lawless Planet. The global climate crisis is complex, with front lines on every corner of the planet, and the stories from the crisis are equally complex, filled with uncomfortable truths and sometimes terrible acts. On Lawless Planet, the new podcast from Wondery, these stories almost unfold like a true crime podcast. From the depths of the Amazon to small town America, host Zach Goldbaum investigates stories of conflict, corruption and resistance. Each episode takes you inside the global struggle over our planet's future. Featuring mysterious crimes, high stakes operations, billion dollar controversies that reveal what's truly at stake and the everyday people affected along the way. You can follow Lawless Planet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad free right now by joining Wondery plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Once you start talking about what to build or, or what to prioritize politically and otherwise, it gets you into some, let's call them, contested topics in the climate world. And I just want to start with nuclear. You call it one of the most misunderstood technologies in the climate debate. What does the evidence actually say about its risks versus its upside? I think a lot of people, myself included, don't really know how to feel about nuclear. I know it's clean, I know it doesn't use up a lot of land, but also it's perceived with some cause as dangerous.

[Hannah Ritchie]

Yeah. So nuclear, I think historically has been heated by a lot of people with an environmental leaning. Like it hasn't been the kind of poster child for environmentalism. And I think the key reason for that has been the safety aspect, as you see. So it is a very clean source of electricity. It doesn't really emit carbon dioxide except in some of the manufacturing of the stuff. And in the first place, it uses very little land. Right. So if you wanted to build an energy system using as little land as possible, you would choose nuclear power. But when it comes to safety, people are, I think, quite rightly concerned about the risks of, of nuclear disasters. But I think what's really important is to get some sense of comparative risk to other energy sources. The key point is that no energy source is safe. I think nuclear has such a deep place in people's minds as an unsafe energy source because you can name specific disasters that have happened. When I say nuclear power, what do you think of in terms of particular events?

[Sean Illing]

Chernobyl, Fukushima, you can name them, right? Explosions, fireworks, everyone can name them.

[Hannah Ritchie]

They were in the news, they're in the history books. You can make, you know, best selling drama series about these events. And if you tally up the number of people that have died, so there's been three big events. So the Three Mile island in the US where no one died, Fukushima was the most recent one in Japan. Again, no one directly died from that nuclear disaster. You know, you had a tsunami hit a nuclear plant and no one died. And then there was Chernobyl, where which was arguably the, the worst and caused the most damage. And estimates vary, but they rang from Maybe up to 400, up to 4,000 deaths. Right. But if you combine all of the disastrous nuclear events in history, you're talking about, you know, thousands of deaths. Right. Which is tragic. But the, what's really key here is if you compare that to the amount of people that have died from burning fossil fuels. And here I'm actually if even if you just take climate change out of the equation, you know, we have millions of people dying from local air pollution every single year. Most of that is coming from burning fossil fuels. Nuclear's entire history has killed thousands. Fossil fuels kill millions every single year. When you break down the comparative risks there, you're talking about nuclear being hundreds to thousand times more safe per unit of electricity than fossil fuels. So the notion that we should, you know, ban or close nuclear plants and keep fossil fuel plants running just doesn't make sense from a safety perspective whatsoever.

[Sean Illing]

Well, then there's agriculture. And you say that we could cut global farmland use by half, maybe even more than half actually, and still feed everyone. If we got serious about efficiency, what would that require? How realistic is it politically or culturally?

[Hannah Ritchie]

Yeah, I think for here we focused on climate change and we always focus on fossil fuels when it comes to climate change. And I think actually agriculture is a very underrated environmental problem. In fact, if you were to take almost any environmental problem, whether it's land use, biodiversity loss, deforestation, freshwater use, water pollution, agriculture is the leading cause of all of those environmental problems by far. It's not even comparable climate change. It's responsible for between a quarter to a third. Even for climate change. It's a huge contributing factor to the problem. I think many people vastly underestimate this. What people vastly underestimate is how much we've made the world into a giant farm, right? So if you were to look at how much of what we call habitable land, so that's land that's not a desert or it's not glaciers or that we, that we couldn't use or other ecosystems couldn't use, half of that is used for farming. So we use huge amounts of land for farming. And what's really key there is that there are huge differences in the environmental impact of different products. As a brief summary, animal products tend to use more land, emit more greenhouse gas emissions, use more water, any impact really use much more than plant based products. Actually, there's a kind of ranking there among animal products where generally the Largest animals have the highest impact and the smallest have the lowest. As an individual, one of the biggest environmental changes you can make to have a positive impact is shift to a more plant based diet. That would make a huge difference. And as you said, if you, if we were to, you know, have a hypothetical world where everyone went vegan tomorrow, we would reduce our agricultural land use by 75%. So this huge drop in the amount of land we're using for farming, those are huge numbers.

