A much needed column (and post)

All reasonable people are upset about the recent, current state of the world, but I see that Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times has taken on the brave taste of trying to partially remedy that in his column  In Which I Try Valiantly to Cheer You Up.   (It's a gift link - go read the whole thing.)

Here's how he opens:

This is the season when I customarily argue that the year just ending has been the best in human history.

So I dutifully sat at my laptop and tried to write something along the lines of: Sure, democracy is eroding, politics are toxic, wars are raging, America is losing allies, the planet is burning, and young people will never afford homes. But other than that …

I’ve done these “best year ever” columns annually, irritating Eeyores. But now I just can’t. The year 2025 was a setback for humanity — and unfortunately, the United States is a reason for the retreat. 

He nonetheless goes on to point out the ways in which, despite the dire setbacks of 2025, there are reasons to be hopeful of more progress in certain areas.  Some examples:

A starting point is to gain perspective and acknowledge that in the arc of human history, we’re still in good shape. While 2025 wasn’t the best year in human history, measured by child mortality, it was one of the five best years ever. Fewer than half as many children died in 2025 as in 2000.

It also seems likely that the positive trajectories will resume after slippage in 2025 and 2026. The Gates Foundation forecasts that while the trend of declining child deaths will be slowed, deaths will at least drop in the coming years. Similarly, the share of children stunted by malnutrition will most likely be lower in 2030 than it is now, the foundation suggests, but perhaps not as low as if aid funding had been sustained.

Until around 1970, a majority of adults had always been illiterate. Now we’re at 88 percent adult literacy, in part because of increasing numbers of girls going to school — and those educated women transform families, economies and societies. 

 And further down:

Another area that inspires me with its progress is clean energy. Climate change is still an enormous challenge, but energy economics have turned upside down and now offer a path forward — if we are willing to take it. My old college buddy Bill McKibben, who perhaps has done more than anyone else to raise alarms about climate change and who often as a result sounded rather bleak, is now surprisingly upbeat.

In his terrific new book, “Here Comes the Sun,” about the revolution of solar energy, Bill acknowledges all the challenges, but adds, “We’re also potentially on the edge of one of those rare and enormous transformations in human history — something akin to the moment a few hundred years ago when we learned to burn coal and gas and oil, triggering the Industrial Revolution and hence modernity.”

It took 68 years from the invention of the solar cell in 1954 to install the first terawatt of solar power on the planet, in 2022. It took two years to get the second.

This is because solar is increasingly cheap and simple — balcony solar systems are common in parts of Europe — and because batteries are making immense strides. Remember the line in “The Graduate” about the bright future to be found in “one word,” “plastics”? Today that one word might be “batteries.” 

This reminds me, I never linked to this recent article in Science magazine, which you should be able to read for free: 

Turning point
Global greenhouse emissions will soon flatten or decline—a historic moment driven by China’s surge in renewable energy

The topic is clear from the title, and it gives the tiniest bit of reason for optimism.  But the challenge is still enormous, as shown on this illustration in the article: