Thank you Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett for your hand in this!
15
NYT needs to publish much more stories like this.
28
Nick Kristof has a genius for bringing us up when all appears to be down. Thank you, Nick. Good news indeed.
14
Unfortunately, the more children are surviving, without a concomitant practice of birth control, the faster we are killing ourselves! Population growth is not a good thing, for us!!!!! Countries (including our own) are pushing out minority populations. The earth is finite; because of limited resources we have participated in the slaughter of civilians in the Middle East and Afghanistan (it's the poppies); Whole populations are on the move, seeking better lives. They are greeted by growing xenophobia and tilts to the right of our major democratic societies.
The up-side of this year, is in science, the arts, literature, and medicine.
21
Sorry to hear about Hans Rosling. I recommend his YouTube videos on epidemiology and global health; they are amazing.
6
And 2200 refugees drowned in the Meditarrenean trying to reach Europe all while things were better than ever before in their homelands.
6
A shocking editorial on the NY Times op ed page. All other writers here agree that the Armageddon is imminent and its arrival is totally Trump's fault.
6
Progress would mean that no woman on this planet will find herself giving birth to 15 children (and then suffering the loss of 10).
21
Boy, do I need THIS!
5
Thank you for this. A great and necessary annual column.
6
Improvements in various human conditions are inevitable, but to acclaim 2018 as the best year in human history is utterly absurd. Donald Trump, the President of the most powerful nation on earth, is insane and dangerous.
7
It's always about humans. Nothing said about the loss of endangered species, loss of habitat for the animal kingdom, loss of their lives and cruelty inflicted on them. Humans take take and take, throw away throw away and throw away, and then feel good that their lives are improving.
26
Read Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of Our Nature". Human society has come a long way because of Enlightenment ideals of three hundred years ago. A world dedicated to humanistic precepts is and will continue uplift the poor and disenfranchised. The only enemy is ignorance.
7
Thank you for the optimism.
Such anthropocentric “progress” however does not acknowledge or remind us of our place in the web of life.
16
Acknowledging the temporary success of one species out of 8 million on a planet where all 8 million species are interdependent is inherently flawed.
18
I couldn’t help but notice your use of the phrase “access to” electricity, clean drinking water, etc.. Is that the same “access to “ some politicians use for health care and education?
3
What a strange omission here: no mention of where most of these gains are occurring.
Isn't it in countries which reject our market religion -- and liberal democracy along with it?
And no thanks to us and our billionaires?
1
Thank you, Mr. Kristof, you made my day!
3
How many people were added to this vastly overpopulated world in 2018?
I'm looking forward to a day when no mom will again have 10 children.
15
Nick:
With the significant diminution of the world's resources, no woman should be HAVING ten children, let alone fifteen. That's what Planned Parenthood is for, remember? No child should be brought into the world who can;t be fed, clothed, educated properly, enabled fully to survive on the planet. That's just common sense.
8
I keep having this discussion with my kids and friends and they look at me like I am nuts. A big part of it is people don’t read.p this kind of stuff. In addition, it is much for fun to report about a Trump tweet. The news business thrives on bad news.
1
I wish we had more stories like this to ameliorate the usual droning drumbeat of negative news. I do think that things are going to get much, much worse by the turn of the century thanks to our neglect of global warming, but we have a long way to fall before things get as bad as they were a just a few hundred years ago. God willing we in the northern US can hold the line at the "bad" old days of the late nineteenth century. Except for Canada the rest of the continent is probably totally hosed though.
1
What benefits humanity harms the planet. To be blunt about it, fewer human children dying at a young age is bad news for all the other species we share this planet with. Do they not count too? This article is human egotism at its finest.
15
Everyone should read "Enlightenment Now" by Steven Pinker. Around 100 graphs and 500 pages--making this very point!
3
We are less than five percent of the world population. While many are against democracy, it is what got us here. The remaining ninety five percent are unable or unwilling to help themselves.
They could also benefit from democracy. When they do, we can help.
Until then, let's make America better and stronger.
1
Great column, Nick. It would be interesting to know who should get credit for these improvements in well being. My guess, ranked by amount of credit due, would be enlightened government policies in China and India, other local initiatives in Asia, Africa and South America, European philanthropy, US government programs, and US philanthropy. An I way off?
1
Yes, it’s enlightening and pleasing to read Mr. Kristof’s report of how things have improved this year. And most likely this kind of improvement will continue in the foreseeable future, because they’re due inlarge part to technological advances. These have brought enormous improvements in health, health care, prevention, hygiene, nutrition, agriculture, and so forth. Education and women’s rights are making meaningful advances.
But bad politics, bad politicians and bad national leaders have kept even these advances from improving things nationally and globally as much as they could. Trump and the Trumps around the world are undermining, indeed, sabotaging, much of what could and should be a much better world now, and in the future.
3
Thanks, Nick. We all need refreshers like this from time to time. I do appreciate this column. So many somehow still have the idea that life can and should be perfect. Some of us know that it ain't and never will be. But the complainers and naive idealists like many commenting here will continue to whine, moan, and blame, regardless of the progress that is definitely being made.
1
Great to read something positive in the Times instead of griping and whining.
3
All good things. Just one nit to pick. From the numbers gaining access to clean drinking water, electricity, etc, you must, to arrive at a significant figure, subtract the numbers who have lost such access.
Even good reporters can get it wrong.
While it is very important, perhaps more than ever, to maintain a positive attitude about our place on this planet, we need practical (not delusional) optimism for how we tackle what might seem like intractable problems today. These problems are directly connected to the better lives more of us appear to have. To borrow Joni Mitchell's lyrics we are "caught in a devil's bargain," having built our new society on those "billions years of carbon."
But to announce that we once again are living better lives than ever before seems like what those in the first class cabin of the Titanic were probably thinking about the wonderful new technology that was making their voyages so much nicer, while the iceberg lay ahead in its path.
While much of what Kristof points to may be factually true, the future problems that we are creating now dwarf those improvements. So the worst thing that we can do now is to become complacent by shifting focus to some statistics so we can feel better. Sorry folks, but future generations will scoff at these kinds of articles unless we come together and focus on how we will deal with what Ian Morris calls the 5 Horsemen of the Apocalypse (state failure, disease, mass migration, famine and climate change).
Until we learn how to tackle greed, sloth and fear, our comfort in statistics like these will only hasten the speed of the horsemen as they ride down upon us.
4
I expect it has always been so.
Equally the destruction of the planet no doubt also continues apace.
I pray that mankind can stop worshipping money, and start to use our massive human resources to work with our natural environment instead of against it before it is too late.
4
Thank you for the optimistic view Mr Kristof. I needed a break. I wish you and the rest of us the strength we need to do good in 2019.
It's great to be optimistic! But can our old earth support this new consumer population? Remember when we worried about overpopulation? What happened?
6
Great column Mr. Kristof! But there's a word missing from it, the name of the driver of all the progress you report. Its name is: Capitalism.
1
Nicholas Kristof is one of the most objective columnists I know. Although I appreciate that he listed some of the optimistic progresses we have made in the year of 2018 (which I totally agree with), I have to say I am a little surprised and even disappointed that he has not even mentioned a word on the Uyghur humanitarian crisis the year of 2018 has witnessed. According to UN and other credible sources, up to a million Uyghurs are locked up in the Chinese internment camps in Xinjiang for indoctrinations where they are forced to renounce their identity and pledge allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party. The camps are not at all 'vocational training centres' as the Chinese government claims, because how anyone would explain the detainment of hundreds of intellectuals and professionals who already have excellent jobs, and do not need any training. What's more, many of those intellectuals are the member of CCP.
They year of 2018 can not be the best year in human history. I hope that the Uyghur humanitarian crisis in 2018 which is unfortunately doomed to continue in 2019, should be on top of list when we talk about the achievements or disasters in 2018/2019.
1
Does it seem narrow to only view progress in terms of people while most of the other species on earth are threatened, with many going extinct every year? Can things turn out for the better for humanity if the rest of the world -- animals, plants, and environment -- is continuously degraded? I'm not sure that one species can prosper if most others are not. Again, this may be a short-sighted article.
15
History will challenge your assumption.
You are off by two years.
January 20, 2017, the day Donald J Trump took the oath of office as president of the United States, marks the beginning of the decline of human civilization.
On that day, all progress made by the joint cooperation of the free nations on the planet ended. Any chance of halting the progression of climate change ended. The belief in science and technology ended. Free trade ended. Civil discourse ended.
Ignorance has taken hold and not just in this country but around the world. Trump's victory has given license to extreme right wing ultra nationalistic groups around the world.
I hate to be the pessimist, but I never thought we would be in the position we are in. We are are no longer a leader of nations. We are no longer the Shining Beacon on the Hill.
Much of the progress of which you speak, is the result of decades of hard work and good science often led by the US.
That has come to an end.
Can we get it back?
Only time will tell.
But time is not on our side.
5
All of this "good news" is overshadowed by "Climate Change," which represents an existential threat to the planet. All of the vaccinations and literacy and reduced poverty and "optimism" in the world will not save us from environmental catastrophe unless we institute radical changes now.
16
And don't forget we mined more, fished more, drained more aquifers, cut down more trees, put more species under stress. And put out more greenhouse gases. With every year our dominion of Nature grows more complete. The world must be bent to the human will. The planet must be turned into a giant mine and plantation to serve our needs. Nothing may be allowed to get in our way. Soon we will be 10 billion and who knows, maybe more. Imagine how wonderful things will be then!
16
Since the days of Jesus and of Malthus humans have fretted over declining resources and rising population but human ingenuity always prevails. Study a bit of history. Everything’s going to be fine. We will adapt.
2
@BD
Sure. We will adapt by living in climate controlled bubbles without nature. Maybe like the Jetsons!
No thanks.
3
Thank you so much. Good news does help propel us forward knowing that generation by generation, decade by decade, some things are getting better.
Your column gives us hope and hope sends us out the door each day and makes charitable donations feel even better.
Thank you again.
6
I appreciate this article, but I'm not on board. Between our aggressive destruction of biodiversity and increasing emissions of greenhouse gases, any of the gains Kristof writes about are fleeting illusions. This article does more harm than good: Things are great, I can be complacent and continue whatever I'm doing that is leading to human misery and long term human misery.
11
Thanks for this timely reminder that our own particular problems in the US are not always the main event for everyone else. There is much good news in this column. Just think that it might be even better if the US rights its course and once again becomes the world leader for good our traditions and resources enable us to be.
6
Hooray for utilitarianism and the greatest good for the greatest number! By that measure, any real humanitarian should have been all for NAFTA and globalization in general, since the reduction of poverty in China, Mexico, etc., far, far outweighed the loss of jobs in America. (Too bad all the profits from the process of gutting American manufacturing for the benefit of the world's poorest went to our top 1%, however!) All utilitarians should be cheering the prospect of China and Indias' both dwarfing little America by 2100. Even if there's much more poverty then here than today, who cares? In both China and India, the numbers lifted out of poverty and misery will be much, much larger than our entire population. It's easier for NY Times readers to cheer this argument than it is for unemployed American steel workers. But it remains valid nonetheless. We just need to get better at spreading the profits and pains of globalization around in this country. We need to make America itself utilitarian, instead of Republican and Democratic neoliberal.
6
@Fred White...It may be too early to celebrate just yet....Did you forget that CHINA is still communist and INDIA is struggling with corruption and thier own demons.
Get a grip....been to both countries and I would rather live in 'dwarfed' American than these so called 'other' countries. The lines coming into our country are literally 1,000 times (no exaggeration) longer getting to America. When that line shrinks..then lets see .
More accurately, 2018 was another “best of times, worst of times” season.
In addition to what Kristoff mentions, the Gates Foundation and others did a spectacular job of bringing vaccines, toilets and cleaner water to more of the world.
I learned on a journey through Central America recently that the Presbyterian churches of USA have been funding purchase and distribution of efficient ceramic cooking stoves to Guatemalans who have been deforesting much of the nation in effort to cook.
And Cleveland Clinic has sent more than 70 pediatric surgical teams to Honduras to give destitute and catastrophically ill children healthy hearts. The US military transports for the surgical teams every single item needed for the surgery, down to the sutures. And the supplies are donated.
