With all the gloom and doom being pushed today, the title of this book is one of certain optimism. WUWT reader may recognize the author, Indur M. Goklany, a frequent WUWT contributor. I highly recommend his book, both for the positive outlook and for the factual discourse. – Anthony
Many people believe that globalization and its key components have made matters worse for humanity and the environment. Indur M. Goklany exposes this as a complete myth and challenges people to consider how much worse the world would be without them. Goklany confronts foes of globalization and demonstrates that economic growth, technological change and free trade helped to power a cycle of progress that in the last two centuries enabled unprecedented improvements in every objective measurement of human well-being.
His analysis is accompanied by an extensive range of charts, historical data, and statistics. The Improving State of the World represents an important contribution to the environment versus development debate and collects in one volume for the first time the long-term trends in a broad array of the most significant indicators of human and environmental well-being, and their dependence on economic development and technological change.
While noting that the record is more complicated on the environmental front, the author shows how innovation, increased affluence and key institutions have combined to address environmental degradation. The author notes that the early stages of development can indeed cause environmental problems, but additional development creates greater wealth allowing societies to create and afford cleaner technologies.
Development becomes the solution rather than the problem. He maintains that restricting globalization would therefore hamper further progress in improving human and environmental well-being, and surmounting future environmental or natural resource limits to growth. **Key points from the book** * The rates at which hunger and malnutrition have been decreasing in India since 1950 and in China since 1961 are striking. By 2002 China’s food supply had gone up 80%, and India’s increased by 50%.
Overall, these types of increases in the food supply have reduced chronic undernourishment in developing countries from 37 to 17%, despite an overall 83% growth in their populations. * Economic freedom has increased in 102 of the 113 countries for which data is available for both 1990 and 2000. * Disability in the older population of such developed countries as the U.S., Canada, France, are in decline. In the U.S. for example, the disability rate dropped 1.3 % each year between 1982 and 1994 for persons aged 65 and over. * Between 1970 and the early 2000s, the global illiteracy rated dropped from 46 to 18 percent. * Much of the improvements in the United States for the air and water quality indicators preceded the enactment of stringent national environmental laws as the Clean Air Act of 1970, Clean Water Act of 1972, and the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974. * Between 1897-1902 and 1992-1994, the U.S. retail prices of flour, bacon and potatoes relative to per capita income, dropped by 92, 85, and 82 percent respectively. And, the real global price of food commodities has declined 75% since 1950.
From the Back Cover
“This optimistic view of the impact of economic growth and technological change on human welfare is an antidote to the prophecies of an imminent age of gloom and doom.”
-Robert W. Fogel, Nobel Laureate in Economics
“Provocative, illuminating, sharp, and fact filled. Do you think that economic growth is a problem for the environment? Goklany will make you think again. Whether or not you’re convinced by his arguments, you’ll learn a ton from them.”
-Cass R. Sunstein, University of Chicago, author of Laws of Fear
“Goklany does an excellent job of refuting the global pessimists by documenting the dramatic improvements experienced in recent times by humankind, not only in the developed world, but worldwide. Goklany addresses a vast array of issues from the improving state of humanity’s life expectancy to his examination of the promise and peril of bioengineered crops. The vast breadth of Goklany’s inquiry is impressive, as is his exhaustive documentation.”
– Roger A. Sedjo, Resources for the Future
“A remarkable compendium of information at odds with the present fashionable pessimism, Goklany’s The Improving State of the World, published by the Cato Institute, reveals that, contrary to popular belief, it is the poorest who are enjoying the most dramatic rise in living standards. Refuting a central premise of the modern green movement, it also demonstrates that as countries become richer, they also become cleaner, healthier and more environmentally conscious. the full review
“In a book to be published next month entitled The Improving State of the World, Indur Goklany, of the Cato Institute, argues that the world’s state is, well, improving. He produces figures to demonstrate that chronic undernourishment has gone down in the past 50 years, we are living longer, we are healthier, the basic necessities of life are cheaper, literacy has gone up and so has educational attainment, economic freedom has increased and a larger proportion of mankind than ever enjoys political freedom. the full article
“Goklany’s essential message in his book, The Improving State of the World, is that the world over, more people are already, or are fast becoming, more blessed than they’ve ever been by a considerable margin. article
“What Goklany concludes is that massive progress has been made in so many areas as a result of the positive impact of economic growth, technological progress and more liberal trade. It’s clear that never have more people had access to education, health care, food, clean water and an improving environment.”
