Climate Data Scientist Explains What the Numbers Mean

So I’d encourage considering: Is a saving of 1 million tons of CO2 big or small? It sounds really big. In the global context, it’s actually relatively small. When you’re talking about land use or mining, try to give a sense of how much of the United Kingdom’s land that actually is. Actually, probably it’s like half a percent or something. So that’s the first principle: Ask, is that a big number? And try to give context.

And then I think the other one is thinking about what the counterfactual is. Because, as I say in the book, there is this problem of us always looking for this perfect solution that has no impact whatsoever. So whenever someone sees that this solution has some impact, whether it’s land or mining or whatever, they automatically think, “Oh, we can’t do that because that’s bad because there’s some impact.” In those instances, I think it’s really important to consider the counterfactual. We aren’t striving for a world where we produce zero energy and have zero impact, because that’s just not going to happen.