But meanwhile, I continue to hear horror stories from immigrants who still have relatives in the Philippines, Pakistan, Africa and elsewhere. In Nigeria, the kidnappings and murder rates are a constant worry for relatives in USA. Indeed, a physician who works with my husband had a cousin kidnapped and murdered In Nigeria about six weeks ago.
Meanwhile, our nation has STILL left many Americans without running water and electricity in Puerto Rico, 15 months after the hurricane. Only about 45 percent of FEMA public assistance grants had reached Puerto Rico by the end of October.
Now the government shutdown is destroying more American lives already struggling to economically survive.
11
Thanks for the reminders. I do wish we had a "good news" channel sometimes. Why do we focus on "bad" news more? I suspect somewhere inside us it makes us feel a bit better about our own lives. It is unfortunate that we need that.
4
In a broad view, millennia of seemingly slow human progress has inevitably led to thinking and acting globally. Advances in mathematics, the birth of modern science, revolutions of democratic ideas are a mere three-hundred years old, recent enough for some today to actually feel taking part. Population growth, medical and technological advances, declarations of human rights, addressing inhumane living and working conditions, and policies to solve generational poverty occurred in the previous century. All these things have led to realization world wars and weapons advances demand global tolerance, cooperation, and man-made solutions to man-made and other problems - poverty, disease, natural disasters, and climate. Add to these advances instant communications and the world shrinks exponentially to like the size of a small town where everyone knows everyone else’s business.
Humans can revel in the progress made, have hope humankind can solve new problems, knowing our neighbors, even in the face of backlash representing fear, hatred, greed, and all the negative human emotions.
35
I really like columns (let alone people) that are positive and present flourishes in the abstract. It is good to take stock and look over the numbers, and perhaps bend them to whatever conclusion you want to come to. Let's all do that for a day, or two, or even three.
Then let's get back to the grindstone and use the flip side of those numbers to put a face on the problems we face. They are not abstract and they are very real. (becoming more and more real for millions each and every day)
Is it enough that disease, poverty, and strife are at their lowest levels in human history, when we are on the precipice of eliminating ourselves via man made climate change ?
Is it enough to raise up the 3rd world, while the disparity in the 1st is becoming more and more crushing with each new republican tax theft ?
Is it enough to subsidize twenty million people to ''buy'' health care insurance, while still leaving millions more behind, as well as tens of thousands to perish each and every year still ?
Is it enough to promote anything positive while we (the western world and the U.S. in particular ) are waging war still in the Middle East and elsewhere - all the while supporting and supplying forces that are committing war crimes and genocide ?
Indeed, lets take a moment to look at and perceive that the glass is half full, but then let's take a closer look and realize that there is a hole in the bottom of glass, and then do something about it.
Just a thought >
117
I'd love to see more factfulness... but economics-focused news like the ones about poverty reduction, electricity, internet leave out the ecological cost this comes at - and ecologically focused news (typically, warnings) come without much consideration of the human and economic aspects.
It makes it all look like there's a disconnect that has to be there. Which makes it easy to tell stories of how whichever side one dislikes is all wrong, while one's own side is the right one. Which also makes it look as if either we or the world were doomed.
The big question, then: Who will span that gap and look at how we can live better, see further progress, for people and "planet"?
2
@Gerald Zhang-Schmidt The only way is a new philosophy that accepts both continuity and fallibility and sits light to passing judgment. This is inherent in spirituality that is affirming and in some but hardly all of the self-help efforts. The glass has always been half full but we have been harnessed to philosophies that are mostly binary. Only a positive triadic philosophy that is centered on ethics and aesthetics will suffice. C. S. Peirce did the spadework but the best is up to us.
3
Yes, progress indeed, but we have to acknowledge that progress brings with it a series of higher class problems. The UN says there are a bit fewer than 750 million people living on less than $2 a day so that’s progress. But living on just above $2 isn’t that great. For the past few decades we’ve been adding one billion people to the planet per decade and we’re on track to have 10 billion here by mid-century. Here’s the bad news: We’re not doing nearly enough to figure out how to feed, shelter, water and educate them. We ought to measure progress in those things at a time when we’re running out of fossil fuels but focus on the fact that the planet is getting drier in growing regions. We simply must begin bending the population growth curve down.
103
The good news, Denis, is that lifting people out of poverty by itself bends the population curve. After that, when people receive a basic, primary-school education, the birth rate declines significantly.
18
While this is a compelling argument, it assumes human happiness is measured mostly by rates of poverty, disease, access to technology, etc. These are critical metrics, to be sure, but they don't measure things like societal or personal freedom or deep human connection. Quality of life can be measured in myriad ways.
Still, I take Mr. Kristof's larger point to heart, especially in these perilous times. We should all cultivate gratitude for the blessings we do have, particularly when many of us in this country live with a bounty the rest of the world only dreams of. And we should certainly celebrate any improvement in literacy and well-being for the world's most desperate inhabitants.
Thank you for the reminder, Mr. Kristof.
69
Mr. Kristof doesn't acknowledge it, but the vast decrease in world poverty is due to a number of countries - India and China most notably - moving from socialist to capitalist economies.
Also, it's clear that the large number of commenters arguing that life expectancy in the US has declined didn't read the article - or have poor reading comprehension. Mr. Kristof acknowledged that the US is an outlier with declining life expectancy, mostly due to the opioid epidemic.
2
@J. Waddell Very correct. Knowing that India and China are moving away from socialism to capitalism, one has to wonder then why today's Democrats are so enamored with implementing socialism here?
It is very true that a poor country transferring to a freer capitalist society can move millions out of poverty; China is a great example over the last few decades. Yet, once an economy has reached a post-modern capitalist state, progressive and regulatory policies must be enacted to prevent extreme wealth from only benefiting the few, while the many get left behind.
Also China was hardly socialist before, more like a semi-corrupt communist pseudo dictatorship. Denmark is much more accurately socialist, and they’re the happiest people on earth.
@J. Waddell
the opiod epidemic.........and the ludicrous US gun laws.
1
Thank you! This is exactly the discussion I keep having with the young people in my life to help them gain perspective. They are agonized over the suffering caused by inequality and man's inhumanity to man that they read about and study in college. Even as they actively volunteer and work to contribute to the good of the world I see them overwhelmed to the brink of despair. I try to open their eyes to the big picture that mankind is marching forward to a better day one day at a time, year after year and we can all contribute and play our role. Thank you! Your annual column reminds us that our faith and hope in mankind to keep evolving and do the right thing is not a fantasy but a reality unfolding every day around the world. I will be forwarding your column to all the young people in my life. Thank you!
95
All of these gains come at a cost to a planet with finite resources and already irreversible global warming. We march along with no plan in place to control inexorable population growth and fossil fuel consumption. How many of the 295,000 people per day getting electricity are getting it from added coal fired plants and other non-renewable sources? Sorry to be the spoil sport, but our success will also be our demise.
304
omg, I have known successful people from small towns in Mexico who remember when their house was wired up and they studied under their first bare bulb light. Some of their school mates in the seventies suffered from polio and now mountain towns and far flung farms are getting internet WiFi. Yes they will have to become greener in their electricity production but the children gaining access to light for homework may solve many of our remaining challenges. Our success will multiply worldwide.
48
@Dr Tommy C, The only hope to control the population growth is precisely to change people's living conditions so that they are reasonably assured that the children they have will survive, can become literate, and are not needed in multiples as money earners/farm labor. Then of course they need ready access to birth control. Lots of empirical evidence says that educating young women beyond the early grades is crucial to making this plan work. Most if not all of the advances that Kristoff cites advance those goals directly.
By the way, I see the effect of such differences a couple generations back in my own family. My maternal grandparents came from farm families with 7 and 9 children. My city dwelling paternal grandparents' families had 4 and 3 children. My mother was the second oldest of 34 first cousins which sounds like a lot until you consider that their parent generation was 16 people, only two of whom were childless. Quite a change in one generation. Similar things are reported to be happening in countries that can actually be called developing.
47
@Dr Tommy C Would that folks with Dr Tommy's outlook only used their fair share of the world's resources. At least one could ask that they never fly on an airplane unless absolutely necessary, not live in an oversized house, eat no more than a few ounces of meat each day, and so forth. The Al Gore paradox is real, but he's probably buying lots of carbon offsets, so it's all good.
18
That is wonderful news. Only when we have a world where women have zero, one, or two children will humanity and the biosphere as we know it have a chance to survive.
7
You do know that overpopulation is no longer an issue right? It’s the opposite now; global economies aren’t having enough kids to sustain themselves.
What would be more positive is more animals surviving. Less species dying out. The world needs less people not more. Don’t get me wrong I am not a Malthusian but more people equals more waste, geater carbon footprint, and greater cost to the environment. More people essentially means more endangered animals being killed due to the Asian use of horns and the hubris of those who believe they should be hunting big game.
7
I love this column!
Thanks for the update as to how terrific we are doing as a world!!!
1
I like hearing this news. Indeed we all do! We are very clever and occasionally we solve real problems! But while it may be counter-intuitive and perhaps even heretical, it is increasingly evident that our greatest threats emanate from some of our greatest 'successes'. Our enormous ecological debts are coming due. If any journalist knows this, surely it's Nick Kristof.
4
Insightful as usual. Thanks Nick.
It may have been great for humans but that’s about it. Humans are continuing to make life terrible for other species when it is killing them all. Focusing on just humans, as Kristof does here, is the real problem. Humans cannot help making it all about them. What an arrogant, and ultimately insecure species we are! Look how great everything is for us! We’re doing so well! Meanwhile insect populations are plummeting, the number of fish in the sea continues to decline, the numbers of other large mammals are lower than ever and continue to decline. Give me a break. Our arrogance will surely get a nice rebuke from Mother Nature.
11
Well done.
And most of these improvements are thanks to capitalism. Bill Maher said it best: "democratic socialism isn't a replacement for capitalism, it's a lap band."
I live in a society with socially-tempered democratic capitalism and doing quite well, thanks.
Capitalism yes. Republican style? No way...
Having a failed on our southern border is nothing to celebrate, when US life expectancy is tied with Cuba and Costa Rica by WHO ranking because it is the only wealthy, with huge income disparity, country with no national health care program that even poor President Nixon offered in 1974. The US is ungovernable because as little as 18% of your population can elect a senate majority, and there is a slave era electoral college that denies universal suffrage for the presidency. How ironic the madness of King George saved us from the madness of American presidents!
4
@Craig, You left out the bit where amending our Constitution to change those things requires the consent of 3/4 of the states, not some supermajority of the popular vote. A number of the less populated states wouild have to vote to restrict their own influence. (Just Google a list of the states in order of population to see who they are.) Rhode Island might. I can't see how any of the others would.
1
I mean, compared to 2017 how much better is it really?
Where are you getting these numbers? Citing their origins would be appreciated.
2
Trump presents a huge cloud over saying that 2018 was the best year in human history . Perhaps we can say this year was the best of times, the worst of times .
Never neglect the trump effect !
2
If wasn't so sad and ominous, I would be laughing real hard!
Let's say I see a 14 year old lighting a stoggy.
Based on what we know today, it can be considered that will contract lung cancer in a few decades, right?
Or the Chamberlain syndrome ...
Both examples relate to future conveniently denied consequences.
We are now almost 8 billion bipeds, founder members of the so-called anthropocene and facing almost certain extinction. Humanity is doing a great job causing the demise of between 1
Thanks for this article. Perhaps the NYT can devote more space to good news. That would help balance the bad news and our base negativity bias with positive news. Good news is news too and not necessarily less important news. Thanks again.
2
@gailhbrown--- Unfortunately, Good News doesn't sell....ask any reporter -> if it bleeds it leads....if its not bad its sad ....violence begets reader interest....
did he mention the joy of looking forward to ten billion happy people here?
4
What, the press has convinced the public that things are worse than they really are? I used to think the press was meant to inform, but now I realize they are just there to serve as a propaganda machine for liberal and globalist policies. Fear mongering is the new journalism.
3
@TL... Remember "Fear Mongering" sells or enables manipulation by politicians.
We humans may be doing good, but other residents of this planet are doing very bad. In fact they are being annihilated. See https://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/E6089 for a detailed discussion. See also https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html We are entering a period of major biodiversity loss. The destruction of the environment for buildings, highways, cattle, farm products, recreation, etc. is a major cause. The Amazon rainforest including its aborigines, and other pristine areas are under imminent threat. When the biodiversity and the ecosystems are gone, we will be next. So, we are not doing that good after all.
