Wonderful World
Now, of course, there are still great differences both within countries and between countries in different parts of the world - natural disasters still occur and human lives are still lost in unnecessary wars or through terrorist violence.
Nonetheless, I think Bjorn Lomborg makes a valid point because the world has not exactly come to an end over the past five years - broadly speaking people are around 5% worse off than they were in 2008 which is not a cause for celebration, although neither is a real human tragedy.
At the same time, mortgage payers in the UK (around 11 million households) have benefited from artificially low interest rates in recent years which means that many people are actually better off during the recession - even after taking into account the squeeze on living standards.
The last Labour Government under Gordon Brown claimed they had abolished 'boom and bust' forever - only to preside over the worst 'boom and bust' in living memory, fuelled by an ever rising mountain of public and private debt, and a housing bubble driven by London and the south east of England.
Yet I haven't heard many practical suggestions on how UK PLC should turn things around - other than by learning to live within its means and rebalancing the economy by eliminating crazy spending decisions - such as building two 'white elephant' aircraft carriers, replacing the Trident nuclear missile system and throwing money away on the Edinburgh trams.
So, far from being the end of the world - I think Bjorn Lomborg is on to something with his rather more positive outlook on life.
What an increasingly wonderful world
By Bjorn Lomborg
Ignore the doomsters: on nearly every measure our planet is getting fairer, healthier and safer
How is the world doing? Answering this question has led to clashes between pessimists and optimists for centuries. In 1798 Thomas Malthus made a famous pitch for the pessimists, predicting that large proportions of humanity would remain in starvation because the population would always increase faster than food production. Similarly, William Stanley Jevons worried in 1865 that Britain would run out of coal and economic growth. These worries were woven together in the hugely influential 1972 book, Limits to Growth, which predicted a world running out of food and raw materials while drowning in pollution. This bleak view has a pervasive influence on the environmental movement to this day.
The optimists, on the other hand, have cheerfully countered that there is no need to worry and everything is getting better. Perhaps it’s time we looked at the evidence.
Together with 21 of the world’s top economists, I’ve tried to do just that, creating a scorecard from 1900 to 2050. Across ten important areas, such as air pollution and biodiversity, we have estimated the relative cost of various problems in the year 1900. Then in 1901, 1902 and all the way to 2013, with predictions to 2050.
Using classic economic valuations of everything from lost lives and bad health to the impact of illiteracy on income, to lost wetlands and increased hurricane damage from global warming, the economists show how much each problem costs. To estimate the size of the problem, it is compared with the total resources available to fix it. This gives us the problem as expressed in terms of a percentage of GDP.
The trends below show some surprising results. Overall they emphasise that there is a realistic position between the extremes: since 1900 the world has become an amazingly better place, and although there are still problems, it is likely to continue to get better to 2050.
1 Air pollution
The biggest environmental problem in the world is air pollution. Most deaths are caused by indoor pollution from cooking and heating with dung and twigs. Over the 20th century, 260 million died from indoor air pollution in the developing world — about twice the toll in all the century’s wars. This is more than four times the number who died from outdoor air pollution. As poverty receded and clean fuels got cheaper, the risk has fallen eight-fold and will decline another 70 per cent until 2050.
In 1900 air pollution cost 23 per cent of global GDP; today it is 6 per cent and by 2050 it will be 4 per cent.
2 Conflict
The cost of war has dramatically declined since 1914. The First World War cost about 20 per cent of world GDP and the Second World War almost 40 per cent. On average, the 20th-century military cost about 5 per cent of GDP per year. Yet since the Korean War and a peak of 7 per cent, global costs have declined steadily through 3.5 per cent in 1980 to about 1.7 per cent now.
A pessimistic forecast for 2050 estimates 1.8 per cent, an optimistic one 1.6 per cent. The important takeaway is that the heavy military costs of the 20th century have been turned into what looks like a permanent peace dividend.
3 Health
In 1900 the average human life expectancy was 32. Today it is 69 and it will be 76 in 2050.
Take smallpox, the biggest single killer in the 20th century. It killed some 400 million people before being eradicated in 1979. In 1970 only some 5 per cent of infants were vaccinated against measles, tetanus, whooping cough, diphtheria and polio. By 2000, 85 per cent were vaccinated, saving about three million lives a year — more, each year, than world peace would have saved in the 20th century.
