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Are We the Last Generation — or the First Sustainable One? | Hannah Ritchie | TED

The word “sustainability” gets thrown around a lot these days. But what does it actually mean for humanity to be sustainable? Environmental data scientist Hannah Ritchie digs into the numbers behind human progress across centuries, unpacking why the conventional understanding of sustainability is misleading and showing how we can be the first generation of humans…

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The word “sustainability” gets thrown around a lot these days. But what does it actually mean for humanity to be sustainable? Environmental data scientist Hannah Ritchie digs into the numbers behind human progress across centuries, unpacking why the conventional understanding of sustainability is misleading and showing how we can be the first generation of humans to actually achieve it.

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67 Comments

67 Comments

  1. Paul Snookes

    September 25, 2023 at 11:36 am

    A really inspiring and well-researched presentation, Hannah. Thank you 🙏. I’d be interested to know what stats you have on the state of biodiversity over the same time frames. You mentioned an increase in trees and an increase in agricultural production that potentially means less land needed for our species. Do you have any stats on how other species are doing?

  2. Rob Lyn

    September 25, 2023 at 11:49 am

    Fantastic presentation. Thank you.

  3. Creators Child

    September 25, 2023 at 11:53 am

    She just believing & regurgitating the narrative….. totally clueless 🤦🏻‍♀️
    The Flouride is definitely working 😵‍💫🤤

  4. DONNA G

    September 25, 2023 at 12:03 pm

    UN is the culprit putting out fear mongering on climate change. Read the agendas. That tells you everything you need to know.

  5. Ty Bowman

    September 25, 2023 at 12:18 pm

    Very misleading. You omitted manufacturing, electricity and agriculture which comprises 77% of the world’s 51 billion tons of CO2 emitted every year. Stop this green washing and include all of the data.

  6. avani patodi

    September 25, 2023 at 12:47 pm

    Addressing sustainability issues by reducing carbon emissions is a doomed approach.

  7. Dale Wolver

    September 25, 2023 at 1:10 pm

    Only if there are 100 million of you left

  8. harshbutt

    September 25, 2023 at 1:18 pm

    Neither. Weirdo cultists.

  9. vicaya

    September 25, 2023 at 1:26 pm

    Reduce animal suffering is required to achieve sustainability.

  10. Glimmmerra

    September 25, 2023 at 1:32 pm

    Bamboo is a really exceptional green building material. It is a sustainable material that requires very little energy to nurture, restrains soil erosion, supplies biofuel, extends wildlife refuge, and manufactures a wholesome food source for both humans and wildlife.

  11. Glimmmerra

    September 25, 2023 at 1:36 pm

    Have to say I was overjoyed to see a solar farm being installed on the drive over to visit my daughter’s family recently! My wish is that they would plant wildflowers in between the panels, or at least by the roadside.

  12. R O'B

    September 25, 2023 at 1:51 pm

    Buying ev’s and eating tofu won’t save the planet, ending greed and wars is a start!

  13. R O'B

    September 25, 2023 at 1:55 pm

    Most of this is bs

  14. joe johnson

    September 25, 2023 at 2:25 pm

    Dream on…

  15. mlindsay527

    September 25, 2023 at 2:33 pm

    So many flaws. “Renewables” are heavily dependent on mined minerals. Mines are not sustainable. That high yield American agriculture is dependent on GMOs, fertilizer, and glyphosate. Also not sustainable. Many of those new forests are single specie monocultures slated to be cut.
    Absent some miraculous technological innovation, we can not buy or grow our way out of this. The best we can do right now is to shrink our population and consumption as gracefully as we can to buy time for new technologies. Hope is important, without it we die. However, this presentation is so naive that it comes off as deceptive.

    • Liz Marks

      September 25, 2023 at 7:14 pm

      I agree.

  16. Reb van Winkelstein

    September 25, 2023 at 2:54 pm

    Electric cars arent environment- friendly.

    • Darin Herrick

      September 25, 2023 at 9:18 pm

      They are just massively more friendly than ICE. ICE has horrific efficiency and directly causes human death through air pollution.

  17. Jan Ainali

    September 25, 2023 at 3:27 pm

    It rhymes well with the ending “we need to do it bigger and much, much faster” that the example of the multistory bike rack in Amsterdam is already obsolete. It was too small, so it has been closed and replaced with a super fresh underground manned bike garage with the capacity of 7,000 bikes (and a smaller one for 4,000 bikes on the other side of the train station).

  18. Lasse Rydmark

    September 25, 2023 at 3:40 pm

    Thank you Jesus🙏🏻, $32,000 weekly profits Our Lord Jesus have lifted up my Life.

