Do you also sometimes feel flooded with bad news? Wars, climate change, natural disasters, species extinction, hate speech, political egomaniacs, weakened economy, financial uncertainties, real or perceived restrictions to freedom … an endless list of mental toxins that are bombarding us day by day by day. Do you also sometimes feel an antipathy to continue watching or reading the news?
I recently was reminded about the amazing amount of positive things that are happening on our beautiful planet, too. How many aspects have factually improved over the last decades. And to not let the ‘bad-news-sells’ principle allow to dominate my mindset and thinking. “Five sensations, by which the world is currently essentially improving” (“Fünf Sensationen, durch die sich die Welt gerade entscheidend verbessert”, WELT 10.11.2024) was written by the German journalist Axel Bojanowski in the newspaper WELT, is the article which inspired me to this post.
Let me share just 10 things (and there might be many more) which got better and continue to …
- Since 1900, the global average life expectancy has continuously increased to 71 years (2021) (source: ourworldindata.org).
- Over the last >50 years, the global infant mortality rate has continuously decreased to 4.3% (2020) (source: ourworldindata.org, gapminder.org)
- In India, the program “Poshan Abhiyaan” has reduced undernutrition with children below 5 years of age to 35% (2019), and underweight children decreased to 32.1% (source: World Bank).
- Since the 1970’s, the number of people globally living in extreme poverty has dramatically decreased to less than 9% (souce: ourworldindata.org).
- Within 20 years the number of countries having legislation specifically addressing domestic violence has raised to 90% (source: World Bank).
- After peaks in earlier years, global emissions of key air pollutants (NOx, SO2, CO) are dropping steeply since the last ~15 years (source: ourworldindata.org). Which is also associated with the fact that between 1990 and 2021 the cases of death due to air pollution have globally decreased by 44% (source: ourworldindata.org).
- Scientists more and more refrain from the apocalyptic worst-case climate change scenario RCP 8.5. This still means that we need to care, but at least apocalypse has been canceled (source: nature.com).
- First time in human history, Leprosy disease has been eliminated in a country (Jordan). Leprosy is a scourge of humanity especially in lower income countries (source: WHO).
- World Bank is investing U$90 Billion to bring electricity to 300 Million more people in Africa who have still no access (source: Bloomberg).
- Last not least, one of the most popular opponents of a healthy planet, the growth of the human world population, started to flatten and is expected to have reached its peak in the before the end of this century (source: ourworldindata.org).
Does all of this mean that everything is perfect in this world? No!
But also … not everything is getting worse and we are not “sliding into hell”. No, we do not.
Two of my personal mantras are “Never panic!” and “Fear is a bad advisor.” Yet another time I am really happy to see that real-world data are supporting this mindset. And it is such a great thing to remind oneself about all the positive things happening.
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