The cost of poor health at the outset of that century was a phenomenal 32 per cent of global GDP. Today, it is down to about 11 per cent and by 2050 will have halved again.
4 Education
Illiteracy today afflicts 20 per cent of the world’s population. Yet in 1900 some 70 per cent were illiterate and average schooling lasted a mere one year. Throughout most of the 20th century progress was concentrated in the prosperous West. That started changing from about 1970, when developing countries started making similarly large (and continuing) advances, with the biggest improvements in China.
In 1900 the cost of not having universal literacy was 12.3 per cent of GDP. Today that number is close to 7 per cent. By 2050 it is estimated that illiteracy will reach about 12 per cent and the cost will have dwindled to only 3.8 per cent of GDP.
5 Free trade
International trade rarely appears on lists of top humanitarian problems, but with China’s rapid trade-driven growth over the past 30 years, 680 million people lifted themselves out of poverty. We started the 20th century with relatively free trade: the total cost of trade restrictions was perhaps 3-4 per cent of GDP. That changed after the 1929 crash and the Depression of the 1930s. Trade barriers shot up and the costs rose above 10 per cent.
After the Second World War successive free trade rounds brought the developed world’s costs down to about 2 per cent but the developing world has been much slower in reducing its obstacles, reaching 4 per cent today.
For the future, we can move towards more free trade and cut our annual losses to about 3 per cent of GDP. But there is also a real risk of a return to the beggar-my-neighbour policies of the 1930s, again caused by recession, particularly among less-developed countries, which have most to lose.
6 Gender inequality
In 1900 only 15 per cent of the global workforce were women and the position is still less than equal. In 2012 40 per cent of women earned only 60 per cent as much as men.
Even by 2050 the ratio will not be equal, and women will still receive 30 per cent less. Even if we take into account that someone has to do the unpaid housework and we must shoulder the increased costs of female education, the loss of gender inequality was at least 17 per cent of global GDP in 1900. Today, with higher participation and lower wage differentials, the loss is 7 per cent and it will be 4 per cent in 2050.
7 Biodiversity
The economists measured the major biomes in the world — from tundra to tropical forests and deserts — in 1900, 2000, and 2050. They estimated both their cultural value for recreation and also its value in terms of storage of carbon to help global warming, the production of wood and traditional products, and the aesthetic value of “knowing it is there” — as when we enjoy knowing that there is undisturbed rain forest in New Guinea. They found that, overall, the world lost about 1 per cent of GDP per year over the 20th century. For the future till 2050, we are likely to see an annual net benefit of about 0.25 per cent of GDP.
8 Climate change
From 1900-2025 climate change has mostly been a net benefit, rising from barely positive in 1900 to increasing welfare by about 1.5 per cent of GDP per year in 2025. Why? Because global warming has mixed effects, and for moderate warming the benefits prevail. Increased CO2 boosts agriculture as a fertiliser and adds 0.8 per cent to GDP. Moderate warming also avoids more cold deaths than it causes extra deaths from heat. And it reduces the demand for heating more than it increases the costs of cooling. On the other hand, warming increases the competition for scarce water resources by about 0.2 per cent and has a negative impact on ecosystems such as wetlands of about 0.1 per cent. Storm impacts are vanishingly small.
As temperatures rise, the costs will rise and benefits decline, leading to a dramatic fall in net benefits. After 2070, global warming will become a net cost to the world.
9 Hunger
Hunger, one of humanity’s oldest scourges, has relented. The researchers measured it through height, a strong indicator of childhood starvation. In 1900 the average rich-world male adult was only 169cm tall, and 164cm in the poor world. Today it’s 177cm and 168cm. A 4cm increase may not sound like much, but it indicates going from 10 per cent moderate starvation to virtually nil. That means that 1.5 million fewer children die each year from malnutrition.
The cost of malnutrition has declined from 11 per cent of GDP in 1900 to 7 per cent today, and should fall to 5 per cent in 2050 — significant progress, but it also shows that there is still much to do.