    • Lasse Rydmark

      September 25, 2023 at 3:41 pm

      Only God knows how much grateful i am. After so much struggles I now own a new house and my family is happy once again everything is finally falling into place!

    • Jim

      September 25, 2023 at 3:41 pm

      Wow that’s huge, how do you make that much monthly?

  19. WeAre Paramore

    September 25, 2023 at 3:48 pm

    Hello? Your saying that global north countries are reducing their emissions? Which consists of 75% of the global emissions?. Global north can do that because they have the resources while global south who contribute so little to none cant even feed their people and you expect them to transition to renewable without any help.. cool story.. rich countries kickstart this climate catastrophe and poor countries are the one suffering… Coal are declining but oil and gas company from the west and middle east are still continuing their greediness

  20. Yodeling Llamas

    September 25, 2023 at 4:21 pm

    Right, batteries are so good when The Dominican Republic and The Congo are using child slave labor to mine up the cobalt needed for them. Batteries are as sustainable as using coal or oil, except that there is far more coal and oil than cobalt and lithium.

  21. Renata Verdun

    September 25, 2023 at 5:08 pm

    Electric cars are not sustainable, individual responses to collective problems are not sustainable.

  22. First Name Last Name

    September 25, 2023 at 6:16 pm

    Why worry about it we will be dead way before we see true catastrophe. Good luck next generations it was a smoggy ride

  23. Hollo Matlala

    September 25, 2023 at 6:29 pm

    💙

  24. Donavan Miller

    September 25, 2023 at 7:01 pm

    We can’t be sustainable if the wealthy keep controlling our governments

  25. DON MARE PICKUPS

    September 25, 2023 at 7:28 pm

    I can’t understand what she’s saying and if I tried. I would figure out what word she said. But then she says 5 more on top of it. So how where do I set in this? How does my brain function with that kind of accent? Forget it, man, forget it.

    • robinhood 46

      September 26, 2023 at 8:13 am

      You can turn the subtitles on.

  26. Johnny_roots

    September 25, 2023 at 10:47 pm

    Also super rich must be taxed and change their lifestyle. Last year, private jets emissions amounted more CO2 than the whole country of Uganda with 46 million people. It’s unfair to impose lifestyle restrictions on middle class and working class populations while the mega rich just use up an obscene amount of our resources. The 5% richest are responsible for the increase of 37% in GHG emissions in the last twenty years. Look up Confronting Carbon Inequality. Also we need to stop funding fossil fuel industries…

  27. Jony Jos

    September 25, 2023 at 10:57 pm

    Global population has to be limited to 5 Billion. You cannot simply sit and watch that graph going high. Secondly there should be a limit for the use of natural resources for each and every one, including business establishments. If you’re rich you can buy anything lavishly should not be the norm. If you are a company you cannot extract unlimited natural resources. There should be a control or limit for everything.

    • JK Clark

      September 25, 2023 at 11:50 pm

      You could massively cut pollution by just reducing it by 350m

    • Phillip Smith

      September 26, 2023 at 1:02 am

      Cancel your internet and do your part

  28. MOMOMODO

    September 25, 2023 at 11:45 pm

    Really, I just hate the title, the Jomon were plenty sustainable.

  29. Abhay Anand

    September 26, 2023 at 12:07 am

    I dream of living in complete sustainable and eco-friendly environment!

  30. Justa Guy

    September 26, 2023 at 1:31 am

    Look at the data the data says society’s going to collapse because the kids aren’t having kids this entire presentation is a mockery

  31. Dr Joseph Antony

    September 26, 2023 at 3:38 am

    Another implant by elites

  32. David thang

    September 26, 2023 at 4:16 am

    This is inspirational! Hope this trend increases in the future

  33. Blair Marshall

    September 26, 2023 at 7:40 am

    Someone better mention this to CHINA and INDIA

  34. Enrico Evangelista

    September 26, 2023 at 8:25 am

    Do we want a sustainable generation where people are under the oppressive one-world government controlled by oligarchs? Or do we want a sustainable generation where true environmental care is the effect of prosperity, prosperity is the effect of the absence of oligarchy and presence of economic liberty and egalitarianism, egalitarianism is the effect of absence of monopoly granted by government, and market competition is the effect of decentralized government or the absence of big government or total absence of state/government?

  35. Aaron Clark

    September 26, 2023 at 10:35 am

    Nice job Hannah. Everyone, remember it’s okay to not be perfect, but don’t be a prig just because you’re exhausted or think no one is watching. The next generation is watching.

  36. Matej Jenko

    September 26, 2023 at 11:08 am

    Thank you TED for getting back on track with an excelent talk, which is properly data driven and rational. Great job mrs. Ritchie, we need you!

