

2012 has been the greatest year in the history of the world - andrevoget
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-week/leading-article/8789981/glad-tidings/

======
rje
I looked up a couple of sources for the facts I was interested in.

Extreme Poverty:

“Progress is within our reach. Since 2000, extreme poverty has been halved.
This proves that with political will and the joint commitment of States,
outcomes can be achieved. To succeed, we must redouble our efforts to combat
new forms of poverty and social exclusion. We must also understand all aspects
of poverty in order to tailor our response appropriately.” [1]

Life expectancy in Africa (2009):

"... the increasing availability of antiretroviral therapy has reduced the
spread of the epidemic, and the mortality due to HIV/AIDS has been decreasing
since about 2005, allowing life expectancy at birth to increase again: average
life expectancy at birth, in Africa, was 51 years in 2000, whereas it was
almost 54 years in 2009." [2]

[1]:
[http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=43307&Cr=po...](http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=43307&Cr=poverty&Cr1=#.UMnvaXPjli5)

[2]:
[http://www.who.int/gho/mortality_burden_disease/life_tables/...](http://www.who.int/gho/mortality_burden_disease/life_tables/situation_trends_text/en/index.html)

------
blindhippo
"The doom-mongers will tell you that we cannot sustain worldwide economic
growth without ruining our environment. But while the rich world’s economies
grew by 6 per cent over the last seven years, fossil fuel consumption in those
countries fell by 4 per cent. This remarkable (and, again, unreported)
achievement has nothing to do with green taxes or wind-farms. It is down to
consumer demand for more efficient cars and factories."

Statement is made that it's all because of capitalism - yet no evidence is
cited or even presented. The chinese reference is amazing too, because we all
know the Chinese government has had nothing to do with the economic boom they
have undergone in the past decade.

Let alone how nearly 2 generations have been raised to "reduce, reuse and
recycle" through educational programs promoted by Government initiatives.

But no... it's all consumer demand that fixed emissions issues. Simple
arguments for simple minds.

~~~
webjunkie
"because we all know the Chinese government has had nothing to do with the
economic boom they have undergone in the past decade."

No I do not know that. Please provide a reference.

~~~
blindhippo
I'll leave it up to you to research why I possibly might have inferred that
the Chinese government has a hand in their economic boom.

~~~
weavejester
It isn't responsibility of people reading your comment to research why you're
correct. If you make a claim, you need to be prepared to back it up if you
want it to carry weight.

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digeridoo
Come on you incorrigible pessimists, lighten up. There is obviously some
tongue-in-cheek and inaccuracies in the article, but also some profound truth.
This is the greatest time in history to be alive as a human and we might as
well recognize that.

~~~
kalms
Thank you. Please never forget about the problems going on in the world, but
take the time to appreciate what you got, and what we indeed have
accomplished, during the last couple of years. We're doing good, but we can do
even better. I don't see any harm in celebrating that.

~~~
phreanix
But I do see harm in attributing the reasons for achievements to the wrong
things.

------
rayiner
This article is light on criticial thinking and evidence, and heavy on
bullshit.

> "This remarkable (and, again, unreported) achievement has nothing to do with
> green taxes or wind-farms. It is down to consumer demand for more efficient
> cars and factories."

It has to do with tax rebates for more efficient cars, ever increasing EPA
fuel efficiency standards, ever increasing EPA factory emissions standards,
heavy subsidization of renewable energy not just by the West, but by China,
etc.

> The number of people dying from Aids has been in decline for the last eight
> years.

The last eight years? You mean the time period encompassing 2003-2008, when
GWB committed $15 billion to addressing HIV/AIDS in Africa?

~~~
Tuna-Fish
> It has to do with tax rebates for more efficient cars, ever increasing EPA
> fuel efficiency standards, ever increasing EPA factory emissions standards,
> heavy subsidization of renewable energy not just by the West, but by China,
> etc.

All of that, and the effects mentioned by the author, are a blip compared to
the effect of nat gas becoming cheaper than coal in North America. In fact,
the reduction of CO2 output caused by natural gas replacing coal is actually
larger than the total reduction of CO2 output -- that is, without fracking, US
CO2 output would have grown.

~~~
BoredAstronaut
So what happens if the price of natural gas goes up again? Isn't this just
another example of a lucky break that won't last forever (much like the
history of cheap oil)?

Granted, it doesn't at all take away from this being a good year, but the
original article seems to imply that things are getting better and will always
get better.

It's during the good times that you're supposed to think about and prepare for
the bad times. But too often, it seems like people just want to sit back and
congratulate themselves. Ant vs grasshopper, I guess.

------
josephlord
For context the Spectator is the British weekly magazine for the political
right (relatively smart and definitely NOT far right) but that is important
context for this article.

As others are pointing out in various comments there seems to be a mix of
facts, errors and potentially spurious causal links in the article. Though I
think it is important to remember how good most of the world has things right
now (wouldn't want to be in Syria at the moment or Gaza for the last 40 years)
although we shouldn't be blind to the risks ahead.

------
BoredAstronaut
What I didn't like this article was that it was so full of self-congratulation
and completely bereft of any mention of serious problems visible on the
horizon. Unbounded self-assurance is the doorway to destructive optimism.

There are many things to be concerned about, ecologically and economically.
But if excessive optimism leads people to believe that these problems are only
being made up by "doom-sayers" and "chicken littles" (like, say, the few who
predicted serious fallout from the real estate derivatives market), then
nothing will be done about them. Causing pain and suffering which could
otherwise have been avoided or reduced.

Fortunately, there are serious people doing serious work to address potential
risks. Articles like this one are primarily aimed at simple-minded people who
can't really understand the hard questions, and need a certain amount of
fluffy encouragement to keep them getting up in the morning.

