It may not feel like it, but 2012 has been the greatest year in the history of the world. That sounds like an extravagant claim, but it is borne out by evidence. Never has there been less hunger, less disease or more prosperity. The West remains in the economic doldrums, but most developing countries are charging ahead, and people are being lifted out of poverty at the fastest rate ever recorded. The death toll inflicted by war and natural disasters is also mercifully low. We are living in a golden age.
To listen to politicians is to be given the opposite impression — of a dangerous, cruel world where things are bad and getting worse. This, in a way, is the politicians’ job: to highlight problems and to try their best to offer solutions. But the great advances of mankind come about not from statesmen, but from ordinary people. Governments across the world appear stuck in what Michael Lind, on page 30, describes as an era of ‘turboparalysis’ — all motion, no progress. But outside government, progress has been nothing short of spectacular.
Take global poverty. In 1990, the UN announced Millennium Development Goals, the first of which was to halve the number of people in extreme poverty by 2015. It emerged this year that the target was met in 2008. Yet the achievement did not merit an official announcement, presumably because it was not achieved by any government scheme but by the pace of global capitalism. Buying cheap plastic toys made in China really is helping to make poverty history. And global inequality? This, too, is lower now than any point in modern times. Globalisation means the world’s not just getting richer, but fairer too.
The doom-mongers will tell you that we cannot sustain worldwide economic growth without ruining our environment. But while the rich world’s economies grew by 6 per cent over the last seven years, fossil fuel consumption in those countries fell by 4 per cent. This remarkable (and, again, unreported) achievement has nothing to do with green taxes or wind-farms. It is down to consumer demand for more efficient cars and factories.
And what about the concerns that the oil would run out? Ministers have spent years thinking of improbable new power sources. As it turns out, engineers in America have found new ways of mining fossil fuel. The amazing breakthroughs in ‘fracking’ technology mean that, in spite of the world’s escalating population — from one billion to seven billion over the last two centuries — we live in an age of energy abundance.
Advances in medicine and technology mean that people across the world are living longer. The average life expectancy in Africa reached 55 this year. Ten years ago, it was 50. The number of people dying from Aids has been in decline for the last eight years. Deaths from malaria have fallen by a fifth in half a decade.
Nature can still wreak havoc. The storms which lashed America’s East Coast in October proved that. But the speed of New York City’s recovery shows a no-less-spectacular resilience. Man cannot control the weather, but as countries grow richer, they can better guard against devastation. The average windstorm kills about 2,000 in Bangladesh but fewer than 20 in America. It’s not that America’s storms are mild; but that it has the money to cope. As developing countries become richer, we can expect the death toll from natural disasters to diminish — and the same UN extrapolations that predict such threatening sea-level rises for Bangladesh also say that, in two or three generations’ time, it will be as rich as Britain.
War has historically been humanity’s biggest killer. But in most of the world today, a generation is growing up that knows little of it. The Peace Research Institute in Oslo says there have been fewer war deaths in the last decade than any time in the last century. Whether we are living through an anomalous period of peace, or whether the risk of nuclear apocalypse has proved an effective deterrent, mankind seems no longer to be its own worst enemy. We must bear in mind that things can fall apart, and quickly. Germany was perhaps the most civilised nation in the world in the 1920s. For now, though, it is worth remembering that, in relative terms, we have peace in our time.
Christmas in Britain will not be without its challenges: costs are rising (although many children will give quiet thanks for the 70 per cent increase in the price of Brussels sprouts). The country may be midway through a lost decade economically, but our cultural and social capital has seldom been higher — it is hard to think of a time when national morale was as strong as it was during the Jubilee and the Olympics. And even in recession, we too benefit from medical advances. Death rates for both lung and breast cancers have fallen by more than a third over the last 40 years. Our cold winters still kill people, but the number dying each year halved over the past half-century. The winter death toll now stands at 24,000 — still unacceptable in a first-world country, but an improvement nonetheless. Britain’s national life expectancy, 78 a decade ago, will hit 81 next year.
Fifty years ago, the world was breathing a sigh of relief after the Cuban missile crisis. Young couples would discuss whether it was responsible to have children when the future seemed so dark. But now, as we celebrate the arrival of Light into the world, it’s worth remembering that, in spite of all our problems, the forces of peace, progress and prosperity are prevailing.
