Thread by @AukeHoekstra

"This Has Been the Best Year Ever"

@NickKristof on why you could choose 2019 as the best year in all history to be alive.

Short thread that adds my ruminations to the @nytimes article.
nytimes.com/2019/12/28/opi…

I like the self reflection. He states he regularly writes about bad news, but "I fear that the news media and the humanitarian world focus so relentlessly on the bad news that we leave the public believing that every trend is going in the wrong direction."

The opposite is true!

Historically, almost half of all humans died in childhood. As recently as 1950, 27 percent of all children still died by age 15. Now that figure has dropped to about 4 percent.

As recently as 1981, 42 percent of the planet’s population endured “extreme poverty,” defined by the United Nations as living on less than about $2 a day. That portion has plunged to less than 10 percent of the world’s population now.

Literacy is increasing at a fast pace which means people can lift themselves out of poverty even more.

Two caveats I see: the world is getting more unequal which is a threat to democracy and happiness.

But I have hope since more egality is better for us amazon.co.uk/Spirit-Level-E… and we all want it. ted.com/talks/dan_arie…

I think reason will prevail.

And we keep killing more animals. We slaughter 72 billion land animals (requiring 80% of land) and one trillion fish every year.

Here I have hope because plant based alternatives and bioreactors will give use cheaper, cleaner and healthier meat that tastes just as good.

So most trends are good. If you want more fact based positivity, maybe order @sapinker's "The better Angels of our Nature" or his new "Enlightenment Now" proving that although the headlines show the falling trees, the forest is growing like never before.
amazon.com/gp/product/014…

Even with regard to climate change it's not only doom and gloom. It's driven for ~80% by burning fossil fuels and we are (much too slowly!) turning in the right direction and 3C is now "business as usual".

https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1207355805378342913

Also written up by @Noahpinion & @dwallacewells

I've written about why this is logical often before but in a nutshell:

We can get massively more energy than we could possibly want from either solar, wind or nuclear.

Solar and wind are rapidly getting cheaper.

Soon it's just stupid to keep burning fossil fuel.

The world is by no means perfect but as @UniofOxford economist @MaxCRoser (also of the great site OurWorldInData.org) neatly puts it:

"Three things are true at the same time.

The world is much better,
the world is awful,
the world can be much better.

One of my new year's resolutions is:

Let's keep trying to make the world a better place by working against all that is awful,

but let's get energy and hope from the provable fact that we are changing most things for the better.

/end