6
Terrible news. More means less for everyone. Either Inferno or NASA will be the bearer of good news.
1
Think how much better it would have been without trump.
3
I really like columns (let alone people) that are positive and present flourishes in the abstract. It is good to take stock and look over the numbers, and perhaps bend them to whatever conclusion you want to come to. Let's all do that for a day, or two, or even three.
Then let's get back to the grindstone and use the flip side of those numbers to put a face on the problems we face. They are not abstract and they are very real. (becoming more and more real for millions each and every day)
Is it enough that disease, poverty, and strife are at their lowest levels in human history, when we are on the precipice of eliminating ourselves via man made climate change ?
Is it enough to raise up the 3rd world, while the disparity in the 1st is becoming more and more crushing with each new republican tax theft ?
Is it enough to subsidize twenty million people to ''buy'' health care insurance, while still leaving millions more behind, as well as tens of thousands to perish each and every year still ?
Is it enough to promote anything positive while we (the western world and the U.S. in particular ) are waging war still in the Middle East and elsewhere - all the while supporting and supplying forces that are committing war crimes and genocide ?
Indeed, lets take a moment to look at and perceive that the glass is half full, but then let's take a closer look and realize that there is a hole in the bottom of glass, and then do something about it.
Just a thought. ..
2
So many of the comments express fear that good is bad, that progress will be our destruction, that people living longer and better lives will cause a global collapse of resources. But what if we invent stuff like unlimited non-polluting energy, a type of plastic that not only dissolves but fertilizes the earth, laser beams that get rid of air pollution and global warming, and get rid of corporations that kill for money and politicians like trump. In the words of John Lennon, "I know that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one." Come on people, stop the doom and gloom.
4
I'm under the impression that American life expectancy has actually dropped. Tens of thousands are dying from drug overdoses. Suicide has skyrocketed. Twenty five percent of Americans work for the minimum wage and receive some form of unearned government support. If American food aid stopped, much of the world would starve. American public schools are generally failing as are most non elite colleges. Global warming threatens our very existence while pollution increases throughout the third world. How is this better than 1976?
3
@Mike
White European American life expectancy has dropped. Along with a below replacement white European American birthrate this will make America even greater. Along with deterring Trump and family organized corrupt criminal plan to add America to Russian Czar wannabe Vladimir Putin's empire.
@Mike
"How is this better than 1976?" Read Mr. Kristof's article.
Thanks. I needed that!!
In a way, your text underlines the craziness of being ruled by selfish and narcissist political leaders.
2
@Roland Berger- VOTE!!!
Oh, stop trying to cheer us up!
2018 is also the year of Donald Trump, Nicolas Maduro, Brexit, and the yellow jackets, all intent on tearing down the progress and decency of many years of good works.
3
@AynRant.....are you talking about the French Yellow Jackets protesting rising gas prices with lowering wages ? How can that be tearing progress....its their right to demonstrate....Our country does it ALL the time...
There's a huge down side to humans living longer.
4
Ahh but there is no balance and fair coverage in your human-centric Oped. The earth, the environment and all the creatures upon it surely are not doing as well...
5
No! The most important thing we need in this frighteningly overstuffed world is no mom giving birth to ten children.
8
"Go ahead and gnash your teeth about President Trump or Nancy Pelosi." Please, let's give this Congressional official officeholder the respect she deserves: if Mr. Trump gets his title, then Ms. Pelosi should get hers! I am really bothered by your construction, and wish you would edit it to "Speaker Pelosi" or "Representative Pelosi" (or whatever the Times Style Guide requires for her position!). Thank you.
5
Not only is there a problem with not equivalently using titles; a more serious problem is constructing the advice to readers so that "gnashing teeth" about the President or the Speaker are equally reasonable choices. You know better, Nick, and and don't need to pretend neutrality on that issue.
I am assuming life expectancy in the U.S. is falling, because of a lack of consistent healthcare for all Americans. It is criminal that in the richest country, people should die because they can’t afford medications nor medical care.
8
Good God. Are you blind to our collective helplessness in the face of the accelerating disintegration of our natural world? Do you truly think the political heads-under-blanket events of 2018 indicate security for the continued well-being of humanity? You are promoting a Chamberlin peace-in-our-time fake optimism.
6
but life-expectancy for Americans is falling
3
"2018 was actually the best year in human history."
This view is exceptionally narrow. 2018 certainly wasn't the best year for life on Earth. Insect populations around the globe are in a crisis. The African megafauna is about to go extinct. The yearly net loss of trees may be about 10 billion trees. Ocean acidification is increasing, and the oceans are overfished. Soon we may reach the worst year in human history.
7
@Emil What bothers me is that 2018 may in fact be the best year every BEFORE it all goes down hill....so I guess I need to enjoy the ride...comforted that I knew/observed 2018 .
The Wall Street Journal had this same argument in a Jan 2 article by Greg Ip.
1
All I could think of as I was reading this was this:
https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-58-the-neoliberal-optimism-industry
Diseases of despair run rife in the United States but, ok, 2018 was our best year ever! By trotting out this line (and the mindset behind it) you flatter the powerful and let them off the hook, effectively, endorsing the world of savage inequality they've created.
5
Of course like most things in the universe pain & suffering are relative and subject to change.
Who says living longer is better?? Have you been to an elderly care home and looked into the rooms. You do realize that there are more suicides than homicides in this country; I assume this follows through in the world too.
This optimistic secular humanistic theme that's being pushed by Steven Pinker and crew just will not hold the test of time or experience or data. As Voltaire replied to Leibniz: "If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others like?"
Some could have and many did at the turn of the 19th Century claim humanity was on the road to improving for good. Epimethean Humanists having little or no foresight did not see the coming of WWI, the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, WWII, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot....DJT....climate change, the end.
After the advent of toilet paper in ~6th century China, I'm sure things were looking up. Plenty to celebrate with that.
"In what sense", asks John N. Gray," is a Nazi, a communists or an Islamist and improvement on an ancient Epicurean. Stoic or Toaist?"
I guess one counter with, toilet paper
"For optimists", says Ligotti, "human life never needs justification, no matter how much hurt piles up, because they can always tell themselves that things will get better."
2
The rising tide of fascism around the world will put an end to this progress.
4
Thank you.
These are good???
-- gained access to electricity
--get online
-- lived such long lives
**when electricity comes with the cost of increasing CO2 levels to the point where the planet won't be habitable for people
**when the internet has made the ascendance of demagogues so much faster
**when long life without concomitant increase in youthfulness simply overburdens all eonomically and environmentally
7
The great thing about the future is that there are always many different possible tomorrows buried in today's action and inaction.
The great thing about the past is that it is impossible to make it any worse than it was.
In a century in a millennia or two or three how thoroughly ignorant stupid and primitive do you think that we will appear to our descendants?
1
@Blackmamba I dont think the future will know how good we had it back (now) then. ....Sort of like the movie IDIOCRACY.
I'm at the age where every now & then a friend will send me an e-mail, or I'll see a post on Facebook, that reminds us all of how good things used to be, when we didn't worry about seat belts or infections or rough sports or padded baby seats in cars, and look - we turned out fine!
The obvious implication is that we are too protected today - and yes, it goes along with the crowd that shouts loudest against "politically correct" discourse. Again and again I hear from the same folks - things were so much better "back then," before (fill in the blank) screwed everything up.
Well, I was born in '52, and so I know how things were "back then," and how they are now. I love my large screen TV, my smart phone, my new car with all the bells & whistles, and more importantly, I love my expanded group of friends from all different countries and religions and cultures.
And I love that kids today are growing up without the threat of falling through thin ice and drowning, or being killed by a drunk driver, or suffering severe brain damage from an injury incurred while playing a rough contact sport with little or no protection.
Yes, we have new challenges today - when I was a kid no one was shooting up classrooms or bombing public places. But if we meet these new challenges the way we've been meeting them for the past half century - finding & implementing reasonable, effective solutions - then I think we have a shot of making this world even better.
1
@TM Agree, I remember POLIO, Nuclear Warnings where children got under thier desks, Bomb Shelters and Drinking fountains for WHITES only...Or Jim Crow laws....Seems like we made 'some' progess only to encounter others....oh well...such is life.
How am I supposed to get past the first sentence? Namely the 'as everyone knows' part.
Is this supposed to be satire or snarky, some kind of joke?
Even my favorite Kristof goes off the end sometimes. I'd like to get a better handle on those who don't know and you're jesting about it.
1
The most important point here, of course, is that “journalism” misreports these facts. The “news” has one purpose: to sell more “news”. And yet “journalists” breathlessly report how the world is “failing” everyday. Thank you NK for your true reporting - just make the mea culpa the headline next time.
I have to say, unashamedly and with complete political incorrectness that I love you. You are a brilliant journalist, one with great heart, and perhaps it is because of the unrelenting reportage from you and other like minded associates casting light on these global stories that the rest of us keep perspective, and hope, alive.
Underneath the supposed chaos of the world, there is great strength and light. I have absolutely no doubt that in fact, we are headed in the opposite direction to hell.
Keep your vision sharp and all of the rest of us will do the same. Collectively, we shall prevail.
I certainly don't want moms to lose 10 of 15 children born to them. I want them to get access to that family planning you mention so they can take control of their lives and have a reasonable number of children.
I guess I'm not all that uninformed since I'm the one in ten who knows global poverty has decreased, not increased. Some of that is due to our billionaires like the Gates family and their push to eliminate global poverty. Too bad they didn't spend a bit more to help people sleeping under bridges in our cities where tech has priced Americans out.
I'm thrilled humans all over are becoming better educated. Hopefully, not too long from now, they'll take the leaders of the developed world to task for destroying the planet for them just when they became healthy enough and educated enough to really enjoy it. Maybe they'll all get together and write a letter to Donald Trump telling him to stop being a moron.
Of course there's been progress. Do you know what refugees fleeing the Middle East did when they landed in places like Greece? I know, because I saw photos: they took their cell phones out of plastic baggies and held them up hoping for a signal so they could call their families back home in the devastated war zone they escaped to let them know they made it safely! What a wonderful world! What progress!
Sorry, but "everyone gets the world devastatingly wrong" is a silly statement. We still have plenty of problems.
3
And you also gave aid and comfort to white supremacists in supporting an honorable platform for the racism of the odious Charles Murray. So you're really like the Burmese women leader who talks out of both sides of her mouth, while supporting oppression.
To monitor these trends, the Social Progress Index is the thing to watch. Global improvement, but the USA declined.
https://socialprogress.blog
Economic growth is obsolete as a positive metric.
However, 2018 may have been the best year for humans, but the worst year yet for the planet. We are on the brink of destroying our planet even while on the brink of improving our lives. The two cannot diverge much longer.
4
Lets see. We measure well-being in $/day, and the duration of our physicial survival.
Neither is the sole or even main variable in what determines our sense of well-being.
2018 was the worst year in history because we continued to expand the population of human beings beyond the carrying capacity of the ecosystem, moving us closer to a catastrophic collapse of all that we care about. Such statistics tell us about
how we have used technological "progress" to reduce death rates in 2018, but tell us nothing about how we are simultaneously accelerating the onset of ecosystem (and in homo sapiens, civilizational) collapse.
7
Amazing. Here's a columnist taking a break from the hysteria that engulfed his profession when Trump won his parties nomination, for at least part of one column, only at the end to say that we should hesitate for but a nanosecond before getting back to what? - piling on Trump and wringing our hands that we are heading towards oblivion? There is nothing that makes the insufferable Trump so sympathetic as the media, despite the fact that he's the worst thing that ever happened to the Republican party and not suitable for the presidency (not that Clinton was either, and I prefer him to the anti-Democratic, anti-capitalism, sometimes violent "resistance"). The only thing I enjoyed about his election was the slap in the face the media, which has forgotten its job, got. And if that's what it takes to give them another slap in the face in 2020, in the slender hope that someday they will wake up, I will endure it, presuming the Democrats again also put up someone unsuitable and not one of the few moderate politicians they have, like a Jim Webb, who they treated so badly last time because he was the only one who insisted on not being a racist at the debate (if he's still a D). From the looks of it, they are going to head even further left than they did last time.
What is he even suggesting here? That people should take time to realize how much better this world is thanks to democracy and capitalism, before getting back to hysteria?
