A Capital Research Center writer and investigative researcher named Hayden Ludwig published a column asserting that “If you’re alive today, you won the lottery.” He draws a stark contrast between the blessings of modern life, and the drastic changes in policies throughout the western world – policies that he says threaten those very blessings.
Ludwig’s often controversial columns are fairly widely read, but occasionally deserve even greater attention. Today’s political climate is as divisive as ever in our lifetimes, and much of that polarization results from widespread disagreement about environmental issues, especially climate change and the policies advanced to combat it. Some of those policies would dramatically alter (some say diminish) the lifestyles of people who now enjoy the highest standard of living ever known. I continue to think climate science is evolving, and that these are issues upon which reasonable people can disagree. But it cannot reasonably be argued that people are, in general, far better off today that at any time in human history.
We are nevertheless subject to a continuous barrage of news suggesting the opposite. It is at least implied that the Earth has reached its capacity to support life, that humanity is on the brink of starvation, and that we are running out of time to take drastic action to stave off the disaster. It is a view shared by most of the leaders of the free world, including presidents of the U.S., France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada, and most other UN member states. Even Price William, heir to the British throne, recently warned that mankind has only a decade left to “fix the planet.”
As Ludwig writes, “Reality isn’t even close.” This does not mean, at least in my view, that we should ignore potential dangers, or fail to make responsible choices. But the “urgent crisis” mentality is unhelpful, because people rarely make good decisions during life-threatening crises.
The truth is that people alive today are wealthier, healthier, better nourished, better housed, better clothed, and more comfortable than any people who ever lived on Earth. They have better access to clean air and water, the benefits of electricity, heating, air conditioning, and mobility than their ancestors.
This is especially remarkable when you consider that there are more people on Earth today than ever before. Ludwig quotes economic statistics showing that the global gross domestic product, per capita and in current dollars, rose from $445 in 1960 to over $11,000 today – while Earth’s population more than doubled, from 3 billion to nearly 8 billion.
Not everything is rosy, of course. There are still millions of people undernourished, especially in Africa and Asia. But in prior times, millions actually died of starvation every year, a tragedy that has been mostly eradicated today, even though there is less farmland than a century ago. That’s because a smaller percentage of people (barely two percent in America) now produce much greater yields on smaller acreage than farmers of any previous generation. There are still plenty of natural disasters, including droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and landslides, but deaths from such disasters have fallen dramatically since the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress, author of “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,” argues persuasively that today’s use of technology and energy has transformed the natural environment into a livable one. “Most of the natural world is too hot, too cold, has too much rainfall, or not enough,” he writes. “Then there’s bacteria-filled water, disease-carrying insects, tornadoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis, to name just a few of nature’s unpleasant features.”
That was the inhospitable world our ancestors inhabited. Drudgery filled the lives of a vast majority of people a century ago, working from sunup to sundown to eke out a bare living from marginal farms, chopping wood, hauling water, milking cows, and dying young by today’s standards. Most of us now live in a world that is astonishingly comfortable compared to that.
Today’s opponents of energy production never mention the quality of life it enables. Development of ways to burn fossil fuels without emitting harmful pollutants is light years ahead of all previous technology. Automobiles now emit almost nothing into the air, and the march toward cleaner energy will continue into the future, as it must.
Research and analysis on global climate issues ought to continue in earnest, helping inform policies for a clean and healthy environment – and strong economy. Because a society can only afford the luxury of such study, when it is wealthy from winning the lottery.
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