Is Humanity Headed Toward an Increasing
Desperate, Hungry, and Hopeless Future? By Alan Hahn SETTING ASIDE THE HYPERBOLE ABOUT THE DIRE STRAITS OF OUR ENVIRONMENT AND THE STRESS OF OUR GROWING GLOBAL POPULATION, HOW ARE WE REALLY DOING? HAVE OUR ADVANCEMENTS IN AGRICULTURE, MANUFACTURING, HEALTH CARE, NUTRITION AND TECHNOLOGY SIMPLY ALLOWED MANKIND TO “TREAD WATER?” IS HUMANITY IN A CERTAIN GLOBAL DEATH SPIRAL? HAVE WE REACHED THE POINT OF NO RETURN?
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Spring 2015 — Partners
In a word, no. By nearly all measures, our society is cleaner, we are healthier, we are enjoying longer lives and we are being far more productive. We quickly forget, or perhaps we fail to recognize, that in the not too distant past, life was very short and not so pleasant. Economist Max Roser has an interesting website that helps to put some of the past into perspective (OurWorldinData.org). For example, Roser points out that not so long ago (in the early 1800s), 84 percent of the world lived in extreme poverty. Today, that global number is closer to 20 percent. And, since 1980, the world poverty rate has declined at the fastest rate in history.