1
Someday I should have tea with your mom. I read every one of your columns too. I could thank her for the deep empathy and humanity that shines through every one of your columns--and the courage it takes to travel to all of the dangerous places the rest of us would never go or know about without you. She should get at least some credit for that. Thank you for today's good news and for being out there every day keeping us informed and making us pay attention, even when it makes us squirm.
4
@Sherry Law Amen ! I have been grateful for Nicholas Kristof's wisdom and humanity for years.
Important and uplifting reminder!! Thank you.
2
Your readers who like this column should read Steven Pinker's "Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress." It is 450 pages of good news about the world.
2
Perspective. Thank you, Sir. I vow to make that MY watchword for the Year, and try to be a better person. It’s really difficult around here, but spring IS coming, eventually. The best cure for Trump despair and angst is yard work. Then lounging about on the sofa, sipping wine. Or BEER !!! When the Temperature finally hits 70. Good times.
2
Thank you Mr. Kristof. I am one of those people who gnash their teeth every day over the abuses, indignities, atrocities, injustices that occur within our own country and abroad all too regularly. To be reminded of the progress that has occurred around the world releases a breath of relief even as that relief occurs alongside the profound sadness at how ugly people can be. Your writing "Why 2018 was the best year in human history" provides a nanosecond or two in which to regain some hope.
1
Please keep up this incredibly important journalism. Never have I been more inspired. From the “early” days reporting on sex trafficking have your articles elicited tears of sorrow and joy at the progress you have made. If I were to ever embark on another career it would be my own version of yours.
infant mortality is down in places where people are having 15 children ? I guess that's good news for those families.but it spells doom for the human race.
3
@Ken..Good point....its not the numbers its the quality...improving numbers only is NOT GOOD!
Our collective mindset of 'The News' being a collection of terrible acts and misfortune is MOST PROBABLY a result of the media in general and television in particular, portraying only BREAKING BAD NEWS. It seems bad news sells ads.
Acts of goodness, academic success and people the world over pulling their lives up by the bootstraps, while seemingly better news, rarely are deemed by news editors to warrant television or other media play. Too bad, so sad!
1
Well I have a few things to say. Mr Kristof seems the eternal optimist and it's great to see this progress throughout the world. But the obvious seems to go past him.Ms Fernandes in Angola lost 10 children out of 15. Fifteen children? The way things are she should be having one maybe two at most, Why is that not what is encouraged? How about birth control? And it seems to be a problem in all the poorest places, esp parts of Africa.
305.000 people had access to clean drinking water. Not the Palestinians in Gaza, where 90% of the water is contaminated, not clean. The WHO is getting ready to declare Gaza unlivable next year.
And more people around the world are living longer. Hey that's just swell. But not here in the USA. Where life expectancy just went down another year or two.
4
Hate to be a "downer" but perhaps we should look at what the cost of rising people out of poverty is doing for future generations. I use as an example China's destruction of the South China Sea and their continued use of coal power. Rising people out of poverty is admirable but we must balance it with the cost to future generations. I use China only as an example because it was fresh in my mind.
3
@Chi town Ron... ITs not just thier coastal oceans...you should see thier RIVERS....omg...horrible and sad. And air pollution is STILL not under control.
Thanks for the good news. We definitely need it these days more than ever. And thanks for all you do to keep us informed. We read your weekly column religiously. It’s no small matter and greatly appreciated.
As Canadians, we’ve been subscribing to the NYT since truth, intelligence and integrity left your federal government in 2016 with the election results. Truth be told, some days American news in the NYT is so grim (not to mention ludicrous and farcical, but not a funny way) that I scroll down right past it to get to the crossword puzzle. I can’t look. We hope reason and integrity returns to your federal governance and thereby your people before too long. In the meantime, we read with concern and with eyes wide open, knowing that some days some hefty scrolling may be necessary...
4
It is somewhat disappointing that Mr. Kristof did not take his own profession to task (but somehow managed to take an unnecessary shot at President Trump), for spending far too much time on the negatives in 2018. Not enough - not nearly enough - time and space were devoted to writing about the positives.
It is time - way past time - for journalists to take a look in the mirror.
1
@Maurice Gatien. Yes....agree...Mr. Kristof...what are you going to do about your fellow colleagues...or even the editors who make the decision to choose to cover "DOOM & GLOOM" news....its almost like brain washing...whats the point if EVERYONE sells bad news....maybe there is a market for GOOD NEWS...Something like Readers Digest...but its stories not news.
It is not good news when one person has five children any more than it’s good news that we burned more gasoline than ever before in 2018. Sorry to be a buzzkill, but look at in the context of how we are destroying the planet. Enjoy last year while you can, because it was the worst year ever for the future.
5
2018 might actually have been "the best year in human history," but as Mr. Kristof points out, it certainly wasn't in the USA, a country still with boundless potential, so much of which is being squandered by greed, partisanship, unjustified rage, rampant megalomania and just plain bone-headed stupidity.
With our out-of-control opioid crisis, spiking suicide rate, rising gun carnage and falling life expectancy, the relative decline of our homeland compared with the rest of the world is almost palpable on a day-to-day basis. We are responsible for this and only we can fix it.
In a different column, David Leonhardt makes a case for presidential impeachment without delay. I am not so sure, but the ultimate goal seems clear: For America to get on the train of human progress and to reverse its current decline, the nation's political trajectory must be reversed and sustained soon, and for a very long time.
Thanks for this article. The world does need this information of hope. You are correct that news boradcasts seem to only be about the bad... the hopelessness, distruction and violence happening around the world. Then at the end they serve you a fluff piece to wash it down. The depression you walk away with follows everyone through their daily routines. When you are filled with depression, of thoughts of violence and hate what can with expect of the people around us. The world needs these facts, the knowledge that we are getting somewhere when we help these causes. There is an answer, a positive answer, to our hopes and dreams. Only by caring and helping each other can we make a true difference. Articles like this needs to have a place on the front pages of our papers above gloom and doom. It’s more important to all our well being than the doom and HATERD that receives front page!!
1
Suggested reading for Mr. Kristof: "The True and Only Heaven" by Christopher Lasch.
Of course it was the best year, but you should really examine why more closely. Ever since the Bible indicated 2000 years ago that a mans life on this earth is three score and ten years (70), what have we managed to extend that by? 10 years maybe? And how? Not by medical science so much as simple sanitation. Someone once said that the plumbers wrench has done more for human health than the surgeons scalpel ever has.
Thank you. Yours has always been a unique and distinct voice in the American landscape and I don't think I've ever written anything you've ever written without being profoundly grateful that we have your voice.
Progress is advancing worldwide, even though progressives see it as a diabolical plot by the energy companies and Hillary's Russian friends.
I'm still wondering how the Pope and Steve Zuckerberg are going to face 2019 after the Speaker of the House screeched that all walls are bad and a crime against the poor, or whatever.
Zuckerberg builds the most impressive walls this side of Vatican City whenever he buys most of an island or large property. How does he look in that mirror every morning now?
What is sad is that the US is at the top of the list for childbirth deaths, we are in danger of losing healthcare, corporations cheat people out of their wages, people refuse vaccinations, and our government is shut down to satisfy the whims of one man - for a political gimmick - a memory aid!! We learn our citizens trashed our National Parks and our leaders were set to get raises while a million federal workers are working without pay. People live in poverty and are denied education. Truly a third world country -
3
Can you tell us how/why this progress has been made? Maybe that could guide us in accelerating and spreading it.
1
Progress implies a destination. The destination isn’t ten billion of us having drinking water by 2050, GMO magic providing a plate of gruel for everyone, more of us surviving birth and living longer. This finite, accelerating process ends at the solid wall of finite resources even if we don’t all murder each other for advantage along the way. The more we progress, the faster that wall appears. True, we have accomplished so very much in a few short centuries, but so far we have no plans for any kind of progress beyond say, the lifetime of someone born today.
5
Mr. Kristof,
I always appreciate the global perspective that you bring to the Times Opinion section. While it is heartening to know that children around the world are (statistically speaking) living healthier lives, it is important that we not let this rosy picture cloud our eyes. I am haunted by the images of starving children in Yemen--a tragedy (like many) that is completely man-made. Our government contributes to this tragedy by supplying weapons and support to Saudi Arabia. Now that we've given ourselves a few minutes of respite from the bad news, let's get back to work--putting pressure on our elected officials to change our policy and donating to organizations that relieve conditions in Yemen!
3
I am positive that some newspaper writer said exactly the same thing in 1919-that the end of the recent Great War would allow millions of European & American men to live and breed, was a major step. The vast expansion of cheap oil and the march of the internal combustion engine,(at the minor cost of the mass transit systems of the USA), and the opening of huge metal mines (using deadly poisons) would make copper cheap and plentiful-allowing almost all cities to electrify and use telephones! New aircraft would finally elemininate war, as bombing from the sky was too horrible to contemplate, and the avances of dirigible technology would make trans oceanic travel swift and afe for all. Now that women were voting in America, (and some other modern states), and the wonderful Russian Revolution was over, freedom was expanding for all-women, too-across the globe.
Cheap coal, cheap oil and even gas, were making life better and better every year, now that the Awful War to End all Wars had ended.
3
Thank you for this article. We all need the education on progress as a regular staple of quality news.
1
Thanks for the refreshing piece. Hope its inspires readers to become more broad minded.
1
Mr. Kristof, Thank you for your thoughtful reminder that, there’s some good in this world and it’s worth fighting for (lifted from Tolkien). Likewise, Steven Pinker offers “conditional optimism” as helpful, if not essential, pragmatic advice on saving our planet, not to mention getting up in the morning.
In his recent book, “Enlightenment Now,” Pinker distinguishes between complacent optimism and conditional optimism:
“…we cannot be complacently optimistic about [the state of the world], but we can be conditionally optimistic. We have some practicable ways to prevent the harms and we have the means to learn more. Problems are solvable. That does not mean that they will solve themselves, but it does mean that we can solve them if we sustain the benevolent forces of modernity that have allowed us to solve problems ….”
Pinker has his detractors, but those reflecting the call for “conditional optimism include Bill Gates and Barack Obama, the latter an advocate of “relentless optimism [to] reject the notion that we’re suddenly gripped by forces that we cannot control.”
When asked in an recent NYTs interview how she avoids despair, seeing the authoritarianism that marked her childhood now sweep the globe in her old age, Madeline Albright, responded “You have to make a way of dealing with the problems that are out there in order to avoid despair, and not just be an observer of it. And realize that we all have a role.”
It’s all worth remembering.
4
I believe this column illustrates an additional point that Mr. Kristoff fails to mention. The progress he charts here is mainly in the basic statistical categories of human well-being and development. By failing to cover stories in these terms - at home and abroad - the rest of the year and focusing on the most tooth-gnashing dramas of each day, we grant a victory to the thinking that either government can do no good (all the news is bad, after all), or that ‘the other side’ is just as bad.
If we are to build a space for constructive political dialogue, we must give as little attention to political drama as possible and focus on two questions: whether politicians enact policies that improve the citizens’ lot and whether they act impartially or corruptly. When the news reports consistently whether local policies are succeeding or failing to improve citizens’ lives along axes of life expectancy, infant mortality, educational attainment, life satisfaction, social mobility, poverty rate, etc. at rates comparable to those achieved by the best-governed jurisdictions, then citizens will have the information necessary to hold their representatives accountable. Everything else is distraction.
8
Thank you for reminding us that there is progress to be thankful for!
Humanity is threatened with extinction unless we rapidly replace fossil fuels and other sources of greenhouse gases.
More can be done a lot faster! Car, truck & bus engines can soon cheaply and easily be modified to replace gas, and diesel with water. See MOVING BEYOND OIL at aesopinstitute.org
Fuel-free turbines were prototyped in Russia. The government stopped the work which threatens an economy based on oil & gas.
Fuel-free micro-turbines will give electric vehicles unlimited range and turn them into power plants when suitably parked, selling electricity or providing it to buildings. Future electric cars may pay for themselves.
Micro-turbines are under development as range extenders for electric cars by Pininfarina & Delta motorsport. They could be converted to run on water extracted from the air. Imagine the impact on the electric car market. And they can be replaced in the future by fuel-free micro turbines (which also will help make electric aircraft practical).
