I loved this clear-eyed guide to global warming

Climate change is one of the most important issues of our time and is causing enormous suffering, especially for the world’s poorest people. That makes it especially important for our conversations about climate to be grounded in facts. A few months ago I read a book that does an amazing job of that.

It's called Clearing the Air, and it’s the second book by data scientist Dr. Hannah Ritchie, a senior researcher at Our World in Data, an online platform that uses data to create super-clear visuals about global trends. (The Gates Foundation is one of their funders.) I’ve known and admired Hannah for several years. I learned about her work by reading her excellent first book, Not the End of the World, which argues that the global picture—in terms of health, poverty, the environment, and other measures—is a lot brighter than many people think. I liked it so much that I asked her to record an episode of my podcast with me.

Hannah brings the same spirit to Clearing the Air, which came out this year in the U.K. and will be published in the U.S. next March. She organizes it around fifty questions, like Isn’t nuclear power dangerous?, Is there any hope of low-carbon aviation and shipping?, and Aren’t renewables too expensive?

Her answers are a model of science writing for a general audience. She avoids jargon and keeps things concise—most chapters are only a couple of pages long, and each one starts with a summary that’s only one or two sentences long. For example, here’s her brief answer to a question about whether electric cars are too expensive for the average driver: “Electric cars are much cheaper to run, and will soon be just as cheap to buy upfront.” Over the next few pages, she explains why that’s true, but that single sentence is a memorable way to sum it all up.

She opens the book with a sharp question: Isn’t it too late? Aren’t we heading for a 5 or 6°C warmer world?. Here’s her short answer: “Every tenth of a degree matters. There’s no point at which it’s too late to limit warming and reduce damage from climate change.” After expanding on that answer, she turns to a bulleted list of three tips for talking about climate in a more helpful way.

First, she says, “be honest about where we’re heading…the 1.5°C target is dead.” Second, “don’t throw in the towel… Our 1.5°C and 2°C targets are not cliffs or thresholds.… Stop obsessing over arbitrary targets and focus on how you can help to reduce our carbon emissions as quickly as possible.” Finally, she suggests, “watch out for headlines based on worst-case scenarios. … Knowing the impacts of these extreme cases is useful for scientists, but not for policymakers or the public, who assume that this is the most likely outcome.”

One of the reasons we’re probably not headed for a worst-case scenario is that the energy transition is moving remarkably quickly in many areas. Hannah shows that solar and wind are scaling faster than any other energy source in history. In a single year, China built enough solar and wind capacity to power the entire United Kingdom, and half of the cars sold there are now electric.

Those are reasons to be optimistic, but not excuses to be complacent. We need to get renewables out there even faster, and we need to keep working on new breakthroughs like low-emissions steel, cement, and aviation fuel. These would be necessary even if there weren’t also the possibility that the climate will hit a tipping point and start warming faster than scientists are predicting now. Hannah has excellent chapters on each of those areas, and many others.

If I could add a 51^st question to Hannah’s list, it would be: “Aren’t higher temperatures the biggest threat to mankind?” I’d love to hear her answer.  Here’s mine: “Higher temperatures cause serious problems, especially in places with a lot of poverty and disease. The solution is to reduce emissions and also make sure people aren’t sick and poor.” I’m fortunate to be able to help on both fronts: lowering emissions by investing billions in clean-energy innovations, and fighting disease and poverty by giving away all my wealth through the Gates Foundation.

What I appreciate the most about Hannah is that she’s realistic about trade-offs and relentlessly focused on solving problems. As she writes toward the end of Clearing the Air, “The solutions we have today are as bad as they’ll ever be, and that’s a good thing.” They will only get better from here. That’s as true for vaccines and climate-smart seeds as it is for clean energy.

If you want a book that explains the climate challenge without doom or denial, Clearing the Air is a must-read. It’s a hopeful reminder that while the problem is enormous, the progress is real.