Now for some good news

In general the media seem to prefer to feed us the bad news however despite what we are being constantly told, except for the very real climate change problem, the world  is not going to hell  in a hand basket. Nevertheless the constant media depiction of bad news has clearly coloured our thinking. 

A study in Britain showed that  only 10% of people thought poverty had decreased, an American survey only 5% knew that poverty had actually halved  in the past 60 years and in Sweden three quarters though that it had increased.

Oxford economist Max Roser pointed out that Newspapers could legitimately run a headline ’ Number of people in extreme poverty fell by 137,000 every day for the last 25 years’.  Yes, there are some very cheering facts out there if we care to look for them.

For starters we can expect to live  much longer . The early hunter gatherers could only look forward to between 20 and 30 years, even by 1800 this had only risen to 33. By 1850 it had risen to 36 years in Europe and a century later almost doubled to 68 years. The world average is now 71 and climbing. In New Zealand it is 84  years for women and 81 for men.

This improvement in life expectancy soon made itself felt in third world countries with the introduction of vaccinations,  insecticides and medicines. The risk of dying in childbirth  reduced from 6%to 2.8% in Africa and from 2.5% to .5% in Asia.

The all important factor, nourishment, has improved dramatically. A 1945 survey showed that over half the people in the world were seriously undernourished, currently the number is under 9%  

The world’s illiteracy has been all but eliminated dropping  from over 90% in the early 1800s to less than  9% today.

So there is some good news out there. What is really required is some balance in the news we get these days. The constant diet of ‘breaking news’ horror stories distorts the possibility of  having a correct long term perspective and some optimism. 

Now just waiting for some good news on efforts on dealing with reversing climate change