PLANET EARTH AND HUMANITY ARE DOING FINE, AND THE BEST IS COMING

The world appears to be in a mess, and include the USA, for our government is closed for business.  We have a nincompoop called Donald Trump leading the country and the Dow Jones just suffered its worst December since the Great Depression.  However, according to Stephen Pinker (right):

Last year, the world had 12 ongoing wars, 60 autocracies, 10 percent of the world population in extreme poverty and more than 10,000 nuclear weapons. But 30 years ago, there were 23 wars, 85 autocracies, 37 percent of the world population in extreme poverty and more than 60,000 nuclear weapons. 

Farid Zakaria on CNN recently featured a debate between Stephen Pinker of Harvard and Niall Ferguson of Stanford, more specifically, the Hoover Institution, which is an almost out-of-place conservative organization on a liberal campus.  While they mostly agreed that the world is better off today than we were a hundred and fifty years ago, Ferguson was the pessimist and Pinker the unabashed optimist.  Here is a transcript of this discussion, and you can watch a clip of this discussion also.

I was so influenced by Pinker that I placed his Enlightenment Now (the case for reason, science, humanism and progress) book, published earlier this year, into my iPhone for the free moments I have at the Ala Wai Golf Course.  For the record, that's where I do my most productive reading.

How do we today compare with, say, 1918?  World War I ended in 1918 with up to 100 million deaths, and into the next year there were 100 million deaths from the Spanish Flu, although many in the former were part of the latter.  Note how the population dipped during this period:

World Wars tend to do that.  In America alone 650,000 died from the flu in 1918.  Last year, with three times more people, there were "only" 80,000 flu deaths.  In comparison, there were also around 40,000 vehicle deaths.

A hundred years ago there was no internet, no television, and, can you believe this...no radio stations.  Regarding the USA:

                                                    1918                    2018
Life expectancy                            53                         80
Population                             103 million           325 million
Household income                     $1,158                 $56,516
Cost of automobile                    $   360                  $33,560
Cost of home                             $5,000                $377,710

$1 in 1918 is the equivalent of $16.69 today.  However, this ratio varies by category:

Food                15.17
Energy             45.59
Shelter             55.86
Medical care  145.85

Now you can better understand the concern about medical care in the U.S.

Interestingly enough, $1 in 1918 was only worth $2.30 in 1968.  So what happened that year?

• January:  the Tet offensive was the turning point in Vietnam, a war that we lost.
• April:  Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated.
• June:  Robert F. Kennedy assassinated.
• November:  Richard Nixon elected president.

Otherwise in 1968:

• Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 943 (we ended the year at 23,327).
• Gasoline price averaged 34 cents/gallon.
• Movie tickets cost $1.50.
• Minimum wage was $1.60/hour.
• Big Mac cost $0.49.
• The Rolling Stones and Beatles were popular.  I just saw the Stones on TV, still touring.
• Celine Dion was born.
• First successful heart transplant.
• The USA still exploding hydrogen bombs.
• Charles de Gaulle was president of France.
• This is what people wore:

Hmmm...not much different.  To me, 1968 was not all that long ago.

Here are some tidbits from Pinker:

• The homicide rate in England was 50 times higher in the 14th century than today.
• Advances in longevity and health — life expectancy on Earth has grown from about 30 to more than 70, in rich countries to more than 80. Health and prosperity, and sustenance — the fact that famines are far rarer than they used to be. Malnutrition is much lower, infectious disease. More generally, I see science as part of the Enlightenment — namely reason applied to human betterment.

• I don’t think the fact that some things are improving means everything is improving. That’s not the way the world works.  It’s no contradiction to say that we’re extending human life and there are threats: threats of climate change, threats of authoritarian politicians. You can appreciate the threats, worry about the threats, try to fight back against the threats at the same time that you appreciate the progress that we have made.  I would say that it’s appreciating the progress that gives us the courage and conviction to try to strive for more progress. History tells us that attempts to make the world better tend to succeed. We’ll never achieve a utopia, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make things a little bit better.

Okay, so what about climate change, Donald Trump and the screwed up world economics?   This is not Pinker, but me responding;

• Soon after 1968 we were faced with Limits to Growth, Acid Rain and the Population Bomb.  Humanity finds a way, and not by doing much.  Take population, for one.  The birth rate is dramatically decreasing.  Save for China, which has now basically stopped controlling population, it turns out that improved economies caused families to want fewer children:

• Acid rain was checked by the 1970 Clean Air Act.  Yes, the U.S. Congress is not all that hopeless.  However, China is where were in 1968.   I will not ever again go to Beijing, especially around now, when coal emissions cover most of their cities.  Today, the air pollution index is 28 in Hawaii and more than ten times that all over China and India, two countries that refuse to cooperate on climate controls.  While China gets just past 500, several cities in India approach 1000.  But here is another instance where the problem will solve itself, for the masses just won't take this much longer.

• What about Limits to Growth?  Well, look at Peak Oil.  What happened?  Petroleum companies found more oil.  While the basic points the authors made still make some sense, they miscalculated on the ingenuity of industry and how need finds a way.

• Hoping there is no serious tipping point to global warming, there will come a time when something like a carbon tax will check carbon dioxide emissions.
• Ah, Donald Trump.  Well, there is the Mueller investigation with Democrats now controlling the House.  Then in less than two years will come the 2020 presidential election.  He's as good as gone.

• For past 5000 years interest rates have gone up and down.  The Great Depression sunk this figure to an all-time low.  We have been down at the bottom for several years now, which has energized the world economy.  Plus, oil prices are half what they were a few years ago, making businesses more profitable.  The trade matter will just go away when new leaders and politics adjust.  Sure, Europe is a basket case and China is metastable.  However, no thanks to Trump, the USA is doing very well.

So let me ask you, would you rather live as a cave person, at the time of Jesus Christ, when the Pilgrims came to America, or any other time in our historic past?  1919?  1968?  Probably not.  Certainly, if you're a minority, LGBeTc or female, today is better than yesterday.

Planet Earth is being challenged, but will in time recover from climate warming.  Humanity has always been tested, but we are closer to world peace than ever before.  The fear of a nuclear winter to end mankind is gone.  We might have another century or more of conflict, but we're getting there

Will we want people a century from now to all be beautiful, healthy, smart and with the right humanitarian instincts?  Genetic engineering will permit this.  But will morality?  Should climate be controlled around Planet Earth?  Will there be ten thousand floating countries, as indicated in my Blue Revolution?

Climate change is a concern, but Donald Trump and the world economy are almost trivial threats to the future of us.  We are doing fine and life for most will continue to improve into the foreseeable future.

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