-Michael Campbell, Vancouver Sun
Economic growth has certainly helped improve the world but why oh why did Mr Goklany use the term globalization! The definitions are rather vague and could be either economic or political or a combination. I think most of us here recognise carbon trading for what it is and something to be avoided at all costs. We here in Europe are being strangled by EU red tape (particularly in the UK where EU laws are ‘gold-plated’) so I’d be very hesitant to recommend the ‘global governance’ being touted by van Rompuy and his colleagues.
So in less than a century we should see a voluntarily stabilised world population and the beginnings of a gradual decline.
At the same time we should see improving technologies combining efficient production of energy with less consumption of scarce resources and steady progress towards genuine long term sustainability.
The real medicine we need to take is more free market capitalism (with checks and balances from a rule of law of course) widespread democracies (or local variations on the theme) and less central direction or regulation.
The current global financial crisis is a consequence of government meddling rather than an unstable system. It was governments who bought votes by insisting on the creation of vast numbers of loans to unsuitable borrowers and thereby bid up the price of homes to unaffordable levels.
Let governments and their hangers on get out of the way and all will be fine. Indulge them and instead we will see the decline of the Soviet Union writ globally, perhaps worse.
The poorer they make us the longer it will take before global population peaks because only wealth, freedom and education for women leads to lower birth rates voluntarily.
I am grateful for Indur Goklany’s work and for his contributions to WUWT. Bought this book when he last contributed to the site. An excellent read. It certainly offers ideas as to what a United Nations worthy of the name might turn its attention to. I am hoping that one of the tea-party-movement reforms will be to give away the present UN to one of its client-states and begin a real one. The Improving State of the World could offer a foundational structure.
I would ask for one addition: that improving/non-improving measures be more carefully linked to governmental forms and functions. Those that offer the freedoms of the American Bill of Rights (e.g., “freedom of religion”, not just “freedom of worship” — let there be competition among religions) and advocate and protect private property (e.g., pp. 220-234) should be the ideal of this new organization. Masses of evidence show that these are among the main markers of a better life for human beings. Also among the markers for human creativity and inventiveness. Thanks to Indur Goklany.
Who wouldn’t love living in the modern world? Compared to any other time in history, we have more food, better medical care, amazing technology, and expanded knowledge. Even a middle class American lives better then royalty did a couple 100 years ago. Life is indeed grand!
But there is one nagging fear in the back of my head. Are we kind of like a rookie in the NFL? Suddenly we have wealth beyond our imagination (in the form of plentiful cheap energy for the last 100 years) that allows us to live an amazing lifestyle. But we all know the stories of professional athletes who find themselves at the end of their careers (which is often much sooner than they had anticipated!) with no money and big debts.
If energy remains plentiful (and other resources as well), then we can continue to live this wonderful lifestyle. But if that wealth runs out, then were will we be? Pro athletes who invest wisely and plan for a career after sports often continue to live wonderful lives. The ones who don’t can end up living in cars working dead-end jobs.
Don’t we as a race need to develop a plan for “life after oil”? Sure, some think that there is nearly limitless oil seeping up from deep in the ground, but that is certainly not a mainstream view, and I am not quite ready to gamble the lives of my grandkids on that theory.
Cheap energy is the driving force that allowed “unprecedented improvements in every objective measurement of human well-being.” We are dependent on the equivalent of ~ 5 tons of oil per person per year to maintain our current (western) lifestyles. If cheap energy ends, I fear these unprecedented improvements may slide backwards a bit.
Stephen Wilde
Nicely said but allow me to restate one of your paragraphs.
The real medicine we need to take is more free Enterprise (with checks and balances provided by protection of law of course) widespread real democracies (or local variations on the theme) and no central direction or regulation with a return to Common Law.
Stephen Wilde (7:36 a.m.) “The current global financial crisis is a consequence of government meddling rather than an unstable system”.
