Check out this video and fast forward to 1948 (at 2:19). The last 62 years have been amazingly successful in terms of increasing life expectancy and average wealth in most parts of the world.
No one likes to admit this, but other than the fact that we are probably destroying the planet, things are going pretty well worldwide, by historical standards (admittedly not the highest bar).
walt
The contradiction between our material well-being and planetary health will eventually collapse civilization. I would prefer that we understand our situation well enough that we make the necessary trade-offs in order to perpetuate civilization. But apart from some advanced nations in Scandinavia, we seem oblivious to the dangers. It won’t really matter if we have longevity and comfort now if later we’re simply scrapping over the remains. The denial, particularly in this country, is overwhelming and definitive.
Odie Hugh Manatee
While it’s admirable to extend the lifespan and improve the health of humans I do think it’s shortsighted to destroy the place you need to live that longer life.
I know, crazy thought…
Cat Lady
I’d like to see his chart in 10 years. There will be some falling balls – what goes up must come down. I’d also like to see balls representing specific income groups, and not average income, particularly in the Americas. Billionaires tend to skew the results.
jayackroyd
Things have worked out so well that we are approaching the crisis date. Around 2030-2040 population will peak, as the population absorbs the decrease in infant mortality.
Then we will see whether the human experiment with a few generations of exponential population growth was successful.
I am not sanguine, personally.
jayackroyd
@walt:
If you think the Scandavian economy is sustainable for a population of 10 billion, you’re a sunny optimist.
See Fallows most recent piece on coal in the Atlantic. A sustainable economy has the OECD living at something like a tenth of current living standards.
A major technical breakthrough, like usable fusion, will be needed to prevent either the collapse of civilization (defined as government organized around centralized agriculture) or a permanent apartheid. I don’t think the latter is sustainable; the 80-90 percent will object.
ed
One might also note that the increase in lifespan also increases the rate of the earth’s destruction.
sven
Rosling actually has a great website called Gapminder where the same visualization tool is available to the public. Income and longevity are only two of a dozen options which can be represented over time.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
It has been shown on other charts that the average change in life expectancy has increased the most among the wealthy; there hasn’t been much of a change here for the lower class.
This chart could still increase, as long as the comparative wealth of everyone increases. That isn’t going to happen as long as things keep happening here the way they are, with all income increases only occurring at the top.
As for destroying the earth, remember, the earth will still be here long after we are gone.
jayackroyd
Log scale on the X axis is also misleading.
@belafon
The predominant effect is still reduction in infant mortality–That life expectancy of 40 in 1810 doesn’t mean the average adult died at 40. It means there were many,many deaths before the age of five.
Punchy
The US just lost the bid for the 2022 World Cup to…..wait for it…..Qatar. Of course, Chicago lost the 2016 Olympics to Brasil.
That seems to speak loudly on how much the rest of the planet hates us. Or not.
TheMightyTrowel
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): average life expectancy for men in Glasgow is 54.
In good news: politically engaged children and teens are protesting to Tory cuts! Yay millennials! (self-promo: I wrote about it this morning – click link in my name…)
PurpleGirl
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): As for destroying the earth, remember, the earth will still be here long after we are gone.
Yes, the planet will be here. Will there be the resources needed to maintain the population — oil, coal, potable water and such? I don’t mean you, but I often get the idea that American fundies believe that their God will have a thought and put oil in all the exploited wells and reform the mountains destroyed for coal and other minerals. They do not want to acknowledge that these materials were formed over millions of years or in the original event that created the universe.
Alex S.
@jayackroyd:
I think that mankind should colonize other planets. I don’t know why this isn’t a priority – well, I guess I know, it’s because it sounds too much like fiction. But since capitalism requires eternal growth, and a growing population is one of the main vehicles for growth, it should be on the global agenda. Also, we are running out of precious metals.
oliver's Neck
Average wealth is meaningless in terms of social justice. A very, very small portion of the world’s population has control of a mind-boggling amount of wealth whilst the rest of the world gets materially poorer. Median wealth is a more useful metric, and it has been falling.
