I have just finished Hannah Ritchie’s Clearing the Air. More on that later — spoiler, it is a great book. As such, I was interested to see what a review that appeared in The Guardian newspaper had to say about it. The writer overall liked the book, which makes sense. But he didn’t stop there. He found himself falling prey to the genetic fallacy when addressing the idea of the carbon footprint. This is a really common error I see in sustainability writing. Given The Guardian is an English paper, I’ll use terms English people should understand, the quality of the thinking in the review was a bit naff (poor quality) to be honest.
What Is A Video Game Theorist?
The reviewer in The Guardian was Steven Poole. I don’t know him, but he is described on Wikipedia as a British author, journalist, and video game theorist. This is a post about the genetic fallacy. For me to avoid the genetic fallacy I need to not criticize an idea because of who originated them. So, I’m really trying hard not to be too biased against someone who describes themselves as a video game theorist. I may have failed.
Overall, the review makes a lot of reasonable points. Poole likes the book. He explains its benefits noting:
This is a refreshingly pragmatic and undoomy book, which dismantles a lot of dubious arguments, including those made by deep-green degrowthers.
Poole, 2025
So basically, the review does has a lot of good points.
Missing The Point
Rather than leave it at that though Poole manages to demonstrate that he seems to have missed the point of the book. Hannah Ritchie believes in assessing things using data. To her it isn’t good enough to make an assertion about the world, you need to support it with proper evidence. The reviewer, Poole, falls into the trap she warns about. He doesn’t bother giving evidence, I think because he seems to want to say something negative in order to sound clever. (To be fair, it is hard for British people to be completely enthusiastic as I know). He also might need to say Ritchie is doing something wrong in case any of the Guardian readers don’t like her book. So, he says:
It is a shame that she regularly urges the reader to consider their own “carbon footprint”, a concept that was popularised by oil giants such as BP in order to deflect responsibility for global warming on to individual citizens. You can go vegan, stop taking aeroplanes and wear a hair shirt for the rest of your life in an ecstasy of virtuous self-denial, but that won’t make the slightest bit of difference to the planet’s climate. What we need is collective action.
Poole, 2025
Applying The Genetic Fallacy To The Carbon Footprint
The challenge is that Poole’s critique of Ritchie offers no meaningful evidence. Hannah Ritchie seems to think that going vegan and taking fewer flights, if enough of us do it, will help. [BTW I’m not sure why Poole is still using that old-fashioned UK version of airplane]. Ritchie has evidence to support her ideas. Indeed, think about it logically. Beef produces a lot of greenhouse gas emissions, if people stop eating it, we will have fewer emissions. That seems to make sense to me.
To counter this Poole deploys his strong personal opinion untainted by evidence. He believes we don’t need to monitor our carbon footprints, instead we need collective action.
Yes, we need collective action but why does Poole think it is an either-or situation? Can’t we have both collective and individual actions? Will individual action prevent collective action? I assume he must think that individual action will undermine collective action, if so, why? Will giving up meat somehow make collective action less likely. Weird. His ideas seem — what is the word — naff?
His point seems to rely on the common discussion point that the carbon footprint was popularized by a fossil fuel company. That is a fascinating piece of history, but why is that relevant? It absolutely isn’t relevant to this discussion. It is pure genetic fallacy. The origin of the carbon footprint is less than ideal so therefore he has leapt to the conclusion that the idea must be bad. But why?
Vegans Against Collective Action
Regardless of what was the intention behind its popularization does paying attention to your carbon footprint mean that you won’t support collective action? That sounds like nonsense to me.
- Imagine a person who monitors their carbon footprint. They are a vegan, who limits their flights, maybe you are imagining someone a bit puritanical in taking actions to reduce climate change.
- Now imagine a second person who loves their steaks, drives a big truck, and isn’t planning to change any behaviors to address climate change and hasn’t even heard of their carbon footprint.
Who do you think is more likely to support collective action to address climate change? I’m guessing the vegan. Who does Poole think will support collective action? Is he implying it is the person with the big truck whose ideas haven’t been infected by the idea of carbon footprint? Seems pretty absurd, and I think any reasonable person will think that Poole’s argument is cobblers.
To Address The Point More Carefully
To be fair, I am playing a bit fast and loose to illustrate the point. There is a counterfactual Poole could rely on. Maybe the vegan is more likely to support collective action than the meat eater nowadays, but they would be even more likely to support it if they hadn’t heard of their carbon footprint. It’s obviously impossible to completely prove that this counterfactual is wrong. But it seems unlikely to me and Poole, after reading a book that argues that we need to look at the data, makes his strong, counter-intuitive argument, completely without reference to data.
I find the whole idea that we should forget about our own carbon footprint because it distracts from collective action a bit ridiculous. Furthermore, I hope that Poole in his life actually takes personal action to reduce his carbon footprint.
What would you call someone who believes climate change is a problem, lectures people on it, but doesn’t take any individual action? Let’s use the language of London and utilize a bit of Cockney rhyming slang and say that person would be a complete merchant banker.
Fighting Global Warming Is At Its Heart About A Fairer World
Beyond the genetic fallacy Poole added further weirdness to the end of his review. Strangely, Poole wants to divorce working on climate change from building a fairer world. He gets confused when Ritchie talks about how fighting climate change can help build a fairer world
Wait, I thought we were talking about mitigating risks from global warming, not building a fairer world.
Poole, 2025
His puzzlement is odd. Surely, a (the?) key reason to mitigate the risks from global warming is to help those who most need it. It is the poor who will be hurt the most. (Don’t worry, Elon Musk will probably be fine whatever happens). Surely, the reason to fight climate change is to prevent disasters for the poor in Africa, the disappearance of island states, and deaths of the most vulnerable. If fighting climate change isn’t about making the world fairer, what does Poole think it is about?
I was left thinking that maybe Poole wasn’t the right reviewer. Great that he was mostly positive about the book. Still, we need a better messenger to talk about fighting climate change as the message of this video game theorist was a bit naff.
Individual And Collective Action To Make The World Better
Yes, we need collective action but I’m guessing that is more likely to happen if we all show that we care by doing our part.
For more by Hannah Ritchie How To Make The World Better and Denial, Doom, Or Informed Optimism. For details on monitoring your carbon emissions see Measuring Impact On Climate
Read: Steven Poole (2025) Clearing the Air by Hannah Ritchie review – practical climate optimism, The Guardian, September 12th
