“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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