Is Green Growth Possible?
About this episode
The episode asks whether "green growth" — marrying prosperity to sustainability — is possible, or whether saving the planet requires shrinking the economy. Hannah Ritchie of Our World in Data argues it is possible and already happening. Air pollution, she says, is a problem of poverty: countries pollute most while industrializing, then clean up as they get richer — the environmental Kuznets curve, Beijing's post-2008 cleanup being one example. Rich countries have decoupled growth from emissions; Britain's carbon footprint is below its grandparents' generation. On trade-offs: mining for batteries is a fraction of fossil-fuel extraction, solar uses far less land than corn ethanol, and nuclear deserves more credit given fossil air pollution kills millions yearly. Food is the harder problem: vast land goes to grazing, cattle drive deforestation, and cutting beef is the biggest individual lever — Ritchie herself went vegan. Klein's caveat: climate policy must sell prosperity, not austerity.