10 Water and sanitation
The death rate from water and sanitation problems in developing countries was 1.5 per 1,000 in 1950, slashed to 0.4 today and projected to fall again, to 0.2 per 1,000 by mid-century.
At the same time, mortgage payers in the UK (around 11 million households) have benefited from artificially low interest rates in recent years which means that many people are actually better off during the recession - even after taking into account the squeeze on living standards.
The last Labour Government under Gordon Brown claimed they had abolished 'boom and bust' forever - only to preside over the worst 'boom and bust' in living memory, fuelled by an ever rising mountain of public and private debt, and a housing bubble driven by London and the south east of England.
Yet I haven't heard many practical suggestions on how UK PLC should turn things around - other than by learning to live within its means and rebalancing the economy by eliminating crazy spending decisions - such as building two 'white elephant' aircraft carriers, replacing the Trident nuclear missile system and throwing money away on the Edinburgh trams.
So, far from being the end of the world - I think Bjorn Lomborg is on to something with his rather more positive outlook on life.
What an increasingly wonderful world
By Bjorn Lomborg
Ignore the doomsters: on nearly every measure our planet is getting fairer, healthier and safer
How is the world doing? Answering this question has led to clashes between pessimists and optimists for centuries. In 1798 Thomas Malthus made a famous pitch for the pessimists, predicting that large proportions of humanity would remain in starvation because the population would always increase faster than food production. Similarly, William Stanley Jevons worried in 1865 that Britain would run out of coal and economic growth. These worries were woven together in the hugely influential 1972 book, Limits to Growth, which predicted a world running out of food and raw materials while drowning in pollution. This bleak view has a pervasive influence on the environmental movement to this day.
The optimists, on the other hand, have cheerfully countered that there is no need to worry and everything is getting better. Perhaps it’s time we looked at the evidence.
Together with 21 of the world’s top economists, I’ve tried to do just that, creating a scorecard from 1900 to 2050. Across ten important areas, such as air pollution and biodiversity, we have estimated the relative cost of various problems in the year 1900. Then in 1901, 1902 and all the way to 2013, with predictions to 2050.
Using classic economic valuations of everything from lost lives and bad health to the impact of illiteracy on income, to lost wetlands and increased hurricane damage from global warming, the economists show how much each problem costs. To estimate the size of the problem, it is compared with the total resources available to fix it. This gives us the problem as expressed in terms of a percentage of GDP.
The trends below show some surprising results. Overall they emphasise that there is a realistic position between the extremes: since 1900 the world has become an amazingly better place, and although there are still problems, it is likely to continue to get better to 2050.
1 Air pollution
The biggest environmental problem in the world is air pollution. Most deaths are caused by indoor pollution from cooking and heating with dung and twigs. Over the 20th century, 260 million died from indoor air pollution in the developing world — about twice the toll in all the century’s wars. This is more than four times the number who died from outdoor air pollution. As poverty receded and clean fuels got cheaper, the risk has fallen eight-fold and will decline another 70 per cent until 2050.
In 1900 air pollution cost 23 per cent of global GDP; today it is 6 per cent and by 2050 it will be 4 per cent.
2 Conflict
The cost of war has dramatically declined since 1914. The First World War cost about 20 per cent of world GDP and the Second World War almost 40 per cent. On average, the 20th-century military cost about 5 per cent of GDP per year. Yet since the Korean War and a peak of 7 per cent, global costs have declined steadily through 3.5 per cent in 1980 to about 1.7 per cent now.
A pessimistic forecast for 2050 estimates 1.8 per cent, an optimistic one 1.6 per cent. The important takeaway is that the heavy military costs of the 20th century have been turned into what looks like a permanent peace dividend.
3 Health
In 1900 the average human life expectancy was 32. Today it is 69 and it will be 76 in 2050.
Take smallpox, the biggest single killer in the 20th century. It killed some 400 million people before being eradicated in 1979. In 1970 only some 5 per cent of infants were vaccinated against measles, tetanus, whooping cough, diphtheria and polio. By 2000, 85 per cent were vaccinated, saving about three million lives a year — more, each year, than world peace would have saved in the 20th century.