These are what Nassim Taleb terms positive BLACK SWANS - Highly Improbable breakthrough technologies. They can sharply speed replacement of fossil fuels. This is an unrecognized revolution that reflects revolutionary new science - beyond textbook dogma.
The work is attacked by Trolls - who lie and twist facts to deter support.
Positive BLACK SWANS open a faster way to provide reasons to celebrate. Are we sufficiently wise?
3
It's nice to be reminded of the bigger picture, but I think a strong argument can be made that 2018 was *not* the best year in human history. In 2015, all of these trends existed but we also had a decent and stable president, 3 more years to do something about global warming, and we had not yet witnessed the appalling damage Trump would inflict on people's faith in democratic institutions, basic facts, or even the value of truth.
8
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."
I admit my faith in my own intelligence is severely challenged when I try to reconcile the Best Year in Human History with a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year for Our Planet. I have difficulty letting these two notions coexist in my little brain, but thank you Nicholas Kristof, once again, for inclining me to try.
Maybe the key to unlocking that F. Scott Fitzgerald quotation comes at what is, rhetorically speaking, the strongest and most emphatic part of the sentence, its end (sic): "retain[ing] the ability to function."
Especially when we think about problems on a global scale, it's not hard to lose faith in our autonomy, in our agency, in our ability to function. It's hard to believe that any one of us can make a difference.
We all know that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing," certainly in combination with a lot of stupidity, but it might be an even more dangerous thing in combination with a lot of intelligence.
Kristof is reminding us here - because these day we all need some reminding - that our intelligence and our awareness of the world's problems shouldn't lead us to despair, cynicism or inaction. Paralysis is not the option of choice for living on this planet.
2
Great essay. Many don’t realize the progress that has been made in reducing global poverty over the last 2 decades. Much have that progress has been achieved due to the adoption of capitalist economic principals in China and India. Also, cheap fossil fuel energy allows these economies to achieve tremendous growth rates. There is an environmental impact that needs to be managed, but there is a huge upside to moving billions of people out of poverty. People worrying about their day-to-day survival will most likely not be able to achieve in science, technology, commerce or art. Environmental hysteria curbing or banning the use of fossil fuels condemns huge numbers of the world’s population to crushing poverty. The loss that creates is measurable and huge.
5
@Mark V
In order to survive, the planet has to be sustainable.
Life expectancies are inversely proportional to the amount of fossil fuel pollution. Pollution causes lung and heart disorders, and most probably mental disorders like depression and birth defects.
Also in OKie City you have a greater risk from earthquakes due to fracking and increased and stronger tornados.
3
We're focused on progress right here in the back of our own woods, along with a global perspective because we participate in a global economy.
You state, " I suspect that this misperception reflects in part how we in journalism cover news. We cover wars, massacres and famines but are less focused on progress." According to the CDC infant mortality rates have decreased in neighboring states such as Ohio (a big shout out to Gail Collins there).
We are glad that infant mortality rates are dropping in Ohio and Wisconsin.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/infant_mortality_rates/infant_mortality.htm
1
Thanks for a fine column. It’s great to get a hopeful, positive perspective on the world. After a year of waking up each day and reading about the latest calamity or Trump outrage, I found your column a refreshing pause.
1
Finally Kristof is recognizing the benefit of providing cheap reliable electricity to developing countries. The positive benefit to society of coal fired power plants far out weigh the negative.
2
Here's the problem i have with this. Yes, in the circumstances that many human beings deal with, life is getting better - that, from many statistical measures as you point out, is incontrovertible. However, what this column and what others who trumpet these claims conveniently ignore is the impact we human beings are having on the planet and our fellow denizens of earth. And while laudable, the incremental improvements for humans is, from my perspective, swamped by the damage we're doing.
19
Grazie... Maybe we could use this perspective more than just a “nanosecond” every year. I believe that the responsibility to be well-informed is one of the most difficult challenges of this moment.
11
Perhaps it goes without saying, but I suspect that a better way to deal with our "immigration" problem is to make life better for potential immigrants - in their own countries. How many millions of potential immigrants' lives could be dramatically improved for the $25B we want to spend on a wall?
35
Dear Mr. Kristof,
While I appreciate your zeal in helping peoples around the globe, I can't help but wish more help could come to the poor in our own country. Specifically in education and underfunded schools, also in empowering girls and women to give them control over their own bodies. The incidence of teenage pregnancies is higher in the US than other developed countries and a major reason for girls to stall out in life.
I so admire people like Dolly Parton and Oprah that attempt to put a book in every child's hand from a young age. And what a difference it would make to our school system if just a fraction of the military budget went to teachers' salaries, as well as reinserting government and civics into the curriculum. Much less the reintroduction of shop, carpentry, cooking and the less academic skills -- Free community college? We can only improve the leadership in our country if we have an informed electorate.
25
@EStone
Yet the public, and women specifically, in this country have those freedoms, and rights...they are just often under attack. Too often by fellow women! Too often by women who hand over their voice and votes to the males in their lives.
Underfunded schools are the results of those people in those districts who consistently vote for those who underfund schools. Or worse, don't vote at all! How many people in "low rent" districts fail to get out and vote? Just vote! One simple act, ever few years.
Look, this pie in the sky wish for channeling money from A to D, or B to E...is not how it works. Its never worked that way. So stop the useless wishful thinking and demand that money is put towards the issue/budgets you like, and that they are managed properly!
You/others are never going to get military money siphoned off towards education. Its never gonna happen! Stop the wishful thinking...!
Kristoff is correct, as far as he goes, but he is really talking about success in achieving “easy” wins
- Poverty is becoming concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa. Nearly all the progress in poverty reduction has come in two countries: China and India
- Life expectancy is increasing but chronic diseases are too, which are expensive to manage and require greater health infrastructure than many low income countries have
- More kids are in school but quality of education is so poor in most countries that students learn little. Functional illiteracy and innumeracy remain an enormous problem
I could go on and on but you get the picture: the world still has a very long way to go. Let’s not get complacent
15
Kristof has an effective way of putting our hot political rhetoric in a broader more meaningful perspective. Helping the poor and improving literacy are both more important than electoral debate, especially to those requiring help and those working to help them.
4
@Frank Leibold - But if you don't have policies and money to make programs available, then they won't be and that means being politically aware and active to elect people and the party that understands the need.
1
This column was a breath of fresh air. I would like to see follow on coverage of the how and why of progress. What worked in Ethiopia? What political system fostered literacy? Which economic forces raised living standards? In short what works?
Otherwise we may project our own on assumptions on these landmarks. A further risk is complacency; congratulating ourselves for gains we may have had nothing to do with.
12
Sadly, I must disagree. Sure, it's great that fewer people struggle-- but people are not the only species on the planet. Every other species deals with the environmental damage our "progress" brings. Until we face and reverse the damage we are doing, I see little to celebrate.
32
I usually wonder about raw numbers such as the 295,000 people who were electrified every day. Where's the counter about how many were born to parents without electricity?
Still I tend to agree with the tenor of this piece. Didn't think about Trump or Pelosi at all today until I reached the end.
3
Good read and very uplifting. Thanks! Minor disagreement from one of the many who contributed to the development of the Internet: " And each day an additional 620,000 people were able to get online for the first time." I am not so sure that this is good news.
4
"Enlightenment Now" *
(at least in 2018 for the world, if not for our nation)
Thank you, Nicholas and Steven. It is indeed refreshing to occasionally step back and look at the big picture. Still, there is no excuse to rest on our laurels. We need to pick ourselves up and work on repairing our damaged democracy, and its relationship to those of us in need and to the rest of the world.
* "The Case for Science, Reason, Humanism and Progress" - Steven Pinker 2018
5
Thank you for this reminder of some positive developments in the world. Lately I've been focusing so much on the problems they become all that I see.
"I am an optimist. I see little use in being anything else." - Winston Churchill
3
I cannot thank you enough for this column. It should be more frequent than it is. I would be happy to be reminded three or four times a year!
2
More people living longer is not necessarily good news.
First, what are most people doing? Anything meaningful? Or are they just watching television and consuming. What is the point of that?
And more human population degrades everything else. It destroys the things that make this planet beautiful and interesting and in the end habitable.
We can either have a reasonable number of humans and a living wondrous planet and resources for all. Or we can have increasing population growth.
We will not have both.
78
@Will.
Agreed. A lot of problems - global warming, extinction of species, degradation of environment, waning resources and space - could be solved or at least ameliorated by reducing the global population. But it’s almost never mentioned as a solution. I wonder why that is.
32
@Will.
The best way to reduce population growth is by reducing poverty and increasing the quality of life for as many people as possible. People in countries with higher incomes, better education and better access to health care on average have fewer children. In some of the most prosperous countries population growth is negative or only being sustained by immigration. The conditions which bring about longer life spans will also help reduce the population growth.
5
Dear @Will,
You sound a little like Scrooge in Dicken's Christmas Carol when he was complaining about the "surplus population" that would be more economical if they died.
Scrooge:
" I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.”
Visitor:
“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”
Scrooge:
“If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
Scrooge changed his point of view and heart when visited by three ghosts, the ghost of Christmas Past, the ghost of Christmas Present, the ghost of Christmas Future.
May these ghosts visit you as well as all those who recommended your post.
3
The problem for Americans in realizing global progress is that our situation is different from that of the developing world. We have had for generations the structural and technological basis for increasing human progress. Now it seems that at least the structural basis, stable government and economic opportunity, is under severe stress and we are in danger of losing much of it. We have had the blessing of being able to view the possibility of increasing progress but now see reason to fear regression at least for many
5
Thanks for this! It's quite unusual for the Times to allow anyone to emphasize positive developments so let's hope it sets an example. Good news rarely makes for spectacular headlines.
Thank you for helping to inform us of the positive progress in the world. However, you subtly imply an equivalence between Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi. This journalistic instinct to “either or” does us a disservice, and has led us to the sad state of affairs that this country is experiencing during the Trump era.
7
These are temporary gains, laudable for sure. We have the technology and the means to deliver a better life to humans.
Here is the break to celebrate this achievement.
But we deliver this through a system that depends on growth and exploitation of nature. As long as we can’t reach a state of balanced total energy use and and regenerative production the system will collapse. And we certainly can’t get there as long as the human population grows. All attempts to reduce the human carbon foot print will fail without limiting the number of Sapiens.
26
You wrote this paragraph: "So there’s plenty to fret about. But a failure to acknowledge global progress can leave people feeling hopeless and ready to give up. In fact, the gains should show us what is possible and spur greater efforts to improve opportunity worldwide."
Nick, I think you are on point but when I finished your column i thought to myself, "And then there's America."
7
It's easier to be gloomy about the present and future for a very good reason i.e. the Second Law of Thermodynamics (entropy). Any ordered system tends toward a disordered state without significant inputs of energy to maintain that order. In practical terms, it takes minutes to destroys things like bridges and buildings, large scale infrastructure etc. It takes years, maybe decades, to replace those things. In my NJ county it has taken two years for the county government to replace a small, two-lane, crumbling bridge over the Rancocas Creek that empties into the Delaware River, and they still aren't finished with the project. It's a constant battle to maintain the roads in the towns that operate with a small budget. So, without significant inputs of money and energy, things will tend to fall apart and stay apart. You'd think that, with all the politicians talking about the need for a massive infrastructure improvements, those same politicians would have voted on a bill by now.
13
As a committed Secular Humanist with a Whig view of history's arc I am absolutely convinced that it has been progress all the way. There have been bumps in the road (1914-1945 for instance) but when those bumps were over a great deal of evil had been disposed of (by 1945 we were rid of not just the Fascists, but of the monarchies that preceded them) and the world was a better place.
But we HAVE to do something about population growth. You write of the 15,000 children per day no longer dying during childhood. Most of them will grow up and have children of their own, maybe 15 children like the Angolan woman in your piece. If that happens we'll be right back to $2/day for hundreds of millions (and leaky boats setting off across the Mediterranean).
I know birth rates tend to drop 2 generations after public health and sanitation improvements cause life expectancies to lengthen. But we can't afford even 1 generation of 15 children to a single mother. Modernization efforts in the developing world MUST be accompanied by birth control education and aid.