[Sean Illing]

You know, and I'm not a vegan. I still, I still do eat steak, among other things, but I have tried to cut back and I think it was such a, a problem that it often got framed sort of in binary terms. Right. Either either you had to just eliminate meat or eat meat all the time, when in fact even just eating less could make a substantial difference if enough people did it.

[Hannah Ritchie]

Yeah. So I'm a vegan, but I do try to really reiterate this point that this is not all or nothing. I think for most people they're not going to go vegan tomorrow. But many people are willing to think about or even start reducing the amount of meat they eat. And the reality is if you run the numbers on this, we'll make much more progress if 50% of the population reduce their meat intake a bit than you would from a few percent going completely vegan.

[Sean Illing]

The last thing I wanted to ask about was on carbon removal. It is not a silver bullet. We can definitely say that, but it's also not a fantasy either. What is the most realistic role that can play in getting us to net zero?

[Hannah Ritchie]

Yes, if you look at kind of any of our most models of how globally we get to what we call net zero emissions, which is basically that we're not adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than we are sucking out. The reality is that there's basically almost no pathway that gets completely to zero without any carbon removal whatsoever. We're going to need some carbon removal 20, 30, 40 years from now. The question is what are the specific technologies or solutions that are going to have the largest impact there? There are a range of solutions. There are what we call more natural carbon removal technologies, I. E. Trees. They suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The issue often with trees one is land. If you want to plant a lot of trees, you need land to plant them on. And currently a lot of that land has been used for other causes like agriculture. And also you can plant trees. But if that burns down in a wildfire or someone cuts it down, that's lost. But There are other solutions. Very few of them are at scale at the moment. Most of them are kind of in the early stage, research and development stage. And that ranges from, I think, what people envision when they think about carbon removal, which is direct air capture. It's basically a giant fan that basically tries to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it underground. The issue there is it uses a lot of energy, and that means it's expensive, right? So. So to remove a ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is extremely expensive. And I think there are very few governments or companies that would be willing to pay at the current price. So a huge part of that is trying to basically bring down the price and make it more affordable and feasible.

[Sean Illing]

To that point. Are you expecting, are you hoping for maybe some technological breakthroughs on that front? Maybe not unlike what we've seen with.

[Hannah Ritchie]

Solar and wind for direct air capture? If I'm honest, the physics of that is extremely hard. Even people working on carbon removal and climate scientists always really reiterate, carbon removal was only really helpful if we dramatically reduce emissions. Carbon removal is there to try and tackle the last 5% or 10% of emissions that we're really struggling to eliminate. We need to get rid of the 90% first, and then that's when we'll start to rely on these carbon removal technologies.

[Sean Illing]

Are there things people obsess over right now on this front that really maybe don't move the needle, things maybe we shouldn't really be worrying about that aren't. Aren't all that important?

[Hannah Ritchie]

Yeah, quite a lot.

[Sean Illing]

What sticks out the most?

[Hannah Ritchie]

I mean, I think people focus way too much on plastic from a climate perspective. I think if you talk to people about environmental problems or what they're doing to solve environmental problems, the first thing they see is recycling.

[Sean Illing]

I wanted to ask you about that. I didn't know if I would, but. Good. All right, tell me. Recycling. This is a secular ritual I participate in. Everyone I know has participated and I have heard from so many people that it's kind of. I still do it. I don't know if that's true or not, but there's not a better person to ask if that's true or not than you.

[Hannah Ritchie]

So please, I still recycle.

[Sean Illing]

Tell me.

[Hannah Ritchie]

And I think if you recycle too, you should continue recycling.

[Sean Illing]

Okay.

[Hannah Ritchie]

I think the marginal benefits of recycling, especially materials like plastic, are very small. And that's just because in order to recycle stuff requires energy. And the amount of energy required to make new plastics is actually quite Small, they're really light materials. So the net benefit there is often quite unclear, maybe marginally on the side of recycling, but it's not this huge benefit. And when you zoom out and look at the climate impact of that relative to all of the other behaviors that make up your carbon footprint, it's extremely, extremely small. So I often use this example of. I don't know if it's a big thing in the us, but in the UK we have like a. You now have to, if you go to supermarket, you have to pay for a plastic bag. It's quite cheap, but you have to pay. But that's drastically changed the social fabric and expectations, right? So, you know, if you go to the supermarket and you don't have a plastic bag, like, why have you not brought your plastic bag? Right? Come on, we're all protecting the environment here. You have to bring your plastic bag. So people really, really care and think about the plastic bag, but the reality is that they then wander around the supermarket not thinking at all about the environmental impact of the food products that they're buying. And if you were to weigh up the environmental impacts of the stuff they're buying and putting in the bag, it's probably thousands to tens of thousands times more than actually just the environmental impact of the bag. That's just one example of where what people are focusing on is really skewed from the reality of what makes the most difference.

[Sean Illing]

As we sort of wrap up here, I wanted to bring this back to the question of what can people do that matters? What rises to the top of that list? What institutions, what governments should do, can do, is a separate question. But what can I do that matters? What can everyday people do that matters?