  37. Joost5555

    September 26, 2023 at 12:58 pm

    This Ted is reminding me of the Kate Raworths Tedtalk

  38. Brenda

    September 26, 2023 at 1:42 pm

    Great talk and presentation ❤

  39. Brenda

    September 26, 2023 at 1:54 pm

    Save the trees as much as possible

  40. Brenda

    September 26, 2023 at 1:56 pm

    With God all things are possible

    • catlance

      September 27, 2023 at 10:32 am

      and power of science

  41. Baraz

    September 26, 2023 at 2:33 pm

    Excellent. We need more strong speakers like her in Humanity, that face facts directly and seek realistic solutions. Despair is not an option.

  42. Ben Wilson

    September 26, 2023 at 11:57 pm

    For anyone who’s annoyed with the push for more EV’s because of toxic chemicals used in lithium batteries. The push for EV’s is NOT a push to replace fossil fuels with lithium batteries.
    It’s a push to replace things that run on fossil fuels with things that run on electricity. An electric vehicle can run off anything the produces electricity, it can be lithium batteries today and more green batteries tech tomorrow. It can change instantly as soon as new battery tech comes to market. Just build next years model with different battery cells and you’re done. What we CANNOT change instantly is all the infrastructure required to support EV’s. That takes a lot of time, many 10’s of years. Building massive charging networks, Expanding the national grid to support all the people needing to charge, Understanding all the technical challengers of building EV’s. etc… The EV push is to get all that done now to save time later. It doesn’t matter if an EV today is just as polluting as a fossil fuel car. It maters that we make the change now so we’re ready for all the new battery technologies that will occur over the next 30 years.

  43. Zinaida Erkuru

    September 27, 2023 at 1:20 am

    How about stopping the wars first, before the first sustainable generation dies in nuclear fire?

  44. Bertl Zansinger

    September 27, 2023 at 3:48 am

    Wow, first time I needed subtitles for a TED talk. Suboptimal.

  45. PlaCerHooD

    September 27, 2023 at 5:23 am

    Oh the younger, female version of Hans Rosling

  46. Alex

    September 27, 2023 at 10:14 am

    0:31: 🌍 Young people today feel crippled with anxiety about the future of humanity due to climate change.
    2:40: 🌍 The world has made significant progress in improving human wellbeing, but at the cost of the environment.
    5:50: 🌍 Global CO2 emissions have peaked and are falling due to technological advancements and the decline of coal.
    8:24: ! Technology and innovation have decoupled human progress from environmental impact, allowing us to end global poverty and reduce CO2 emissions.
    11:06: 🌍 The video discusses the importance of sustainability in various aspects of our lives.
    Recap by Tammy AI

  47. catlance

    September 27, 2023 at 10:35 am

    yayy

  48. Kris Berckmans

    September 27, 2023 at 11:28 am

    Thank you! Spread the optimistic message..

  49. Malachi

    September 27, 2023 at 1:52 pm

    Every generation thinks they are the special ones, get over yourselves already.

  50. Thanhatos

    September 27, 2023 at 3:27 pm

    Ok, that’s “inspiring”.
    But that’s say nothing about the rare earth we need to get to reach this kind of world. That’s the only part missing.

  51. Superior Mobile by 13 Fabrication & Personalization

    September 27, 2023 at 5:17 pm

    Okay, so we’re just gonna pretend like indigenous people don’t live sustainably… securing future generations AND living happy fulfilled lives? I’m on board with what she’s saying, but I disagree strongly with her assessment that sustainable people have never inhabited this planet.

  52. TobeyG

    September 27, 2023 at 10:04 pm

    Fantastic presentation! Thank you for all the work you do ❤

  53. Ibrohim Ergashev

    September 28, 2023 at 12:25 am

    Hi absolutely true state

  54. Distaval

    September 28, 2023 at 12:57 pm

    Giving every child a comfortable life will breed weakness.

  55. Shivam Hargunani

    September 29, 2023 at 11:00 am

    This was brilliant! Thank you for all the work that you do, Hannah 👏👏👏

  56. Alex Hunt

    September 29, 2023 at 7:58 pm

    Great talk. Hopium emissions rising to unprecedented levels!

  57. Leanne Phelps

    September 30, 2023 at 2:43 pm

    I’m sure there’s great content in here, but I couldn’t get past the initial argument that all past societies are simply unsustainable b/c of high child mortality

    Sustainability is multifaceted & past livelihoods complex/diverse. Lots to learn about sustainability and resilience in the past. Doesn’t seem like we should dismiss/reduce the past because of one variable (and likely some Malthusian assumptions)

  58. Brice Breard

    October 1, 2023 at 5:52 am

    Are we the first sustainable generation? No. Not yet. Should we become this sustainable generation? Obviously.

  59. Riser

    October 1, 2023 at 11:51 am

    So much fear mongering

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