Come on Stephen. This is a comment made with “conservative” blinders on. A “free market” is not the one and only answer. We have had plenty of global economic crises before. This one is due to the absence of a “rule of law”. Putting out debt as a form of equity? Invest in debt we were all told — by whom? No government advocated that. There simply has been no punishment for law breakers up and down the line, both Parties. The anything goes atmosphere permits all these regulatory laws that simply rent-seek for businesses/corporations that cannot compete in the free market and enables the elites to line their pockets, too. AGW — part and parcel.
Will says:
September 29, 2010 at 6:40 am
That is absolutely true!. All companies of the world now have to conform their products to Brussels’ ISO, 9000, 14000 or whatever standards come from there. ASTM has been trashed. National history it has been reduced to minimum in schools all over the world, etc.etc. International free trade agreements contain provisions for binding “association” (meddling of foreign governments in internal affairs), etc.,etc.
But, recent Globalization using government decree is a different matter. Think Carbon Trading.
That is not globalization but global government.Carbon Trading is a globalized financial product created by financial corporations, lobbying international governments with scientific falsehoods. Trading thin air, brought to you by Goldman Sucks.
Abundant fuel has driven most economic growth in the last century.
We are now facing a peaking of easily recoverable LIGHT oil. See:
The oil ‘peak’ has been reached
Fasten your seat belts. This will cause an economic roller coaster until major quantities of alternative transport fuels are developed from oilsands, heavy oil, shale and coal – or from solar resources.
A world of fake economy, of an speculative economy, intended as a machine for pumping up the fruits of your hard daily working to the wallets of the not ever working elite, can not continue based on “derivatives” or unlimited printing of “money”. Our hard work has its physical limits: The inexorable laws of thermodynamics make it impossible. Though they may concoct an alternative solution….like Carbon Currency!
Stephen Wilde, I couldn’t agree with you more.
It drives me crazy when I hear people (like my own brother) complain that life is getting worse for the average person. This is a pervasive liberal meme and it is so obviously false I find it hard to believe that anyone falls for it. Of course the left has to believe (or pretend to believe) it as the solution is always more government. Are rich people getting richer? Of course they are. Is the middle class getting poorer? Anyone who believes that is delusional. I recently heard a commentator from Africa saying something to the effect of “poor people in Africa have protuding bones and live in grass huts. Poor people in America are 50 lbs overweight and have cell phones.”
Some governments even fund their own lobby groups!
http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/environment/propaganda-by-proxy%3A-how-the-eu-funds-green-lobby-groups/
OK!. We’ll pay it!, that’s our fate! , we have no fear of working!, we are healthy people, we don’t wanna live from other people’s work, like you do, that’s for feeble and sick and sophisticated people like you!.
Here’s a related article looking at the pessimism of leftists/greens. His book “Future Babble” looks promising.
Dan Gardner: The essential error of David Suzuki
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/09/28/dan-gardner-the-essential-error-of-david-suzuki/
David L. Hagen says:
September 29, 2010 at 8:29 am
That is wrong. Synthetic oil is cheaper than US$80 a barrel. There are LOTS of methane all over the world (don’t forget we use to go to the toilet too)….
In some ways money acts just like energy, once it has been created.
However nature abhors a vacuum (so to speak)
Thus there is this regulating law. “That created from nothing must return to nothing”
Therein lies the fate of Fiat money
Fifty years ago, my great grandmother, grandparents and five children lived in a small 4 room (not bed rooms, just 4 room) house in rural North Carolina.
No interior running water. water was from a handpump on a ground well. Sanitary was an outhouse. Electricity served little other than lights, a refrigerator and a radio.
Heating was by a single oil fired stove. Purchased food was necessities only; a lot of food came from the garden and preserves. Telephone was on a party line. Clothes were hand washed and air dried. Shoes were saved for church and special events.
Things are better.
The obese people of America are dying of hunger. Truer than you think
Well, I’m tellin’ ya’, I can’t remember a blog comment from Indur Goklany from which I didn’t learn something. Does the ‘M’ stand for ‘Signal Rich’?
================
I read a book called ‘Trashing the Planet’ many years ago. This book seems to be on a similar theme.