[Hannah Ritchie]

The way we talk about climate and its solutions I think really has quite a profound impact on public discussion more broadly. And I think that filters up to how governments feel about taking action and about how companies feel about taking action. If you have a populace that can see the potential of clean energy, wants to shift away from gasoline cars to electrified transport, or wants to develop cities that run on public transport, if you have a populace that's really passionate about that, I think it makes a huge difference to, I guess you might frame it, bravery of the government or willingness of the government, the incentives for companies to get involved and take action. And I think that starts with us as individuals. And I think that means having really honest discussions with others about your willingness to change and the benefits of these technologies in this transition, and then supporting political parties or leaders that are willing to make that change and basically putting your money on the table for companies that are also trying to shift in that direction.

[Sean Illing]

We are circling around a question that's sort of central to every political project or movement, which is, how the hell do we motivate people? How do we inspire people to do something or to change what they're doing?

[Hannah Ritchie]

I think the narrative component of this is really key when it comes to tackling climate change or environmental problems. Often the narrative is framed around the danger and the risk. Right. And I think that was really, really successful and important and having people understand the problem of climate change, you know, want to be able to take action against it. But as we discussed earlier, most people are convinced that job is done. I think what's really key from here now is helping people understand the solutions and what we need to do. What's really fundamental is that people need to know that there are ways that we can solve this. And in the process of solving this, you also bring a host of other benefits. Is that positive vision of in 2050, what do you want the world to look like? And can you provide a vision and a pathway that helps you get from where we are now to where we are in 2050?

[Sean Illing]

To that end, if we do get most of this right, not perfectly, just mostly, what is that story? What might the world look like?

[Hannah Ritchie]

So rather than living in a world where a few countries basically have a monopoly on the energy system, most countries have a large amount of control over their own energy supplies. And that is not a pipe dream. There's definitely a pathway by which countries get there with these new technologies. The cost of energy is much lower than it is today. So overall, people are getting more energy services, but they're using vastly less energy. And that's because we built this much more efficient system than we currently have.

[Sean Illing]

You dedicate the book to your niece, who will very likely, unlike me, live to see the 22nd century. If she. Her name is. Is her name Maeve or Maeva? Yeah, Mava. If she listens to this conversation in 50 years, what do you hope she says about this period in. About our generation?

[Hannah Ritchie]

So I think on many of these issues, we're at a crossroads. We're in a very good position to make the right choice and go down the pathway that not only protects us, but also protects the future generations and the opportunities that they have. And there's a not so good pathway. So I hope that, looking back on this, my niece in 50 years would be proud that we took the better path, not just for us, but for her. And also for the next generation that comes after her. So I would hope that she would look back and I guess be proud and satisfied that we made the right choice rather than the wrong one.

[Sean Illing]

We're doing it. We're totally doing it, right.

[Hannah Ritchie]

Yeah.

[Sean Illing]

Is that where you've landed? We're doing it.

[Hannah Ritchie]

Yeah.

[Sean Illing]

It's happening.

[Hannah Ritchie]

We can do it. And I'm trying to do whatever I can to, to push us in that, that direction. As I always say like this, the I always present these kind of more positive visions of the future as an opportunity because they're not inevitability. It's going to take us to actually make it happen. But my key point is always like that option is there and it's up to us to go and take it.

[Sean Illing]

Once again, the book is called Clearing the Air, A Hopeful Guide to Solving climate change in 50 questions and answers. Anna Richie, thank you for coming in.

[Hannah Ritchie]

Thanks, Sean. Thank you.

[Sean Illing]

All right. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I certainly did. I mean, let's get real. Whomst among us doesn't need a little bit more optimism in their lives. But as always, we want to know what you think. So drop us a line at the gray [e-mail] or you can leave us a message on our new voicemail line at 1-800-214-5749. We've gotten some really incredible voicemails. Please keep them coming. I love them. And once you're finished, please go ahead, rate, review and subscribe to the podcast. It helps grow our show. This episode was produced by Beth Morrissey, edited by Jorge Just, engineered by Christian Ayala. Fact Checked by Melissa Hirsch and Alex Overington wrote our theme music. New episodes of the Gray Area drop on Mondays. Listen and subscribe. The show is part of Vox. Support Vox's journalism by joining our membership program today. Go to Vox.commembers to sign up and if you decide to sign up because of this show, let us know. This episode was supported by a grant from Arnold Ventures. Fox had full discretion over the content of this reporting. When will AI finally make work easier? How about today? Say hello to Gemini Enterprise from Google Cloud, a simple, easy to use platform letting any business tap the best of Google. AI retailers are already using AI agents to help customers reschedule deliveries all on their own. Bankers are automating millions of customer requests so they can focus on more personal service. And nurses are getting automated reports, freeing them up for patient care. It's a new way to work. Learn more about gemini [e-mail].

[Hannah Ritchie]

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