Enough with the doom and gloom! Our planet may be in better shape than you think.
Human beings have a cognitive bias toward bad news (keeping us alert and alive), and we journalists reflect that: We report on planes that crash, not planes that land. We highlight disasters, setbacks, threats and deaths, so 2022 has kept us busy.
But a constant gush of despairing news can be paralyzing. So here’s my effort to remedy our cognitive biases.
Where 2022 excelled particularly was in technological strides.
Solar power capacity around the world is on track to roughly triple over the next five years and overtake coal as the leading source of power globally. Technical improvements are constant — such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers’ developing a way to produce thin and flexible solar panels.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
There are parallel breakthroughs in batteries. Likewise, nuclear fusion as an energy source marked a milestone in 2022. Green hydrogen is also gaining ground and could be useful for shipping and energy storage.
The upshot is that we are in the midst of a revolution of renewables that may soon leave us far better off. If things go right, we’ll be able to enjoy cheaper, more reliable and more portable power than ever before.
Health tech has likewise made immense gains. Scientists are making significant progress on vaccines for malaria. Immunotherapy is making progress against cancer. A new gene-editing technique may be able to cure sickle cell anemia; Bill Gates argues in his annual letter that the same approach may eventually offer a cure for HIV/AIDS as well.
We haven’t even mentioned the progress in artificial intelligence, including ChatGPT.
And of course, technology is not taking leaps just in research labs but is filtering down to improve individual lives. I’m writing this on the family farm in Oregon with the help of our new Starlink internet service that is beginning to empower rural America.
You may have winced when I wrote above that “this may still be the best time ever to be alive.” That’s deeply contrary to the public gloom.
Max Roser of the indispensable website Our World in Data puts the situation exactly right: “The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better. All three statements are true at the same time.”
So all the bad news is real, and I cover it the other 364 days of the year. But it’s also important to acknowledge the gains that our brains (and we journalists) are often oblivious to.