46
@Green Tea since there is a strong correlation between a society’s affluence and birth rate we should make the race about poverty reduction. If we manage that we have a hope
8
It takes far too long to reduce birth rates through poverty reduction, plus the effect is not drastic enough. Recently a climate scientist compared our carbon production to a freight train that is speeding up. Human reproduction is the engine of that train. We need drastic measures to throttle it. Unfortunately we have no serious debate about this. It’s almost like a blind spot or even a tabu. But our change of survival depends paradoxically on a shrinking human population.
35
@Green Tea..
Regarding BC. Trust women to get educated , make good decisions and help each other make good decisions especially for their children.
3
It is indeed gratifying when the rate of children dying is cut in half. At this same time, for the parents of those children who died, this was still a tragic year.
It is as if we have gone from a time when a man could lose both arms and both legs to one in which he only loses one of each.
There is still much to be done to help both the planet and those who ride upon it in its celestial circuit.
1
As regards humanity, there will always be the "half-empty" and the "half-full" people. Human evolution ,or more specifically - human Ivolution - the evolution of human self-consciousness continues to carry, drag, or force us on a long cosmic journey to a more enlightened vision and a brighter future.
In the end, half-full triumphs over half-empty - not because humans are wise or good but because ultimately Nature will have it no other way.
4
Thanks for offering a positive perspective! That people have more access to contraception is good news because all those extra people with electricity, water, and internet raise the demand for energy and worsen climate change - the most prevalent and severe health threat we face today, and worsening despite efforts to reduce it.
6
There is good news in this column.
However, I don't think most women want to have baby after baby.
I do think making birth control available worldwide at no cost would help our planet in many ways.
125
@Panthiest - Yes, indeed, and a good place to start making birth control accessible is in the US where the forces of darkness are making it more and more difficult to access birth control. In addition, the rate of maternal mortality in the US is the highest of the top 29 developed countries in the world with 23.8 maternal deaths per 100,000 births according to the CDC (2000 to 2014).
An article in the NYT this week reported that some states now prosecute women for having miscarriages to the extent that some women don't go to doctors to get pre-natal checkups because then no one will know if they have a miscarriage.
Sorry to rain on your happiness parade, Nicholas. Thanks for trying.
26
Those data presented in the article are fine if you leave them outside a temporal context. While I understand Mr. Kristof's impulse to find a glint something positive in the miasma of gloom and doom that is the news of our times, if you plug those data into any realistic model of the next 20 years, most if not all of those gains will start to disappear. In 50 years or less, they will be gone or far gone. So sure, yea for 2018, but if you put those gains in a context of where we are headed, I wouldn't celebrate much.
Whatever else you may think of President Obama, we should all be grateful that he was president when the world economy went south. He showed true leadership and made tough, unpopular choices that eventually led to the recovery we enjoy today. He was the right leader for that critical time, in the spirit of great American Presidents.
The contrast with the "leadership" presently hanging around our collective necks could not be more stark. If Obama was a mix of Lincoln and FDR, then Trump is more like Harding and Nero. Corrupt and tweeting while the world, literally burns. Sadly Mr. Kristof, time keeps on and it is not on our side.
36
The greatest story of our age is China, with the largest population in the world. For millenia, the vast majority of its people were impoverished and subject to frequent mass famines. Today, very few Chinese live in poverty. One can't help but to think that the oft-criticized population control policies had something to do with lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty.
38
@NYC299 Sorry, I am confident there are many of us who are entirely capable of thinking their one-child policy was one of the great human-rights abuses of history and had little to do with their economic success.
An agrarian economy can put multiple children to work doing whatever the heck it is farm families do (as a city-slicker, I have no idea).
As people moved to cities and took factory jobs, kids became a mouth to feed and a mind to educate but not an immediate economic resource. Hence, fewer kids were wanted and needed. That seems to be a worldwide pattern, BTW.
FWIW, fertility dropped throughout the developing Asian countries as their economic growth took off in the 70's and 80's. Folks who study this aren't sure just how much impact the one-child policy even had on Chinese fertility, let alone their economic success.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44133954?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
Every year Kristof puts on his Santa suit in time for the second epiphany and gifts us news of global good fortune. Incomes are up, life expectancy is up!
Gee, everything is improving Steven-Pinker-like. Alas, rhetorical efforts to cheer up an expected glum audience introduce each year's delivery. But, chin up, the gifts themselves belie all rational defense for the recurrently glum expectations, don't they?
Alas, no, for Pinker-like, Kristof touts LEVELS of good things and their improvement and is tight lipped on RATES of improvement, which are generally decreasing as an eye to rates of change in the very WHO and World Bank data on which Kristof relies quickly reveals. The trends toward improvement tend to be decellerating. RATES of improvement are down!
Let's hope the Global folks are more upbeat about their lives than U.S. folks, many of whom recently have been taking to opiates and the worship of sneaky big bad wolves. Let's hope that rates of change don't really matter and at the very least all is "onward and ever upward" as long has been the case (oddities like great depressions, plagues and World Wars of course aside).
China up!
4
Mr.Kristof, thank you for making us aware of the larger world.Through you and your travels we learn of terrible injustices which exist in countries little known to us.Your writing is a great service.This column is particularly important to help us see a bigger picture-some good news is so important .It let’s us know that Foundations and charities which we contribute to are making a difference.It celebrates the problem solvers-those who work every day to make a small difference which cumulatively makes a big difference.
5
Well, we should also consider the driving force behind this remarkable progress - the spread of a global market economy.
13
Thanks for this.
As Bill Gates noted exactly one year ago today, "Bad news arrives as drama, while good news is incremental--and not usually deemed newsworthy."
True that.
35
Yes, believe it or not, whether Donald Trump wants to support it or not, we are part of the whole world. Yes we are.
We have gotten stuck in this wayward country of ours. We have gotten way too self centered while worrying and fretting about the characters in and around the White House. They say the rest of the world is not important! Are we going to succumb to that? Do we want our kids and grandkids to only think about us, us, us?
Thank you, Mr. Kristof. It’s sad we need to be reminded we’re part of the world, but we are. We can feel sorry for ourselves under Donald Trump, but we must see the good of the global effort as a goal of our life, of future generations. Thank you for reminding us there’s a bigger plan here than what Donald Trump could ever imagine - all we have to do is recognize that global plan, cling to it, and make sure we still, no matter what, do something about it.
Maybe we really are great! We just need to minus ourselves of some of those obstacles, especially one. No further explanation needed.
Carry on fellow countrymen. Carry on world neighbors - we can be you!
14
Thank you for this nanosecond.
There is another "plus" to this. You mention the heartbreak of the woman who lost 10 of 15 children. She, of course, was living in deep poverty, and still had 5 living children, a fairly normal amount of children among those in poverty.
However, n countries with large majorities living above the poverty level, the number of children in each family is more like 2 to 3 and the rate of population growth from the resident population is virtually flat, or lower. In an era when we are moving closer and closer to a world wide overpopulation crises, cutting population growth is essential for our long term survival.
We can now see that there is a "good" way to accomplish that, namely raising everyone's standard of living, at least to out of poverty. It certainly seems like a better choice than waiting for a plague or nuclear war to accomplish the same thing.
From you excellent article, it seems we are following that hopeful path. Thank again for pointing it out.
11
No. In 2018, humanity took another step towards climate apocalypse.
And the very richest handful of people continued to increase their share of the world's wealth.
A generation of lower poverty in developed countries, ALL of which came at the expense of the poor and middle classes in developed countries, does not remotely make up for that.
10
Its good that you have read Hans Rosling, and I suspect Steven Pinker, as well. Pinker's book "Enlightenment Now: the Case for Science, Reason, Humanism, and Progress" is an excellent recap of the data aggregation that's been going on in measuring quality-of-life statistics over the past 100 years (which we can now do, thanks to modern computing power).
And here's the fact about quality-of-life data - not the morals, not the wannabe, not the pollyanna, just the facts, ma'am: the trend in EVERY quality of life marker, from birth mortality rates, to severe illness, to life expectancy, to educational levels, to income levels (Pinker's book tracks 62 of these markers), they are ALL, each and every one, going UP, and in fact going up faster with each passing decade.
This, again, is the DATA, not an interpretation of it.
And THAT is the story that not being told.
The story of how people in developing countries HAVE been pulling themselves up through hard work, and how financiers have been helping them with micro-loans and how inventors have been taking their innovations directly to poor countries.
In short, how evolution is being furthered by everyday, ordinary people working hard for things they believe in.
We don't hear that on the news cycle every day, and it's a problem.
If the public is fed non-stop negativity on a 24/7/365 basis by all the major news media, what do you expect them to conclude?
Thank you for at least devoting one column a year to it.
8
@yogi-one
The proportion of global wealth owned by the richest six people increased, as it does every year. They already have more than the poorest 50% in the world.
ALL saltwater fish will be extinct within 30 years due to pollution and warming seas.
No meaningful progress was made on preventing a climate apocalypse that will end civilization within a century. With the tundra releasing its methane and the ocean releasing its methane hydrates there will be no technology that can save us.
As for Rosling's optimistic statistics, they are no more meaningful than the tunes the band played while the Titanic sank.
23
@yogi-one
I'm not sure why Mr. Kristoff thinks peddling this kind of thing is helpful. File it under 'Let a smile be your umbrella'
3
Getting online is a measure of the improvement of the state of the world.
I am reading this online - and I wish I wasn't.
3
@ahenryr I don't have the ability to just run to 7-11 and pick up a Sunday times. So, yeah, the online availability is critical.
This is precisely one of the reasons the "45" base is agitated. Globalization has been good for the developing countries, and has given them a chance to come out of drudgery. In many cases, given the opportunity, people in these countries are competing and standing out. Maintaining the older worldview -- where only a select few are destined for success--, requires "45" and the base to deny opportunities, and they're precisely doing that (think trade wars, tariffs, etc).
3
@Ajay
The "select few" gained at the expense of everyone else.
The poor in developing countries gained at the expense of the poor and middle class in developed countries. The "select few" just redistributed other people's wealth while taking even more for themselves.
People have every right to be "agitated" that hard-won gains that workers died for in the early 20th century are being wiped out while the "select few" profit.
4
@Derek Flint Yeah, but the so-called "developed countries" also did so at the expense of the others. Where are the Native Americans as a set of peoples today? What about colonialism - the people from the colonies of former world powers could well say the same thing that you are saying, but with regards to how the "developed countries" became "developed."
I do agree with you about climate change and the crossing of planetary boundaries though. Though that's bad for the platform, short term good for the humans.
1
@RamS
The point is that a handful of people managed to redistribute wealth from poor and middle-class people while taking more for themselves.
1
It is true that the poor countries are improving. But in the US welfare is under attack. As you yourself mentioned, the US is the only country where life expectancy is going down. GDP per capita growth rate is going down compared to the fifties and sixties when top tax rates were much higher defying the notion that reduced taxes for the rich would boost growth. They are still more people in the US that believe in the trickle-down theory in spite of evidence showing the opposite.
4
@Ben True!....gun violence and car accidents lead the way in 'progressive societies'.
Great article and thank you for writing it Mr. Kristof. I just wish you had said one more thing. In some way they were all group projects. If the people who needed clean water were able to get it for themselves, they would have it already. Some untraceable equation of beleaguered chief or small town mayor or newly elected politician or charitable organization or earnest city council or motivated technician or physician or donor large or small had to come together with the people in need to fix it. Whatever it was. For goodness sake, in the very literal sense of those words. America has misplaced that definition. Perhaps to our everlasting sorrow.
3
Not a chance. I am blessed to live in a sanctuary of order and competent government however I do not let that skew my gut feeling that things are demonstrably worse overall. You can cherry-pick a few line-items to make your case (ala Stephen Pinker), but the sad fact is that humanity has vastly exceeded the carrying capacity of this planet and will eventually destroy itself. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is the boss and always will be.
23
This is always wonderful news, that is, the improvement, vast improvement in wealth and living conditions of the poorest people in the world. Thanks for reporting these facts. Now, I have a recommendation for the press, including the NYT. Can we have less coverage on what Trump is doing? Please, please, please. I am not asking for a news black out, but some perspective. Is it important to cover the ignorant tweets with prominent positions in the online editions? Especially if they do not advance the story or impede the developments in a significant way. And can we have more coverage in a prominent position of the condition of the Central American refugees asking for asylum in the USA? Can we have more thinkers reporting on how the USA can develop policy to improve conditions in Central America, more reporting on what those conditions are? Maybe we can do something positive to influence the influx of people leaving their countries in search of asylum. And if this administration will not advocate such developments, at least the Democrats running for president will be thinking about them.
