Fred Pearce Highlights 40 Years of Green Gains in 2026 Book as Fertility Nears Replacement
Updated
Updated · Livescience.com · Aug 2
Fred Pearce Highlights 40 Years of Green Gains in 2026 Book as Fertility Nears Replacement
1 articles · Updated · Livescience.com · Aug 2
Summary
Granta's 2026 release "Despite it All" argues environmental progress over the past 40 years offers grounds for hope even as climate risks intensify and emissions remain high.
Pearce points to renewables as the clearest shift: solar and wind have become cheaper and faster to deploy than fossil fuels in much of the world, with China driving cost declines and India rapidly expanding solar.
Global fertility has roughly halved to near replacement level, he said, defusing the long-feared population bomb and shifting pressure toward overconsumption in rich countries rather than births in poorer ones.
Nature can also recover if given room, Pearce argues, citing rewilding, forest regrowth in Europe and North America, and past environmental fixes such as the ozone layer, acid rain and leaded petrol.
He says the next challenge is scaling technical fixes fast enough—from cleaner grids to lower-input crops and greener data centers—while tackling inequality that undermines climate action.