~~~
acchow
> Unbounded self-assurance is the doorway to destructive optimism.

That's a bit melodramatic. The author points out that media as a whole has the
"serious problems visible on the horizon" stuff well covered. It's probably
over-covered to an extreme degree such that we never hear about any good
accomplishments at all. So he wrote one article listing out the good. All you
have to say is that the article was vapid because it ignored what is already
over-covered?

------
d3ad1ysp0rk
One of the worst offenders of making claims without citing any sources I've
seen in months. This article is rubbish.

~~~
jwoah12
Agreed. I really wanted to agree with it because it has a nice sentiment, but
when the author claims that war has historically been mankind's biggest
killer, I completely gave up hope.

~~~
neilk
He might be alluding to Steven Pinker's argument, which is about the decline
of violence of all kinds, not just organized warfare.

~~~
rayiner
I think jwoah is referring to infant mortality, i.e. historically mankind's
greatest killer.

~~~
jwoah12
Sorry, I should've been more clear on that. I was figured disease might be the
biggest killer, certainly more than war anyway. Whatever it may be, I'm pretty
sure it's not war.

------
webjunkie
What? Ruining nature and specifically groundwater with fracking and toxic
chemicals is an "amazing breakthrough"?

~~~
YokoZar
It's probably less bad than burning massive amounts of coal. In the same way
that moderate poverty is less bad than extreme poverty and dying from cancer
is less bad than dying from childhood AIDS, this represents a form of
progress.

------
bjhoops1
I think that it is more valuable to spend one's time focusing on problems and
how they can be solved rather than celebrating the fact that things are better
than they used to be in many, many ways.

That being said, it is important to periodically remind one's self that things
are generally getting better around the world. Failing to keep problems in
perspective can not only be discouraging, but can skew your perception of how
sever those problems are. Don't let yourself fall for the "Good Old Days"
myth.

~~~
illuminate
"celebrating the fact that things are better than they used to be in many,
many ways."

Yes, that's certainly an invitation to regression of all battles won for the
better, with civil rights and other gains. We're not moving in any particular
vector, necessarily, we have to actively ensure we're pushing to build on
these victories and the victories of our predecessors.

~~~
bjhoops1
yes good point - "progress" isn't quite single-dimensional. :)

------
6ren
According to Adam Smith, the basis of prosperity is the division of labour.
When people specialise, they get better at whatever they do, because they
practice it, spend more time thinking about how to improve it, and don't spend
time adjusting to different tasks.

But specialisation is limited by the size of the market: if you are _too_
specialised, then there aren't enough people who want what you do for you to
make a living. But within a larger population, maybe there will be.

Therefore, prosperity is driven by increased market size, including:
globalization; increased human population; more people being raised out of
poverty (and so can buy more).

From a producer's point of view, these factors enable you to make a living by
specialising in _exactly_ what work you really want to do, that you find most
satisfying and rewarding, that best suits your talents and ways of working.

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zerohm
You lost me on this one...

 _The amazing breakthroughs in ‘fracking’ technology mean that, in spite of
the world’s escalating population from one billion to seven billion over the
last two centuries we live in an age of energy abundance._

Well hell let's all go buy Hummers and crank up the heat!

------
Tichy
"Never has there been less hunger, less disease or more prosperity."

That seems unlikely to me, given the recent growth of the world's population.
I would guess there are now more people hungry than there were people alive
some centuries (or couple of thousand years?) ago. Wasn't there an article
recently about human population being down to a couple of thousands
individuals at some point?

Maybe he is talking about percentages, or just the 20th century, or something
like that?

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arbuge
"Germany was perhaps the most civilised nation in the world in the 1920s."

Hmmm... define civilised. In the 1920s Germany was devastated after losing
WWI, on the hook for gazillions of war repayments under the Versailles treaty,
and experiencing some of the worst inflation ever seen in a developed country.
It took something like a wheelbarrow full of Deutschemarks back then to buy a
loaf of bread.

~~~
yk
Actually Weimar Germany is a lot more complex than usually presented. To
adress your points:

1.) Germany was not devastated by WWI, in fact the fighting did take place
outside of Germany.

2.) The Versailles treaty was large enough to serve as a nazi-propaganda tool,
but not large enough to stifle the economy.

3.) The hyperinflation was in 1923, in the other years Germany had generally
high, but not that high inflation. ( Something like 5 - 8 % )

In addition the Weimar republic worked culturally quite well, it won about
half of the nobel prices in physics and chemistry between 1918 and 1933 [1],
had the Bauhaus [2] a very influential school of design and represents with
Authors like Thomas Mann and Berthold Brecht an important period of German
literature.

On the other hand, the political system was never widely accepted, the
judicial system was completely dysfunctional and the entire thing was never
far away from a coup or a civil war. ( Not to mention that it ended
catastrophically. )

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates> [2]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus>

------
disbelief
> the same UN extrapolations that predict such threatening sea-level rises for
> Bangladesh also say that, in two or three generations’ time, it will be as
> rich as Britain.

Can anyone find a reference for this one? Seems a bit outlandish considering
the current situation on the ground in Bangladesh.

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bitwize
Also thanks to fracking, U.S. groundwater contamination is at an all-time
high! Go us!

~~~
ars
Please switch to a different news provider. Your sentence is nonsense.

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chiquitabacana
The year haven't ended yet.

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ErikAugust
Greatest year in the history of the
world!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

~~~
ErikAugust
What's with the downvotes? The notion of a "greatest year in the history of
the world" is silly.

~~~
AndrewDucker
HN tends to reward responses that clearly point things out in a non-silly
manner, and punish purely silly responses, even if those responses were
pointing out how silly something else was.

~~~
ErikAugust
Thanks for the explanation.