8
Thank you for your heartening insights from a more positive angle.
I'd like to know if poverty level improvement in China and in Brazil (this was until year 2014) were factors also. It was not mentioned in this article.
The fact that very few people know that the world is actually less violent and less deadly than at anytime in the history of humanity is directly the responsibility of the media. They almost never report real data or statistics except when they are negative. They rarely report positive news other than the occaisional feel good story.
We need more focus on what we are doing right and need more than our current 'this is what we are doing wrong and need to stop'. Obviously we have to deal with both but we already get plenty of the latter... we need more of the former.
2
Life is paradox. It gets better, and yet things are “breaking bad” as I argue in a story about how we use our heads and why we are all rich and favored in the future. It is not that we are not making impressive progress. It is the environmental cost at which we are doing it and the terrifying ignorance in a world where more people enjoy more of earth’s bounty, yet ignore earth’s fragility.
I have been asking people for the past few years to estimate the extinction probability for humans — nine chances in ten is the most common estimate among the educated I encounter — and I began to imagine the last headline in The New York Times. It does not matter how many more people have clean drinking water if “Insect Drones Poison Everyone.”
Ironically, the likelihood of our extinction is beginning to get our attention onscreen where we all live. We have created and are creating the most extraordinary technologies which can be used to heal or destroy. The application of wisdom is the difference. If we face honestly the frightening likelihood of our extinction at our own hands and recognize that universally excellent universal education is within reach as media reach critical mass, we grow more likely to create the best future in the history of the world.
Data and statistics on the environment coming off the rails: I'll buy it.
Data and statistics on Climate: Hook, line and sinker. Give it to me.
Data and statistics on guns in America: I'm your huckleberry.
Data and statistics on life getting better throughout the third world: Sorry, I cannot accept the fact that anyone is doing better in this world. Because Trump.
6
It's fine to write about overlooked good news; necessary, actually, for many reasons. But the title is based on false premises, often seen this time of year by columnists assessing the past year. Saying any particular period was best presumes you can put all the good and bad things that happened on a scale, convert them all to a common unit, with the net good things coming out higher than ever. So emphasizing the, say, lowered childhood death rates, while great and important to showcase, doesn't in any even quasi-mathematical way outweigh the loss of icebergs, coral reefs, etc. But even if that were doable, there is another fundamental problem: totally overlooked capital loss. A premise of sustainability is that our economic welfare rests, in large, overlooked ways on ecological and out social health. These are all interrelated, even if we're not used to thinking that way. These are forms of natural and social capital akin to better known forms like financial investment. You wouldn't think of truly assessing the economy without looking at the shape of financial investment. Similarly, you shouldn't assess any particular year without looking at how what has been lost means to our future. Any avoidable loss of a child has nearly unimaginable consequences. Fundamentally, it makes no sense to keep interdependent things separate as our fates are linked to the fates of other species. So while I'll take the good news, and it's tempting to say "best," I suggest saying it differently.
5
Yep, we are leveraging all this cheap carbon energy to give ourselves all manner of health and prosperity! And by putting that carbon in the atmosphere, we are dooming future generations to far worse outcomes.
13
@sedanchair Well said in few words.
Not always writings of journalists bring a smile. But this one, by Nick, did.
News by definition is about what is wrong, and not what is right. That could be the reason why journalists revel in painting a gloomy picture.
While they must indeed highlight what is going wrong, they should never forget to highlight also the progress society is making.
4
Mr. Kristof has left out the incredible advances in food production that has practically eliminated famine ( not including self inflicted famine due to war, etc). The use of GMO seeds has produced an abundance of grains in places where they had failed from drought, heat and insects. Millions are alive today thanks to GMO technology.
4
One of my 2018 highlights was encountering Nick at JFK airport when he was (as I found out later - I wouldn’t have dared ask at the time) embarking on the Yemen trip and I was heading to Southern China where Nick is also a regular visitor. What a thrill to meet one of my heroes in person and to hear the voice from the video clips coming straight out of his mouth to my ear! Yes, Nick, I will keep reading and talking about your pieces. Happy New Year and thanks for another inspiring column. I’m a nurse who is retired from Nurse Family Partnership (a great program mentioned many times by Nick and very deserving of support).
4
This column is helpfully informative -- except for this horribly MISinformative line: "climate change is an enormous threat to poor nations in particular." That makes this entire column terrible for our entire human civilization and species.
The climate change we are triggering is not just some flooding and windstorms in poorer nations.
Climate change is an enormous threat to ALL nations, to the future of our entire human civilization and species. We are initiating self-driving processes of climate change that will continue, resulting in suicide for our civilization and species. Turning to parched desert the farmlands that feed us all. Flooding the major coastal cities housing networks our whole civilization depends on. Making it too hot to work everywhere but near the poles. Driving tropical reptiles and insects north, forcing those of us still able to retreat toward the poles.
We must elect LEADERS, who understand that shutting down our ignition of climate change is Priority #1 -- for ALL people, in ALL nations.
33
@Dick Purcell
Will someone PLEASE ask the climate to stop cooling so much? Sorry to imterrupt with an impertinent fact. (You may now continue with your sturn und drang.)
@L'osservatore
Living in the Trumpworld echo chamber makes life so much simpler, eh?
Our President Ego-noramus is full of sound and fury -- Sturm und Drang (that's the correct spelling) -- signifying nothing, except drama, discord and destruction.
Even if the world is cooling, which it isn't, there is no doubt the climate is changing significantly, becoming far more erratic, with seas rising everywhere. And we are doing little to prepare for it, while Trump tries to undo what little progress has been made. That's the point Mr. Purcell is making.
2
Thanks so much, Nick! I am inspired every time I read a column of yours, but this one makes me want to jump up and yell "Hooray!" It's terrific to be reminded that even though life has taken a downturn for many Americans, things have been getting steadily better for billions of people worldwide.
And, as soon as America is able to get over Donald Trump and rejoin the reality-based world, things will go much, much better here as well.
3
Nice to read a cheerful view of the world.
Without impugning in the slightest Mr. Kristof's citations of statistical data, I am cautious about accepting many of such data published in the press and am always thinking of Darrel Huff's "How to Lie with Statistics" (1954-1991).
1
Thank you, Nick! It is important to keep our perspective. My major worry is about climate change, yet even on that dismal subject there are good things happening, like the greatly reduced costs for wind and solar energy.
I am especially pleased about the betterment of children's health.
I'll keep reading your columns, even if they are dark sometimes.
8
America is a peace for the first time in many years. Also, the country is prospering in ways we have not seen in a very long time. These fact also get overlooked and under reported.
3
Looking on the bright side still benefits from balance.
People are coming out of the most absolute stark poverty. But the total numbers of people are growing, so there are also more people still in that poverty.
Many more are not thriving, in fact going backward, and that is right here at home, not off in some other country.
Kids are no dying as much over the whole world. Yet, the American rates of infant death are going up.
I'm glad there is progress. Too bad it is somewhere else.
7
It's all perspective and/or Jedi mind tricks. Either 2018 was the best year, or it wasn't.
3
Nick, this is heartening! Thank you for writing this upbeat column each January, because especially in these discouraging times in the US, it's so good to read about humanity worldwide.
Thanks to your excellent columns, I am very aware of inequities in parts of the world where there is no specific "story." Then I can seek out information on these regions and countries deep in other parts of the paper (though i only read it online).
I'm looking forward to your next book with your wife. Thank you, Nick, for your concern for social justice worldwide.
17
Population projections of 9 to 10 billion are unsustainable. Consider the need for potable water and its continual debasement. People strive for middle class lives. Think of air conditioning demands in India, for example. SUVs remain the auto of choice in US and our people are reluctant to reduce convenience no matter the impact long-term. And what's so good about living really long lives, with many years of decrepitude and medical treatments?
105
@Geraldine Conrad. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding you, but are you suggesting that wile you have air conditioning and a middle class life and the oportunity to live really long one, others should not?
2
@Geraldine Conrad I couldn't agree more !! Mr. Kristof needs to be careful what he wishes for
1
The more literate and well informed people become the more sustainable the earth will become. Smart people invent solutions, finding ways to conserve resources and combat climate change. Informed men and women have fewer children and become better parents. Civil and human rights flourish. Health and posterity overcome diseases and poverty.
So, yes, we may have to consume more energy to conserve it in the future. It will be worth the price. We should never deprive people of second and third worlds the resources to thrive, so that those of us living in the first benefit the most.
Imagine how many young, brilliant minds with future solutions are living and being born in every part of the globe today. By developing their communities, health and education, we can help them create new ways to sustain our world. The potential for solutions is infinite.
3
What an inspiring column. It's been a distressful year, one that encourages futility so I was happily rewarded with proof of your words that the world is actually improving...if not in our own United States. I highly respect your work and believe the subjects you investigate that are hard to acknowledge let alone face, are so very important if we are to take our being a member of the family of man seriously. As a New Year's Resolution, I have resolved to read your column more faithfully and create an exchange of thoughts with you, since you seem honestly interested in your readers' reactions. And while I'm at it, don't worry about what you consider "duds?" I went and read them and found them to be worthy of discussion. It's not always a measure of success for how many people one reaches. One person called to action can be sufficient. Happy New Year and thank you for writing thought provoking columns.
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2018 may be the best year in human history because it was the year that a straw broke the fossil fuel camel's back.
2018 is the year that divestment is finally going mainstream. What started as a grassroots campaign is now branching out to academia, politicians, and business leaders with over 1000 organization cleaning their portfolios from dirty fossil fuels.
https://medium.com/thebeammagazine/why-is-2018-the-year-that-divestment-is-finally-going-mainstream-39b90960655b
In 2018 an oil company that had already dumped all their fossil fuels assets to raise capital to develop offshore wind and be renamed Orstead acquired Deepwater Wind the leading US offshore wind developer, with an enormous portfolio of leases to develop 3.3 GW along the US East Coast!
In 2018 global solar tenders continued to proliferate in over 50 countries.
In 2018 the price of crude oil tanked because the Saudi's are pumping it as if there is no tomorrow. May be there is no tomorrow for fossil fuels. Coal mines and coal power plants closures accelerated in 2018 despite the the dystopian Department Of Energy policies under Trump.
2018 was indeed a very good year.
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@Eli
One more:
2018 was the year electricity from renewables topped coal in Germany for first time in its history. 2018https://qz.com/1515608/electricity-from-renewables-topped-coal-in-germany-for-first-time-in-2018/
Let's hope the US will follow in a short time.
8
Thank you for this. If we give up and despair, we lose entirely. While things often look dire, even, or especially, here in the US, where there is life there IS hope, and many of us are working hard to make sure that hope translates into action in polls, locally and nationally.
4
Thank you!!! We need this again, just as we needed it last year.
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2018 may be the best year in "human history" if one is looking at the year solely from the perspective of humanity as a whole. But that's not the way most people evaluate their lives. Most people understandably evaluate their lives just a tad more parochially. Since humanity generally does not operate collectively, how humanity did as a whole is not particularly relevant - unless of course you are talking about global warming which affects all of us. 2018 obviously was not a good year from that perspective.
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Finally!!! The world is rejoicing that little children actually can have a life! I teach and this year, for the first time in 30+ years of teaching, I’ve avoided current events - too negative, all day, every day. Monday I will distribute this column and have graphs that show our progress. There truly is good news! Thank you for making me smile when I read the ever pessimistic New York Times!
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I enjoyed reading this article very much. To paraphrase a novel "it was the best of times and it was the worst of times" and that is how I feel.
4
A heartening article that shows us what we can do to help others when we put our minds to it and focus on the positive. Ensuring that robust progress continues to help humanity requires human solutions, and we can absolutely keep those coming for the foreseeable future.
Working to thwart global warming and climate change falls right into place along these lines.
Possible solutions have been proposed using hard technology: mirrors in orbit to reflect back incoming sunlight, geoengineering to increase cloud cover and atmospheric particulates, and direct capture of carbon from the air. But we really don't have a good handle on the complexity of these mechanisms. We could easily get ourselves into trouble by relying on them.
