TechTakes

I think a good place to start are the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. I know things feel bed, especially in the United States, where there are severe regressions. But at a global level many things are far better than ever for billions upon billions of people, especially in China and India.

TL;DR - At a worldwide level, hunger and extreme poverty is down, while healthcare and education is up. War is also up, and the environment is suffering more than ever.

A bunch of interactive charts are available here where you can scrub through time: https://ourworldindata.org/sdgs

I’ll summarize in case you don’t want to go through the charts yourself.

1. Worldwide, extreme poverty is down sharply over the last 30 years.
2. We’ve seen a decrease in undernourishment since 2000, but a regression since COVID hit.
3. Since 1985, maternal mortality ratio has improved everywhere in the world except North America.
4. Literacy rates have improved worldwide (especially in Africa, India, and South America) since 1990.
5. There’s not a lot of historical data about gender equality, sadly. About the best indicator I can find there is ratio of women to men in political positions, which has been steadily increasing for over a hundred years at this point. We have a long way to go on gender equality.
6. Since 2000, access to clean water and proper waste disposal has improved worldwide
7. Percentage of energy generated by renewables has been pretty stagnant over the last decades. Moreover, the UN report bundles fossil fuels under “clean” energy sources, which I strongly disagree with. I probably don’t have to say why this is a big fucking problem, but I will anyway. We’re quickly cooking our planet with all these unclean energy sources.
8. Economic growth has been spotty worldwide since they started collecting data in 1961. Besides, GDP per capita is a stupid way of measuring financial success, because it doesn’t control for the dragonlike financial hoarding that the ultra rich do.
9. Infrastructure has been pretty stagnant since they started collecting data.
10. People living below 50 per cent of median income has remained stagnant or worsened for the most part over the last few decades. I think that’s what most people feel when they talk about the world worsening. I know I do.
11. The percentage of prime living in slums has decreased since 1999.
12. Domestic material consumption per capita has increased since 2000, making the world a more unsustainable place.
13. Greenhouse gas emissions have been sharply rising since 1850! This is a huge fucking problem, as mentioned before.
14. The ocean has been getting steadily more acidic, and there has been little progress on preventing overfishing of the oceans. This is another big fucking problem.
15. Our forest area is shrinking, deserts are getting bigger, and species are going extinct. Some minor gains have been had in creating more protected areas, but that seems to be a token effort at best compared to the enormous biological disaster occurring.
16. Death in armed conflicts has been increasing since 1989. This statistic actually surprised me a bit, because it’s true even if you exclude the Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Palestine wars.
17. I’d skip this point since it’s mostly an indicator for whether or not a nation is participating in the UN goals, but for completeness, it looks kind of spotty worldwide.