Mr Golkany’s book now goes on my ‘must read’ list, as I always enjoy his posts here on WUWT. Another book I thoroughly recommend is ‘Climate: The Great Delusion’ by Christian Gerondeau, a French Civil Engineer. His book was originally published as ‘CO2 Un Mythe Planetaire’ and the translation has been updated by the author.
An improving world does bring unintended consequences, however and I do tend to be concerned about the issue of unintelligent eating which seems to be a plague on the less-than-aware individuals comprising a large section of the mass consumer market, which is no longer a Western phenomenon. Even children’s playground equipment in the UK is now wider and stronger than it was thirty years ago, so it is true that one can have too much of a good thing!
I tend to be on the same team as Canadian Mike and Stephen Wilde.
(mod please remove the previous comment)
Stephen is actually right. We have plenty of laws, way way too many laws, useless organizations like the SECC already existed. The recent financial crisis would be impossible without government intervention in the economy, especially the creation of moral hazard. There could be no housing bubble without Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Reserve. None of those three have anything to do with a free market. No housing bubble and no financial crisis. This video and books explain it,
Understanding the financial crisis (Video) (8min)
Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse (Thomas E. Woods Jr., Ph.D. History, 2009)
The Housing Boom and Bust (Thomas Sowell, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Economics, )
People who think the current economic crisis happened because of a lack of government do not properly understand what actually happened.
Enneagram says:
September 29, 2010 at 6:11 am
We forgot to mention “faked science” of the ideological “minimalist” ( no Gods in it) pantheon of the left.
Poptech -Exactly! being a Reatlor now, I saw this whole mess coming when the Fed,
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Congress(in 1999, btw) opened markets and passed laws that made lenders required to loan to people who could not pay their mortgage.
(Personally, I’d love to see Chris, “Coutnrywide” Dodd and Barney Frank hauled
before congress if not a Federal Court…
More Government is not the answer, “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”
pyromancer76 says:
September 29, 2010 at 8:03 am
“Invest in debt we were all told — by whom? No government advocated that.”
The governments in USA and UK and elsewhere did just that.
Mortgages are debt. In order to gain votes from poorer citizens the Banks were encouraged (perhaps compelled) to lend to a vast number of hopeless applicants who would never have been able to borrow within normal prudent criteria. In order to give them the money the savings of a huge number of hard working prudent citizen taxpayers were hijacked for political gain and mostly lost in a Madoff style pyramid scheme but sponsored by our elected representatives.
At the same time Govermment debt was sold in vast quantities while the public sectors were expanded on the back of government borrowing.. Bonds were created and sold supported by nothing but the printing press.
Those two measures inflated the money supply way beyond the value of goods and services available to be purchased and the surplus liquidity went straight into the housing bubble plus huge bonus payments for those cooperative Bankers and long term unrealistic salaries and pensions for the public sector and their accomplices in government.
For a while the bursting of the bubble was delayed by the tax revenues generated. In the UK with income tax at 40% the government was the main beneficiary of that corruption of money.
As always, the longer one defers the necessary correction the harsher that correction must be and the fact is that at this very moment the inevitable future correction is becoming daily harsher because they are still deferring it with more and more ‘quantitative easing’ which is fake money if properly described.
At some point the system must implode and the real (greatly reduced) value of money will become apparent. It should have imploded two years ago when the Banking system froze but to protect themselves our governments decided that the system was too big to fail and have been ruthlessly screwing taxpayers and savers ever since in order to try an defer the proper outcome for a while longer.
In a healthy economy the value of money in circulation must match the value of the goods and services produced by the citizens. The more out of line the two parameters become the more disruptive the inevitable adjustment.
Our leaders are still engaged in a potentially devastating game of ‘pass the parcel’.
The proposal to control and tax the energy supply is just another device to gain time. It gives them a chance to take more of our wealth and apply it to back up the fake money that they keep printing.
Regrettably political parties of both left and right are trapped in this merry go round.
It is not a left / right issue any more. Except that the left and right extremes see it as an opportunity to increase control whereas the centre sees it as a threat that could cause it to lose control.
It is all a consequence of overconfidence, complacency and decadence in the democratic system. We must go through this and endure the coming pain in order to relearn just how hard won our freedoms, successes and progress really were.