Renewable energy, notably wind and solar (and batteries), needs to be pursued. We clearly must invest here, but we also need to acknowledge that we may already have passed a tipping point in terms of their abilities to extricate us from imminent catastrophe.
The simplest way to cope with climate change is to curb overpopulation and consumption. These are almost primitive solutions, simple solutions like losing weight by controlling diet and exercising. They are human solutions, not rooted in hard technology. And we can make them work if we unite as a planet toward a common goal: the survival of humanity.
Americans must visibly do our part, with a firm and lasting resolve. Otherwise, what right do we think we have to tell the rest of the world what to do?
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@Blue Moon I agree with you. We have to think in terms of Sustainability not Growth. The word "growth", meaning progress, is no longer the word to use for the future of the world. The word Growth now means the path to world destruction.
1
Nice column, Mr. Kristof. In addition to this good news we can add the relentless progress of human understanding such as the amazing discoveries in space, CRSPR, and new knowledge about the origins of mankind.
Though you wouldn't know it to read the papers, our species has always thrived because its ability to learn. And we know more after 2018 than ever before!
11
If you're worried about global warming (and you should be) don't gloat over more people having electricity, living longer and worstly, having computer access - which takes astounding amounts of energy to power and store.
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Internet access I meant - but computers aren't much better with all the cadmium and other precious metals we and others literally go to war over (trade war and actual war).
4
@Ignatius J. Reilly well then in all fairness toss out the computer you just used to post this comment versus lament the fact that some poor African child is able to access the web. Or access electricity.
@Ignatius J. Reilly / Sorry Ignatius but you are wrong. The biggest sinkholes for energy is in the Transport sector. Cars, trucks, aeroplanes. IT is just a tiny bit. Here is some EU stats, I guess you have something similar in the US, probably slightly worse--> https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/final-energy-consumption-by-sector-9/assessment-4
What this shows us is exactly how ill-informed Americans are, probably because we believe what we want to believe and "don't bother me with facts unless they confirm what I already believe." Or worse yet, don't bother me with facts at all. What has astonished me most in my senior years is just how uneducated many Americans are and are happy being, when in the America I grew up in, education was the most important value we shared.
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@Brookhawk
Thank you for this observation. I too, a senior, lament (for all the handwringing of who gets into Harvard and how they manage it) the degree to which thoughtful education has lost value, while willful ignorance has been in ascendancy by a majority of our population.
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@Brookhawk
I have to agree with you regarding ill-informed or uneducated Americans. Whatever happened to the art of logic?
However, I believe there is hope. Our centennials (think of Parkland teens) will bring logical thought back to the fore, and perhaps we can return to the land of thoughtful progress.
It's so nice to read about the good news for a change. Thank you for this column Nick!
5
One of the things this column points out is that in 2018, life has improved for much of the world but not for most of the US.
I am hoping that with the new political makeup of half of Congress, things will improve for the US (including how we treat the rest of the world) in 2019.
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@vacciniumovatum
And the perception that much of the rest of the world was improving at the expense of the average American, and that the average American had in absolute terms lost ground versus much of the rest of the world, was one of the major reasons that Trump would up in the Oval Office.
Similar perceptions in other parts of the developed world arguably resulted in Brexit, Macron's yellow vest problem, and retreat from democracy in Hungary and Poland.
Now, it's certainly arguable that the actuality is that the huge advantage of living in the US or Europe was simply becoming somewhat less of one. But it's hard to fight the widespread perception that all but the most privileged in the 'First World" have been losing ground. And when that perception prevails, angry perceivers will fight to maintain that advantage, and deny it to others.
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@Glenn Ribotsky
Yes, it's hard to fight the perception and "angry perceivers (who) will fight to maintain that advantage, and deny it to others."
But we must. Because (as this article shows) it is possible for the economic ships of the world to rise upward without requiring any of them to sink.
US residents have made lifestyle choices that hurt them. I hope others learn from us (and we learn from them too) and make better decisions. For us, that means Medicare for All as a start...
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@vacciniumovatum
It's specifically life expectancy that has dropped in the U.S. -- mostly due, apparently, to drug overdoses, suicide, and in some regions diabetes.
1
My favorite column of the year, every year. It’s so important to celebrate progress because it shows that incremental change does make a difference. Don’t throw in the towel, don’t get disillusioned, we are making the world a better place each year.
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Thank you! This was so good to read. So encouraging. I'd like to know more about reducing birth rates and family planning efforts that we can support in developing countries. Education of women of course is a critical component that helps in this regard. But there needs to be an ongoing effort to reduce the rate of increase in human population through reduced birth rates, not just attrition. Thanks again.
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Check out Our World in Data and the book Factfulness for current data on population growth. It has dropped rapidly around the world in concert with declining child mortality. Typical families in most countries now have two children.
This is another case where perception lags reality.
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@Sonja Benson If you'd like to know more, read Steven Pinker's "Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress." It is 450 pages of good news about the world.
2
Thank you, sometimes we need to see the progress. I often point out that despite all, our world is less violent in terms of individual safety than it ever was. I would love to see an article like this that compares that over time.
13
Thank you for this, and all, your columns! Keep up the great work!
16
I, too, want to castigate you for treating your less well read columns as "failures," unless you're using that as a means to get people to go back and read them. I may not read columns about starvation and war as I pass over the titles, but it prompts me to direct larger charitable contributions to Doctors Without Borders, IRC, and others who make a difference in war-torn areas. "It is not necessary to have hope to persevere." But it helps.
7
Thanks, Nick. I spend several months a year in some of the world's poorest countries working on behalf of my Bill Cook Foundation (ww.billcookfoundation.org), which provides educational opportunities for children in 26 countries. I visit the refugee camps in South Sudan, but I also visit a school we help in Twic State of that war-torn counntry where 800 girls are attending school for the first time. I visit the slums of Kolkata to see where some of the students we support live, but I also visit after school programs for the children of prostitutes in those slums that folks in Florida started. I see, like you, both need and hope. And it is important that people in the US can participate in change, not just when they pay taxes, but when the put money in second collections in their churches, when they give to charities that get to the poorest of the poor, when they read about folks so far away and become impassioned to do something to help and then find a way to do it. Thanks again. It is not just the misery I see that gets me up every day at age 75; it is the hope I have for the children my Foundation is able to help, even in 'impossible' places like Haiti, South Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, Kosovo, Myanmar, the slums of Manila, and almost unreachable villages in Laos.
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@Bill. Bill, Jack and I listened recently to Ron & Ellen sing praises for what you DO for those you help in the poorest areas of the world. We all benefit from your life of dedication to improving the lives of others. May your 2019 be a year of good health, rewarding work and peace! Thank you!
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@Bill Great to hear about your foundation.
2
@Bill And, from what I have read, Honduras. This is the way to stop asylum seekers from coming to the US. Help make their country worth living in, not tear families apart and tear gas them at the border. The world needs more people like Bill Cook.
10
I am glad to read these heartening statistics. Now tell us why this is happening. Who or what agency is contributing to this improvement of life? To me, that is an important piece of information. Is it the poor nations themselves? Foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Clinton Foundation, both of which have plowed a great deal of money into improving health in third world countries? Is it the UN? Please follow up with an in-depth article.
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And which of these agencies would our small contributions help the most. I like the Gates Foundation, but my contributions would be a drop in the bucket. I want to help, but I want my money to be used for people, not administration and advertising.
15
@Barbara - Watch "Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes" at https://youtu.be/jbkSRLYSojo for a good explanation. Mr Kristof referenced Mr Rosling in the article.
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@Retired now
I would remind you of the damage the Gates Foundation has done to public education in pushing policies through "education reform" that have proved ineffective. I've worked in a "Gates" school and I believe the children would be much better off had the Foundation not involved itself at all. I wonder if Gates Foundation money is used in other fields of endeavor in the same way. Please give elsewhere; we could ill afford this foundation's "charity."
2
This is the most heartening news I have read in a long time--more and more of the world's people enjoying literacy, education, light, precious clean water, better health, and a hopeful vision of the future. What great perspective you bring to us! And yet--we see a shadow coming over the world and all its creatures as we feel the grip of global warming and the over-expansion of humans into every available space. We continue to overreach, overuse, overextend, overpopulate, overwhelm our planet. May we learn, and learn quickly, learn now, in this moment and every moment from now on, that all living things depend on greater human consciousness of our overwhelming demands on this beauteous planet, and on an immediate turn away from life as usual.
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"Until about the 1950s, a majority of humans had always lived in “extreme poverty,” defined as less than about $2 a person per day. When I was a university student in the early 1980s, 44 percent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty."
It is always worth remembering the old adage about lies and statistics. To understand these statistics, they should be paired with statistics which show the rural/urban distribution of humanity. That is because rural poverty (as measured by 'income') is significantly different from urban poverty, where one is largely dependent upon the cash economy to acquire the necessities of life. You are familiar with the demographic changes in China during the last several decades, Mr. Kristof, and I think that you understand the significance of having one's subsistence become dependent upon American consumers and trade wars. It is a tenuous condition, and i would not call it progress.
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@brian lindberg Of course, someone had to look for a negative in an article that is doing its best to point out the positives in our world.
1
I just subscribed to your newsletter yesterday. This is the first one I've gotten. Thank you so much for this uplift to my day. I often skim through news stories because they are so distressing and I can't dwell too long on them. I carefully read every word of this. I needed to hear about progress being made in the world. I think you have made me a big fan!
5
Thank you for the encouraging trends. Just as we should not let Trump exaggerate the dangers of crime, we also must not let ourselves get so carried away with 'doom and gloom' that we overlook the progress being made.
6
I want to thank you, Nick, for your terrific columns, especially this one that makes me sit up and take a deep breath and smile. I am forwarding this to my children and grandchildren. You are my very favorite columnist.
23
Thanks for sharing this Nick. Hans Rosling and his videos have been a pleasant reminder that things aren't as dir as we often like to believe-- especially those of us who were born in the 1950s. Better health and living conditions for the poorest among us is definitely something to celebrate.
I wonder if the falling life expectancy in the United States might be because most of the measures of success that are glamourized in social (and mainstream) media don't reflect true "happiness" -- but celebrate consumerism and competition instead? How much "happiness" is enough? Does more wealth really increase our sense of self-worth?
And we should also focus on improving the non-human aspects of our world. Not to exploit it, but to recognize that those aspects-- animals, plants, and all the variety of the Earth itself-- are what also enrich our lives. Despoiling the world for human gain is something we should all think deeply about when we celebrate human progress.
16
..."but a failure to acknowledge global progress can leave people feeling hopeless and ready to give up." This is so true, specially of myself. Seeing your new Congress gave me hope for the first time. Maybe America's path is finally on the right track. Happy New Year to all.
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It is a natural human reaction to concentrate on the negative rather than on the positive; just ask yourself if the many things you do right get remarked upon as often as the few you do wrong. This is not entirely a bad thing, either; the things that are going well do not require change while the things going wrong do.
None the less, thank you for recognizing that we are on an upward trend in the world at large and reminding us of the triumphs.
11
@mikecody
Beyond human nature, other forces conspire to paint the most dire picture possible.
Politicians on the left and right want voters to see a desperate world they only they can save (religions and social movement leaders, too).
Media, bless 'em, have always promoted bad news (insert something about "if it bleeds..."). Few media vendors would succeed reporting (accurately) that "not much happened today, except normal progress".
And, as Steven Pinker has pointed out, those who want to "do something" need to justify that to themselves and others, and those who refuse to acknowledge existing progress he terms "progressophobics".
1
But WHY are the poor and hungry of the world enjoying unprecedented increases in health, literacy and income?
Could it be capitalism in China, Brazil and elsewhere in the third world?
(Somebody tell Krugman).
15
@ed Connor. Of course it couldn't have anything to do with agencies like Heifer International or CARE or Habitat or any of the many organizations that allow people to help people, capitalism or no. Your answer is far too easy, and not in and of itself true. Capitalism has its place, but one thing the world better start learning is that it is not the be all and end all of human existence. It causes problems as well as benefits, just like anything else.
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@Brookhawk
Those agencies and their efforts are important, but were already trying . The tip-over occurred when these countries started to promote or just tolerate significant free market economics (capitalism or not).
1
@ed connor No need- Krugman is pro-capitalism, as anyone who reads his columns would know. True - he deplores unregulated, predatory capitalism, which doesn't help anyone by the top 1%.
2