Enough with the doom and gloom! Our planet
may be in better shape than you think.
Human beings have a cognitive bias toward
bad news (keeping us alert and alive), and we journalists reflect that: We
report on planes that crash, not planes that land. We highlight disasters,
setbacks, threats, and deaths, so 2022 has kept us busy.
اضافة اعلان
But a constant gush of despairing news can
be paralyzing. So here is my effort to remedy our cognitive biases. Until the
pandemic, I wrote an annual column arguing that the previous year was the best
in human history. I cannot do that this year. But I can suggest that broadly
speaking, much is going right, and this may still be the best time ever to be
alive.
Revolution of renewablesWhere 2022 excelled particularly was in
technological strides.
Solar power capacity around the world is on
track to roughly triple over the next five years and overtake coal as the
leading source of power globally. Technical improvements are constant — such as
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers’ developing a way to produce
thin and flexible solar panels that can turn almost any outdoor surface into a
power source.
There are parallel breakthroughs in
batteries. Batteries, boring? No! They are one of the most exciting frontiers
of technology, making remarkable advances crucial to storing green power.
Likewise, nuclear fusion as an energy source marked a milestone in 2022. Green
hydrogen is also gaining ground and could be useful for shipping and energy
storage.
To be clear: Climate change remains an existential challenge. What is new is that if you squint a little, it is now possible to see a path ahead in which we manage — barely — to avoid calamity.
The upshot is that we are in the midst of a
revolution of renewables that may soon leave us far better off. If things go
right, we will be able to enjoy cheaper, more reliable, and more portable power
than ever before. Truly cheap energy, whether from solar or fusion, could be
transformational: For example, it could run desalination plants to provide the
fresh water that we are running out of.
To be clear: Climate change remains an
existential challenge. What is new is that if you squint a little, it is now
possible to see a path ahead in which we manage — barely — to avoid calamity.
Health tech has likewise made immense
gains. Scientists are making significant progress on vaccines for malaria,
reflecting what may be a new golden age for vaccine development. Immunotherapy
is making progress against cancer. A new gene-editing technique may be able to
cure sickle cell anemia; Bill Gates argues in his annual letter that the same
approach may eventually offer a cure for HIV/AIDS as well.
We have not even mentioned the progress in
artificial intelligence, including ChatGPT. (No, it did not write this column.)
And of course, technology is not taking
leaps just in research labs but is filtering down to improve individual lives.
I am writing this on the family farm in Oregon with the help of our new
Starlink internet service that is beginning to empower rural America (and has
been a game-changer for Ukrainians as they humble their Russian invaders).
A promising statisticIt is true that what may be the most
important trend in my lifetime — historic progress against global poverty — has
stalled because of COVID-19, climate change, and the impact of the war in
Ukraine on global food prices. But it has not collapsed.
Remarkably, preliminary estimates suggest that global child mortality continued to fall during the pandemic. A child is now about half as likely to die by age five as in the year 2000, and one-quarter as likely to die as in 1970.
“The pandemic dip was not that bad on many
outcomes,” said Esther Duflo, an MIT professor and the youngest person to have
won a Nobel in economic science. “It was much less of a cataclysm for Africa
than for us.”
Indeed, World Bank researchers estimate
that the number of people living in extreme poverty actually declined a hair in
2022, although the figure remains higher than on the eve of the pandemic. The
number is about the same as it was in 2018 — and much better than in 2017 and
previous years.
Remarkably, preliminary estimates suggest
that global child mortality continued to fall during the pandemic. A child is
now about half as likely to die by age five as in the year 2000, and
one-quarter as likely to die as in 1970.
I do not minimize the global humanitarian
crisis, and we must do better. Children around the world are suffering
malnutrition that permanently impairs their faculties. Young girls are being
married off. Displaced boys and girls are missing school.
‘It could have been so much worse’But David Beasley, executive director of
the United Nations World Food Program, notes that although the world is facing
“a perfect storm” of calamities, the world responded with an outpouring of
assistance and an international push to allow exports of Ukrainian grain
through the Black Sea. These measures have held off full-blown famine at least
for the time being.
“Quite frankly,” he said, “it could have
been so much worse.”
You may have winced when I wrote above that
“this may still be the best time ever to be alive”. That is deeply contrary to
the public gloom. But would we prefer to live at some other time when children
were more likely to die?
“The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better. All three statements are true at the same time.”
Max Roser of the indispensable website Our
World in Data puts the situation exactly right: “The world is awful. The world
is much better. The world can be much better. All three statements are true at
the same time.”
So all the bad news is real, and I cover it
the other 364 days of the year. But it is also important to acknowledge the
gains that our brains (and we journalists) are often oblivious to — if only to
remind ourselves that progress is possible when we put our shoulder to it.
Onward!
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