This essay is Oliver Fung’s winning entry to the Chritchley Salmonson Prize, an annual exam judged by a Cambridge Geography Professor. This year, boys were tasked with reading Hannah Richie’s optimistic approach to climate change Not the End of the World beforehand.

The issue is not that we lack solutions to our environmental problems, but rather it is how quickly we implement them.” Drawing upon arguments and examples from Hannah Ritchie’s book, to what extent do you agree?

Hannah Ritchie’s book Not the End of the World provides a rather optimistic and positive approach to the environmental problems we face today. Overall, I would agree to a certain extent that the issue is not that we lack solutions, but rather how quickly we implement them. Throughout her book, Hannah Ritchie explains the plastic pollution problem we face in terms of the environment in great detail; however, the ways in which she suggests we tackle those problems varies from problem to problem. For example, in some cases she recommends policies and regulations, whereas in other cases she would suggest changes in our daily habits.

Firstly, I do believe that we have sufficient solutions to solve some of the biggest environmental problems our world presents us with. This is made clear throughout the book. For example, she emphasized heavily on the fact that stricter policies should be put in place in terms of paying for carbon emissions or household pollution or tightening rules on over-fishing. I would agree that these are effective ways of reducing environmental damage as they don’t allow anyone from being able to pay off reducing environmental harm. Furthermore, Hannah Ritchie suggests other solutions such as switching to electric vehicles to reduce carbon emissions or reducing the amount of beef we take. Cattle farms can be extremely damaging to forests and the atmosphere. This shows that there is a wide range of solutions that we can implement with our current technology, which would suggest that lacking solutions might not be a problem.

On the other hand, Hannah Ritchie does also admit that there are environmental problems that can’t fully be avoided. For example, she mentions that we will almost be certainly reaching over a 1.5°C increase in global temperature. She explains that this problem can’t really be prevented even though she explains ways in which the damage caused by the temperature rise can be toned down. Moreover, the problem of plastic pollution and microplastics is also a tough challenge to deal with, as the oceans are and have been polluted with plastics and microplastics for so long that it would be impossible to get rid of it all at this point. Even though her research states that microplastics can’t actually be removed and are damaging to the human body, in order to keep biodiversity high in oceans we need to be able to reduce plastic pollution as much as possible.

Ultimately, this shows that we are still lacking a few crucial solutions to some of the biggest environmental challenges this planet faces.

However, even for the solutions that Hannah Ritchie suggests we already have, if and how quickly we implement them is another difficulty to worry about. For example, in COP21, the Brazilian leader Bolsonaro seemed very eager to reduce illegal deforestation in the country; however, reports showed that actually illegal deforestation increased. Sometimes the solutions we have end up not being implemented. In addition, changing the daily lives of people in terms of what they eat and their routines in transport also shows the problem of how quickly we can implement these solutions. People need to be motivated to adapt, which means that a lot of the solutions depend on time. Perhaps the issue isn’t that we lack solutions, but rather the fact that we lack efficient and effective solutions. Imposing regulations is a good first step, as Hannah Ritchie suggests, but acting on and enforcing these initiatives can sometimes be difficult. For instance, the Amazon rainforest is massive, which means that the Brazilian government struggles to cover all that land, resulting in increased deforestation even after Bolsonaro’s promise.

Overall, I do believe that the world in its current state has enough solutions to solve most of the major issues the world is dealing with environmentally. However, I also believe that Hannah Ritchie is somewhat ambitious with some of the solutions she suggests to us in this book. She is asking a lot for people to be changing their daily habits and governments to be investing in problems that might not be prioritized at the moment. On the other hand, I also agree that it will become easier for us to find more efficient and effective solutions in the future as technology develops and becomes more advanced. Hannah Ritchie has also raised other thought-provoking points within the book, such as the fact that we might not have to do anything in some cases. The book makes people aware that they should zoom out and look at the bigger picture to see that environmental problems have been improving for a long time, such as the air pollution in places like London and Beijing. Other examples include the fact that forests are starting to grow back in places like France, as they have transitioned into an economic powerhouse. Therefore, I also agree that some of the more specific problems might not need solutions as Hannah Ritchie optimistically suggests, showing that lacking solutions is less of an issue.

In conclusion, I can only agree to a certain extent that ’the issue is not that we lack solutions, but rather if and how quickly we implement them.’ In short, this is because most of the environmental problems we have already have feasible solutions, and it mostly depends on us humans, if and how quickly we act on them.