Good News and New Perceptions

I love good news. And these days it can often be found in talks and publications. Among the optimistic statistics cited in the popular book Factfullness are the following. Let’s call them Set A: (1)

• In the last 20 years, the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty has almost halved;
• The majority of people live in middle-income countries;
• 80% of the global population have some access to electricity;
• The share of people with water from a protected source has increased from 58% in 1980 to 88% in 2015; and
• The percentage of undernourished people has decreased from 28% in 1970 to 11% in 2015.

These statistics are encouraging. Here’s a few different ones – Set B:

• Since 1990, the world has lost more than 500,000 square miles of forests that absorb CO2 and heat-trapping greenhouse gases, provide habitat for animal species, and are the basis for discovering many plant-based medicines: (2)
• By conservative estimates, more than 200 species go extinct every year; (3)
• Glaciers in the Arctic, Antarctic, and on mountains around the planet are rapidly melting; one example: If current trends continue, 2/3 of Himalayan glaciers that provide water for billions of people in Asia will disappear by the end of this century; (4)
• Increased electrical production has caused serious environmental problems including acid rain and particulate pollution, greenhouse gases, damned rivers, climate warming, and devastated forests (5) and
• A sixth of the world's population — nearly 1 billion people — live in slums; that number will double by 2030 if developed nations continue with current policies.

Unfortunately, the mind-sets, policies and actions that gave us the good news in Set A also resulted in the bad news in Set B. The development programs that have reduced poverty, malnutrition, etc. have been part of a global Death Economy that is ravaging the earth and destroying the resources upon which it depends. It is a system that is consuming itself into extinction. As I write in my upcoming book, Touching the Jaguar:

We live in a world that has witnessed astonishing improvements, including impressive reductions in infant mortality, poverty, epidemic, and hunger rates and remarkable increases in education, healthcare, longevity, potable water, sanitation, and electrical facilities. And, at the same time, we are threatened like never before by global crises, including climate change, nuclear holocaust, and forms of terrorism and cyberterrorism that often are generated by the widening gap between the very rich and powerful and those who feel totally disenfranchised? How do we respond to those threats?

That question of how we respond to the threats may be the most important question facing our species at this critical moment in our history. It begs us to understand that continuing along the current path of economic development will not work. While that path may augment the lists of good news in Set A in the short-run, it will also increase the bad news in Set B and lead us to a catastrophic end. The post-WWII economic model has fostered a great many benefits; at the same time, it has created global systems that are unsustainable and, in many cases, socially unjust. It is time to change. To paraphrase an applicable adage: Old tools will not fix new technologies.

As anyone who follows my blogs knows, I’m optimistic. I believe that perceptions about what it means to be human on this planet are changing rapidly and that the new perceptions are driving changes in values and actions that move us toward a Life Economy – one that pays businesses and people to clean up pollution, regenerate destroyed environments, recycle and develop new life-sustaining technologies.

Recent demonstrations by young people in many countries, inspired by the speeches of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, have made it clear that coming generations desire something better than what they are inheriting now. They are pleading – demanding – that we change the perceptions and policies which resulted in both Set A and Set B.   

There is a growing consciousness among the young – and increasingly among more and more of the rest of us – that we must build life-styles, infrastructure, and socio-political systems that pass on to future generations economies and that are themselves renewable resources and social institutions that are equitable for all. We must give our offspring a world that is better than the one we inherited.

I love to hear good news. I also want to know that such good news does not lull us into the trance of believing that old policies and programs – the ones that led us down the path to Set B – are right for the future. It is time to recognize that a species that can communicate across the globe instantaneously and send space probes to the far frontiers of our solar system is intelligent and creative enough to expand the good news of Set A and end the bad news of Set B.

(1) Rosling, Hans with Rosling, Ola and Ronnland, Anna Rosling. Factfullness, NY, Flatiron Books, 2018

(2) https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/deforestation/

(3) http://wwf.panda.org/our_work/biodiversity/biodiversity/

(4) https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/big-thaw/; https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/02/04/himalayan-glaciers-predicted-melt-global-warming-bakes-asia/2769305002/

(5) https://education.seattlepi.com/electricity-affect-environment-6590.html

(6) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/1-billion-live-in-slums/