The world is richer and healthier

2 December 2006

Gloom and doom are in fashion. But, writes Allister Heath, a remarkable collection of economic statistics shows that the reality is much, much cheerier. For all our laments to the contrary, the human race has never had it so good

In fact, equally rigorous modelling using different assumptions suggests that, for the next 80 years at least, the benefits of faster economic growth in further improving quality of life across the developing world will outweigh any cost of global warming. Some reductions in carbon emissions may eventually be needed, Goklany says, but in most cases it would be cheaper to adapt to higher temperatures than to try to stop them.

Our best bet, therefore, is to allow technology, trade and the global economy to continue growing unimpeded. Such is Goklany’s plea: if the present rate of improvement continues, he argues, we could soon be living in a world where ‘hunger and malnutrition have been virtually banished; where malaria, TB, Aids and other infectious and parasitic diseases are distant memories; and where humanity meets its needs while ceding land and water back to the rest of nature ... even in sub-Saharan Africa infant mortality could be as low as it is today in the United States, and life expectancies as high’.

Hope has become a commodity in short supply in the West. Even though more progress will always be required, our vic-tories over famine and extreme poverty during the past two centuries are civilisation’s greatest achievement. It is time we took a well-deserved break from worrying about terrorism, rising crime, social dislocation and all our other problems to celebrate what we have actually got right.

Allister Heath is associate editor of The Spectator and deputy editor of the Business. The Improving State of the World, by Indur Goklany, is to be published later this month by the Cato Institute, www.cato.org, at $19.95.