EmanuelaOrlandi posted:thats bullshit i have had 4 pet albatrosses in my life and none of them ever gave me a tick
you should have handed in better work then
Take global poverty. In 1990, the UN announced Millennium Development Goals, the first of which was to halve the number of people in extreme poverty by 2015. It emerged this year that the target was met in 2008. Yet the achievement did not merit an official announcement, presumably because it was not achieved by any government scheme but by the pace of global capitalism. Buying cheap plastic toys made in China really is helping to make poverty history. And global inequality? This, too, is lower now than any point in modern times. Globalisation means the world’s not just getting richer, but fairer too.
oooooh my god
real food prices have double since 2000 and global depth of hunger has fallen 0.0001%
And what about the concerns that the oil would run out? Ministers have spent years thinking of improbable new power sources. As it turns out, engineers in America have found new ways of mining fossil fuel. The amazing breakthroughs in ‘fracking’ technology mean that, in spite of the world’s escalating population — from one billion to seven billion over the last two centuries — we live in an age of energy abundance.
wealth isnt finite
Germany was perhaps the most civilised nation in the world in the 1920s.
Advances in medicine and technology mean that people across the world are living longer. The average life expectancy in Africa reached 55 this year. Ten years ago, it was 50.
twenty years ago, it was 49.52
Christmas in Britain will not be without its challenges:
But now, as we celebrate the arrival of Light into the world, it’s worth remembering that, in spite of all our problems, the forces of peace, progress and prosperity are prevailing.
the leading light is prevailing
mustang19 posted:real food prices have double since 2000 and global depth of hunger has fallen 0.0001%
what exactly does this tricky little phrase "depth of hunger" mean and where does that stat come from
Ironicwarcriminal posted:Lots of good news in there I think we can all agree, even if our generation (like every other generation in it’s youth) likes to revel in melodrama and believes that it is the one who will be living in the end times
lol at huey downvoting this. hitherto you had the war to end all wars, the greatest generation, the age of Aquarius, the end of history. Of course we want to dramatize the current situation and make it out like we're meaningful or special.
Anyway i really don't see why it's neccessary to be such a sadsack about these things: famine has been almost eliminated, barely anyone dies in war (18 month of Syria is half a day at the Somme), hundreds of millions have been removed from what Marx called "the idiocy of rural life". I know it's a shitty system we're under but so many incredible things have been achieved that it seems so ungrateful to put our hands in our pockets and kick tufts of grass on the ground muttering "everything sucks".
Perhaps it's not exactly what you're looking for, but if you want to wallow in the mythologized romanticism of a shitty past then maybe you could try A Song of Fire and Ice by George RR Martin?
Ironicwarcriminal posted:Ironicwarcriminal posted:Lots of good news in there I think we can all agree, even if our generation (like every other generation in it’s youth) likes to revel in melodrama and believes that it is the one who will be living in the end times
lol at huey downvoting this. hitherto you had the war to end all wars, the greatest generation, the age of Aquarius, the end of history. Of course we want to dramatize the current situation and make it out like we're meaningful or special.
Anyway i really don't see why it's neccessary to be such a sadsack about these things: famine has been almost eliminated, barely anyone dies in war (18 month of Syria is half a day at the Somme), hundreds of millions have been removed from what Marx called "the idiocy of rural life". I know it's a shitty system we're under but so many incredible things have been achieved that it seems so ungrateful to put our hands in our pockets and kick tufts of grass on the ground muttering "everything sucks".
Perhaps it's not exactly what you're looking for, but if you want to wallow in the mythologized romanticism of a shitty past then maybe you could try A Song of Fire and Ice by George RR Martin?
you realize billions of people will die within the coming decades due to famine and drought caused by these "achievements" - which is really just excessive burning of fossil fuels so that anglos can have unlimited supply of dorritos and their faces permanently melded onto iphone screens
it's not even funny to joke about considering the wave of horror that's going to face humanity in the coming years. look at the population growth since the 1960s, all of that will vanish in bloody strife even quicker than the population growth occurred
AmericanNazbro posted:Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Lots of good news in there I think we can all agree, even if our generation (like every other generation in it’s youth) likes to revel in melodrama and believes that it is the one who will be living in the end times
lol at huey downvoting this. hitherto you had the war to end all wars, the greatest generation, the age of Aquarius, the end of history. Of course we want to dramatize the current situation and make it out like we're meaningful or special.
Anyway i really don't see why it's neccessary to be such a sadsack about these things: famine has been almost eliminated, barely anyone dies in war (18 month of Syria is half a day at the Somme), hundreds of millions have been removed from what Marx called "the idiocy of rural life". I know it's a shitty system we're under but so many incredible things have been achieved that it seems so ungrateful to put our hands in our pockets and kick tufts of grass on the ground muttering "everything sucks".
Perhaps it's not exactly what you're looking for, but if you want to wallow in the mythologized romanticism of a shitty past then maybe you could try A Song of Fire and Ice by George RR Martin?
you realize billions of people will die within the coming decades due to famine and drought caused by these "achievements" - which is really just excessive burning of fossil fuels so that anglos can have unlimited supply of dorritos and their faces permanently melded onto iphone screens
it's not even funny to joke about considering the wave of horror that's going to face humanity in the coming years. look at the population growth since the 1960s, all of that will vanish in bloody strife even quicker than the population growth occurred
no i don't realize that, life expectancy in Asia's risen from 48 to 70 years in the past half century. People have more daily calories available to them than any before thanks to sophisticated farming techniques.