The cost of poor health at the outset of that century was a phenomenal 32 per cent of global GDP. Today, it is down to about 11 per cent and by 2050 will have halved again.
4 Education
Illiteracy today afflicts 20 per cent of the world’s population. Yet in 1900 some 70 per cent were illiterate and average schooling lasted a mere one year. Throughout most of the 20th century progress was concentrated in the prosperous West. That started changing from about 1970, when developing countries started making similarly large (and continuing) advances, with the biggest improvements in China.
In 1900 the cost of not having universal literacy was 12.3 per cent of GDP. Today that number is close to 7 per cent. By 2050 it is estimated that illiteracy will reach about 12 per cent and the cost will have dwindled to only 3.8 per cent of GDP.
5 Free trade
International trade rarely appears on lists of top humanitarian problems, but with China’s rapid trade-driven growth over the past 30 years, 680 million people lifted themselves out of poverty. We started the 20th century with relatively free trade: the total cost of trade restrictions was perhaps 3-4 per cent of GDP. That changed after the 1929 crash and the Depression of the 1930s. Trade barriers shot up and the costs rose above 10 per cent.
After the Second World War successive free trade rounds brought the developed world’s costs down to about 2 per cent but the developing world has been much slower in reducing its obstacles, reaching 4 per cent today.
For the future, we can move towards more free trade and cut our annual losses to about 3 per cent of GDP. But there is also a real risk of a return to the beggar-my-neighbour policies of the 1930s, again caused by recession, particularly among less-developed countries, which have most to lose.
6 Gender inequality
In 1900 only 15 per cent of the global workforce were women and the position is still less than equal. In 2012 40 per cent of women earned only 60 per cent as much as men.
Even by 2050 the ratio will not be equal, and women will still receive 30 per cent less. Even if we take into account that someone has to do the unpaid housework and we must shoulder the increased costs of female education, the loss of gender inequality was at least 17 per cent of global GDP in 1900. Today, with higher participation and lower wage differentials, the loss is 7 per cent and it will be 4 per cent in 2050.
7 Biodiversity
The economists measured the major biomes in the world — from tundra to tropical forests and deserts — in 1900, 2000, and 2050. They estimated both their cultural value for recreation and also its value in terms of storage of carbon to help global warming, the production of wood and traditional products, and the aesthetic value of “knowing it is there” — as when we enjoy knowing that there is undisturbed rain forest in New Guinea. They found that, overall, the world lost about 1 per cent of GDP per year over the 20th century. For the future till 2050, we are likely to see an annual net benefit of about 0.25 per cent of GDP.
8 Climate change
From 1900-2025 climate change has mostly been a net benefit, rising from barely positive in 1900 to increasing welfare by about 1.5 per cent of GDP per year in 2025. Why? Because global warming has mixed effects, and for moderate warming the benefits prevail. Increased CO2 boosts agriculture as a fertiliser and adds 0.8 per cent to GDP. Moderate warming also avoids more cold deaths than it causes extra deaths from heat. And it reduces the demand for heating more than it increases the costs of cooling. On the other hand, warming increases the competition for scarce water resources by about 0.2 per cent and has a negative impact on ecosystems such as wetlands of about 0.1 per cent. Storm impacts are vanishingly small.
As temperatures rise, the costs will rise and benefits decline, leading to a dramatic fall in net benefits. After 2070, global warming will become a net cost to the world.
9 Hunger
Hunger, one of humanity’s oldest scourges, has relented. The researchers measured it through height, a strong indicator of childhood starvation. In 1900 the average rich-world male adult was only 169cm tall, and 164cm in the poor world. Today it’s 177cm and 168cm. A 4cm increase may not sound like much, but it indicates going from 10 per cent moderate starvation to virtually nil. That means that 1.5 million fewer children die each year from malnutrition.
The cost of malnutrition has declined from 11 per cent of GDP in 1900 to 7 per cent today, and should fall to 5 per cent in 2050 — significant progress, but it also shows that there is still much to do.
10 Water and sanitation
The death rate from water and sanitation problems in developing countries was 1.5 per 1,000 in 1950, slashed to 0.4 today and projected to fall again, to 0.2 per 1,000 by mid-century.
