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The world has never been a better place to live in,"
says science writer Matt Ridley, "and it will keep on getting better."
Today, in a world gripped by global economic crisis and afflicted with
poverty, disease, and war, them's fightin' words in some quarters.
Ridley's critics have called him a "denialist" and "shameful" and have
accused him of "playing fast and loose with the truth" for his views on
climate change and the free market.
Yet Ridley, 54, author most recently of The Rational Optimist, sticks to
his guns. "It is not insane to believe in a happy future for people and
the planet," he says. Ridley, who's been a foreign correspondent, a
zoologist, an economist, and a financier, brings a broad perspective to
his sunny outlook. "People say I'm bonkers to claim the world will go on
getting better, yet I can't stop myself," he says. Read on to see how
Ridley makes his case. Brilliant or bonkers? You decide.
1. We're better off now
Compared with 50 years ago, when I was just four years old, the average
human now earns nearly three times as much money (corrected for
inflation), eats one third more calories, buries two thirds fewer
children, and can expect to live one third longer. In fact, it's hard to
find any region of the world that's worse off now than it was then, even
though the global population has more than doubled over that period.
2. Urban living is a good thing
City dwellers take up less space, use less energy, and have less impact
on natural ecosystems than country dwellers. The world's cities now
contain over half its people, but they occupy less than 3 percent of its
land area. Urban growth may disgust environmentalists, but living in the
country is not the best way to care for the earth. The best thing we can
do for the planet is build more skyscrapers.
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3. Poverty is nose-diving
The rich get richer, but the poor do even better. Between 1980 and 2000,
the poor doubled their consumption. The Chinese are ten times richer and
live about 25 years longer than they did 50 years ago. Nigerians are
twice as rich and live nine more years. The percentage of the world's
people living in absolute poverty has dropped by over half. The United
Nations estimates that poverty was reduced more in the past 50 years
than in the previous 500.
4. The important stuff costs less
One reason we are richer, healthier, taller, cleverer, longer-lived, and
freer than ever before is that the four most basic human needs-food,
clothing, fuel, and shelter-have grown markedly cheaper. Take one
example: In 1800, a candle providing one hour's light cost six hours'
work. In the 1880s, the same light from a kerosene lamp took 15 minutes'
work to pay for. In 1950, it was eight seconds. Today, it's half a
second. In these terms, we are 43,200 times better off than in 1800.
5. The environment is better than you think
In the United States, rivers, lakes, seas, and air are getting cleaner
all the time. A car today emits less pollution traveling at full speed
than a parked car did from leaks in 1970.
6. Shopping fuels innovation
Even allowing for the many people who still live in abject poverty, our
own generation has access to more calories, watts, horsepower,
gigabytes, megahertz, square feet, air miles, food per acre, miles per
gallon, and, of course, money than any who lived before us. This will
continue as long as we use these things to make other things. The more
we specialize and exchange, the better off we'll be.
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7. Global trade enriches our lives
By 9 a.m., I have shaved with an American razor, eaten bread made with
French wheat and spread with New Zealand butter and Spanish marmalade,
brewed tea from Sri Lanka, dressed in clothes made from Indian cotton
and Australian wool, put on shoes of Chinese leather and Malaysian
rubber, and read a newspaper printed on Finnish paper with Chinese ink.
I have consumed minuscule fractions of the productive labor of hundreds
of people. This is the magic of trade and specialization.
Self-sufficiency is poverty.
8. More farm production = more wilderness
While world population has increased more than fourfold since 1900,
other things have increased, too-the area of crops by 30 percent,
harvests by 600 percent. At the same time, more than two billion acres
of "secondary" tropical forest are now regrowing since farmers left them
to head for cities, and it is already rich in biodiversity. In fact, I
will make an outrageous prediction: The world will feed itself to a
higher and higher standard throughout this century without plowing any
new land.
9. The good old days weren't
Some people argue that in the past there was a simplicity, tranquillity,
sociability, and spirituality that's now been lost. This rose-tinted
nostalgia is generally confined to the wealthy. It's easier to wax
elegiac for the life of a pioneer when you don't have to use an
outhouse. The biggest-ever experiment in back-to-the-land hippie
lifestyle is now known as the Dark Ages.
10. Population growth is not a threat
Although the world population is growing, the rate of increase has been
falling for 50 years. Across the globe, national birth rates are lower
now than in 1960, and in the less developed world, the birth rate has
approximately halved. This is happening despite people living longer and
infant-mortality rates dropping. According to an estimate from the
United Nations, population will start falling once it peaks at 9.2
billion in 2075-so there is every prospect of feeding the world forever.
After all, there are already seven billion people on earth, and they are
eating better and better every decade.
11. Oil is not running out
In 1970, there were 550 billion barrels of oil reserves in the world,
and in the 20 years that followed, the world used 600 billion.
So by 1990, reserves should have been overdrawn by 50 billion barrels.
Instead, they amounted to 900 billion-not counting tar sands and oil
shale that between them contain about 20 times the proven reserves of
Saudi Arabia. Oil, coal, and gas are finite, but they will last for
decades, perhaps centuries, and people will find alternatives long
before they run out.
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12. We are the luckiest generation
This generation has experienced more peace, freedom, leisure time,
education, medicine, and travel than any in history. Yet it laps up
gloom at every opportunity. Consumers do not celebrate their wonderful
field of choice and, according to psychologists, say they are
"overwhelmed." When I go to my local superstore, I do not see people
driven to misery by the impossibility of choice. I see people choosing.
13. Storms are not getting worse
Not at all. While the climate warmed slightly last century, the
incidence of hurricanes and cyclones fell. Since the 1920s, the global
annual death rate from weather-related natural disasters (that is, the
proportion of the world's population killed rather than simply the
overall number) has declined by a staggering 99 percent.
The killing power of hurricanes depends more on wealth than on wind
speed. A big hurricane struck the well-prepared Yucatán in Mexico in
2007 and killed nobody. A similar storm struck impoverished Burma the
next year and killed 200,000. The best defenses against disaster are
prosperity and freedom.
14. Great ideas keep coming
The more we prosper, the more we can prosper. The more we invent, the
more inventions become possible. The world of things is often subject to
diminishing returns. The world of ideas is not: The ever-increasing
exchange of ideas causes the ever-increasing rate of innovation in the
modern world. There isn't even a theoretical possibility of exhausting
our supply of ideas, discoveries, and inventions.
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15. We can solve all our problems
If you say the world will go on getting better, you are considered mad.
If you say catastrophe is imminent, you may expect the Nobel Peace
Prize. Bookshops groan with pessimism; airwaves are crammed with doom. I
cannot recall a time when I was not being told by somebody that the
world could survive only if it abandoned economic growth. But the world
will not continue as it is. The human race has become a problem-solving
machine: It solves those problems by changing its ways. The real danger
comes from slowing change.
16. This depression is not depressing
The Great Depression of the 1930s was just a dip in the upward slope of
human living standards. By 1939, even the worst-affected countries,
America and Germany, were richer than they'd been in 1930. All sorts of
new products and industries were born during the Depression. So growth
will resume unless prevented by wrong policies. Someone, somewhere, is
tweaking a piece of software, testing a new material, or transferring
the gene that will make life easier or more fun.
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17. Optimists are right
For 200 years, pessimists have had all the headlines-even though
optimists have far more often been right. There is immense vested
interest in pessimism. No charity ever raised money by saying things are
getting better. No journalist ever got the front page writing a story
about how disaster was now less likely. Pressure groups and their
customers in the media search even the most cheerful statistics for
glimmers of doom. Don't be browbeaten-dare to be an optimist!
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