Climate change and energy issues will cause problems sure, but i see no evidence whatsoever that billions are going to die.
THE number of young children dying before they reach their fifth birthday has been slashed from 12 million a year to 7 million over the past two decades.
UNICEF's annual estimate of child mortality has found 14,000 fewer children under five now die each day than in 1990. Even so, almost 19,000 under fives are still lost daily, mostly from poverty-related illness that could be easily prevented.
Countries in Australia's region have achieved some of the biggest improvements.
In Laos the rate fell 72 per cent between 1990 and 2011, while East Timor's dropped 70 per cent. The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund says 20 high-mortality countries have reduced their rates by more than half since 1990.
The chief executive of UNICEF in Australia, Norman Gillespie, said the latest figures showed how foreign aid had helped bring stability in the Asia Pacific region.
“If you are getting these types of results, then clearly aid spending is worthwhile in anybody's book,” Dr Gillespie said. “There are so many advantages not just to local people and individual countries but for the whole region.”
UNICEF estimates the worldwide under-five mortality rate had fallen from 87 per 1000 live births in 1990 to 51 last year. Expanded efforts to combat infectious diseases had underpinned this improvement, it said. Measles deaths declined from about 500,000 in 2000 to 100,000 last year.
Technological advances which had reduced the cost of some immunisations and treatments had helped drive down the infant mortality rates, Dr Gillespie said. The long-term strategy to improve education for girls was also paying dividends.
“You are getting really big step ups in eliminating some diseases now,” he said.
wealthy anglos, doritos, iphones blah blah blah
Ironicwarcriminal posted:AmericanNazbro posted:Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Lots of good news in there I think we can all agree, even if our generation (like every other generation in it’s youth) likes to revel in melodrama and believes that it is the one who will be living in the end times
lol at huey downvoting this. hitherto you had the war to end all wars, the greatest generation, the age of Aquarius, the end of history. Of course we want to dramatize the current situation and make it out like we're meaningful or special.
Anyway i really don't see why it's neccessary to be such a sadsack about these things: famine has been almost eliminated, barely anyone dies in war (18 month of Syria is half a day at the Somme), hundreds of millions have been removed from what Marx called "the idiocy of rural life". I know it's a shitty system we're under but so many incredible things have been achieved that it seems so ungrateful to put our hands in our pockets and kick tufts of grass on the ground muttering "everything sucks".
Perhaps it's not exactly what you're looking for, but if you want to wallow in the mythologized romanticism of a shitty past then maybe you could try A Song of Fire and Ice by George RR Martin?
you realize billions of people will die within the coming decades due to famine and drought caused by these "achievements" - which is really just excessive burning of fossil fuels so that anglos can have unlimited supply of dorritos and their faces permanently melded onto iphone screens
it's not even funny to joke about considering the wave of horror that's going to face humanity in the coming years. look at the population growth since the 1960s, all of that will vanish in bloody strife even quicker than the population growth occurredno i don't realize that, life expectancy in Asia's risen from 48 to 70 years in the past half century. People have more daily calories available to them than any before thanks to sophisticated farming techniques.
Climate change and energy issues will cause problems sure, but i see no evidence whatsoever that billions are going to die.
despite the tepid contrarianism, you do realize that this is precisely what i was saying; these "achievements" these "sophisticated farming mechanisms" are just inefficient implementations of fossil fuels to boost crop yields in a sloppy unsustainable manner. i can't speak in regards to the exact manner the future will unfold, but given how rapidly the population growth curve has risen, it's not unreasonable to assume the population decline won't be a gentle and soft landing met without horrific human atrocities and death.
i suppose what it comes down to is whether you truly believe capitalism is equipped to handle the coming crisis. that by the time peak oil and global warming begins to effect capital's profit rates, we will be saved by a deus ex machina TED talk on averting the fallout from a global catastrophe that, for all intents and purposes, had already occurred by that point.
discipline posted:it's pretty cool how you could eradicate poverty and hunger in a little more than a year but somehow it's better if the wealthy tripple their pocket size each year while the poor experience a .05% boost in their quality of life. someone somehow connects the two and then the rich are leading us all out of a stone age and into a glorious space age
no you couldn't, because the poors would spend all their money on porn and dope and fake gold coins being sold on infomercials and they'd be in debt and penniless again, so they'd still be in poverty again. give them an inch and they'll take a mile.
“no one rises so high as he who knows not whither he is going.” - Oliver Cromwell