Is Green Growth Possible?
b'A decade ago, I was feeling pretty pessimistic about climate change. The politics of mitigating global warming just seemed impossible: asking people to make sacrifices, or countries to slow their development, and delay dreams of better, more prosperous lives.\\n\\nBut the world today looks different. The costs of solar and wind power have plummeted. Same for electric batteries. And a new politics is starting to take hold: that maybe we can invest and invent and build our way out of this crisis. But some very hard problems remain. Chief among them? Cows.\\n\\nHannah Ritchie is the deputy editor and lead researcher at Our World in Data and the author of \\u201cNot the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet.\\u201d She\\u2019s pored over the data on this question and has come away more optimistic than many. \\u201cIt\\u2019s just not true that we\\u2019ve had these solutions just sitting there ready to build for decades and decades, and we just haven\\u2019t done anything,\\u201d she told me. \\u201cWe\\u2019re in a fundamentally different position going forward.\\u201d\\n\\nIn this conversation, we discuss whether sustainability without sacrifice is truly possible. How much progress have we made so far? What gives her the most hope? And what are the biggest obstacles?\\n\\nMentioned:\\n\\n\\u201cWhat was the death toll from Chernobyl and Fukushima?\\u201d by Hannah Ritchie\\n\\n\\u201cReducing food\\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers\\u201d by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek\\n\\n\\u201cFuture demand for electricity generation materials under different climate mitigation scenarios\\u201d by Seaver Wang, Zeke Hausfather et al.\\n\\nBook Recommendations:\\n\\nFactfulness by Hans Rosling\\n\\nPossible by Chris Goodall\\n\\nRange by David Epstein\\n\\nThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.\\n\\nYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of \\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\\u201d at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.\\n\\nThis episode of \\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\\u201d was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show\\u2019s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Kristin Lin and Aman Sahota. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.'