A photovoltaic power station in Muma Lake, China. Costfoto/NurPhoto/AP

This story was originally published by Yale e360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

It has been 10 years since countries signed on to the Paris Agreement, and emissions and temperatures continue to reach new highs, fueling unprecedented weather disasters around the globe. Meanwhile, the shift to clean energy is facing powerful headwinds in the United States, where climate policies are being reversed and support for clean energy is withdrawn.

Yet, while the headlines paint a dismal picture of efforts to rein in climate change, the numbers often tell a different story. That is the assessment of data scientist Hannah Ritchie, a researcher at the University of Oxford and deputy editor of the publication Our World in Data. Analyzing the broader trends on global development, she sees a world making unheralded progress in the fight to stem warming.

Ritchie is the author of a new book Clearing the Air, which uses data to tackle common misconceptions about climate change. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, she explains why she isn’t worried about China’s coal-building spree, why she believes the impact of AI on electricity demand is largely overstated, and why the US reversal on clean energy may do little to slow global progress on climate. 

In the past few months, the US has slashed support for renewable energy. How do you think that will impact the global energy transition?

Obviously at a national level, I think the US transition will slow down. I think people’s assumption would be, of course, that it will also slow down the global transition. I’m not fully convinced of that. I think that often you get a scenario where a large, powerful country like the US leans back, it often creates room for others to lean forward.

I think you’re very much seeing this, even if you just look at China. They’re not just deploying clean energy very quickly domestically. They’re also really dominating global markets and really seeing this as an opportunity. And I think the US........

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