No, the world is not improving
Preface
As we reached the centre of Melbourne, our old van gave up, as though, like Pheidippides before the court in Athens, in recognition of having fulfilled its duty. The intersection outside Flinders Street Station was a hive of activity, and our vehicle, complete with orange, brown, and lime-green curtains, and emblazoned with rainbows and bright yellow No Dams in S-W Tasmania stickers, was quickly encircled by a mob of strangers.
“Where are ya’ headed, mate?” one of them called.
And like magic, we were swept up silently under the impulse of a score of eager hands, and guided to a serendipitously vacant parking space in an avenue nearby.
A beautiful warm sunny day in November, 1982, was the setting for the largest environmental march in Australian history, with some 15,000 people turning out to the state’s capital to oppose the reckless destruction of the Franklin River system. As I marched with my father and siblings alongside a throng of other Melburnians, I was inspired by the immense atmosphere of goodwill, optimism, and empowerment.
That, and other massive demonstrations around the country culminated in a change of government and, following a High Court battle, the cessation of the Franklin Dam project.
The global environmental movement was in full swing. At home, government television programming promoted recycling and responsible citizenship with the Do the right thing advertising campaign, while in school we learnt about the problems of deforestation, land degradation, and global warming.
It was a positive time. And through the eyes of an eight-year-old, everything seemed possible.
Now, nearly forty years later, things could not seem more dire. Tolkien’s last book of The Lord of the Rings might just as well be describing our present reality:
“ It is sad that we should meet only thus at the ending. For the world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air.”
Indeed, the world is changing. And everything that we were fighting for in the 1980s is as relevant today as it was then.
Yet we are being told that the world is, in fact, improving — notably by the likes of entrepreneur and once Richest Man in the World Bill Gates, Oxford economist and founder of Our World in Data Max Roser, and Canadian psychologist Steven Pinker, who has written multiple books on the subject, and whose TED talk Is the world getting better or worse? A look at the numbers, at the time of writing, has received over four million views.
So, what are we to believe? As one might expect, the truth depends greatly upon how we choose to look at it. Implicit to any assessment of the question are assumptions as to what is most valuable — and who.
Through this series of short essays, I will hereby examine the argument from the point of view of our environment, politics, and social metrics, respectively, and thence discuss how we might assess the current state of our world and society, and their future direction.
Let us begin, as Tolkien did, with the water.
