Home > The Magazine > Features

Wednesday 3 December 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

The world is richer and healthier

Allister Heath

Thursday, 30th November 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.

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

More articles from: Allister Heath | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comment

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

I will always defend a big spender like J.M. Keynes

Nancy Dell’Olio

Nancy Dell’Olio makes an impassioned case for Keynesian economics as the necessary remedy for the global crisis. It is to the Cambridge economist that we should turn once more

How I became Bulgaria’s etiquette guru

Dylan Jones

Dylan Jones is astonished to find in Sofia that the former communist country has embraced his guide to the mores of modern life — and that not everybody looks like Borat

Rudd has lurched from indecision to phoney war

Matthew Castray

Matthew Castray looks back on the Australian Prime Minister’s first year in office and audits an administration which has reviewed much and done very little

Incompetence is fine: but being offensive is sure to get you sacked

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle says that something has gone wrong when 15 South Lanarkshire social workers are sacked over a dodgy Gary Glitter joke while none of their counterparts in Haringey has even been reprimanded over the ‘Baby P’ case

Brown has played into the hands of the Tory Bullingdon Boys he loathes

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson says that the Pre-Budget Report killed off New Labour without landing a punch on the Tories. It has paved the way for a new Conservatism, in which Cameron woos aspirational voters, focuses on government debt and looks for responsible spending cuts

Want to cut taxes? First cut spending. Here’s how

Fraser Nelson

After a week of clamorous competition between the parties over tax cuts, Fraser Nelson offers a guide to paying for them: a programme of spending cuts that would preserve core services but shave off the fat of the Brown years. All that is needed is political will

A quantum of respect for the forgotten master

Sinclair McKay

Sinclair McKay hails the pioneering novels of William Le Queux, true inventor of the modern spy novel, whose thrillers prefigured the Bond books by more than half a century

Web Exclusive: Lloyd Evans on Thomas Friedman

Lloyd Evans

Thomas Friedman, the influential American commentator, addressed Intelligence Squared on his new book, ‘Hot, Flat and Crowded. Why the world needs a green revolution and how we can renew our global future.’

Welcome to the new austerity era, Mr Cameron

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson says that the Tory leader must not be tempted by a ‘safety first’ strategy at his conference in Birmingham. The global financial crisis has transformed the political context and left an opening for the Conservatives to promise true radicalism and to be proudly bold

How Dave and George can avoid a terrible rift

Andrew Tyrie

Andrew Tyrie says that root-and-branch reform of the Treasury will be needed when Brown is gone, including weekly minuted meetings. Past friendship is not enough