Brian S (formerly Incertus)
@Alex S.: I think we need to colonize other planets just because there are too many ways, completely outside our control, that the earth could become unlivable for us, or at least for a population this size or larger. If human life is going to thrive in the (very) long term, it has to escape the planet, and eventually the solar system.
SGEW
Well, I’ve been consistently saying this for a while now, Doug. Maybe not here, recently, but still. It’s a damned important thing to keep in mind, to avoid the sadness, and cynicism, and whatnot.
Martin
@Punchy: Well, don’t use sports to assess international relations. Formula 1 has been on a decade long kick to expand into new markets. China, South Korea, Indonesia, Abu Dhabi, Turkey are all destinations now. India is coming. Russia.
It’s not a reflection of the world hating europe (where most of the races used to be) but that most countries now have first-world components to their economies. There are people in China and India with the income and discretionary time to connect to a sport like F1 – and cheap digital communication being what it is, it’s easy to deliver. Marketers want to reach a global audience. Red Bull wants to be seen everywhere, not just in a handful of top markets, and so sports are responding.
The world continues to get smaller and more egalitarian. Unfortunately, it’s having the effect not of a few dominant nations and a bunch of 3rd world ones, but of a dominant subgroup in each nation and a larger populace in or flirting with poverty. Not quite jayackroyd’s apartheid state, but something closer to it than we’d like.
Alex S.
@Punchy:
Nah, it’s not anti-american sentiment. It’s just corruption.
Doug M.
I see multiple comments claiming that the increases are only affecting a small portion of the planet’s population.
Well, no. Lifespans and income have increased dramatically over most of the world, including places like Senegal and Andhra Pradesh.
Very broadly speaking, the bottom couple of deciles — people living in the Congo and the poorer parts of India — haven’t seen much improvement. But once you get past around the 20th percentile mark, the curve starts to steepen fast. And the average, 50th-percentile human is way, way better off than her grandmother was back in 1948.
Doug M.
JMS
It’s a matter of viewpoint. I suspect that to be a progressive is to be a kind of utopian who can’t feel comfortable or guilt-free enjoyment of life until every problem is solved. Even if you thought that a Scandanavian country-like level of peace and prosperity was a good enough goal (after all, there is still crime and wealth inequality in such countries), you’d still always be unhappy about the state of the world, because it’s currently impossible to get the rest of the world to that level. Setting impossible goals and not meeting them seems to be a good route to crankiness, whatever your goals (I imagine someone advocating for a return to segregation or taking the vote away from women or something like that would be pretty cranky too). In general, though, I think conservatives tend to be happier because their goals are more limited, more likely to reflect the status quo, and thus more attainable.
cleek
@Brian S (formerly Incertus):
the thing is, if we have the tech to live on other planets, we’ll certainly be able to keep living here. it would be pretty tough for us to make Earth more inhospitable than Mars.
sven
@JMS: You may be right… but that also may be why Scandanavian countries enjoy “Scandanavian country-like levels of peace and prosperity.”
Brachiator
We may destroy our ability to live on Earth, but we are not destroying the planet. The planet got along for billions of years before we popped up, and will get along billions of years after we are gone.
Life is pretty good. The idea is to try to make it better.
And it will be interesting to see what little nugget that NASA unveils at its news conference later today. The few good science journalists out there are trying to tamp down the craziest speculation. Here’s a little tidbit from the Guardian.
Arsenic and New Life. Cool.
Mike E
@Brian S (formerly Incertus): Oprah had on some blonde-haired boy genius who said almost exactly the same thing: “Earth cannot sustain our species, so, it’s Mars Beeyotches!” Well, except the Mars part–the kid’s a genius after all.
Capitalism has no heart, and, if the latest train-wreck is any indication, no head either.
jayackroyd
@Alex S.:
Humans are not colonizing other planets because it is impossible to do so. I realize it is not impossible to imagine, but there are at least four insuperable hurdles. A propulsion method, safety from cosmic rays, debilitating effect of weightlessness and, most important, the inability to develop an artificial (meaning not on Earth) self sustaining ecosystem.
This leaves aside that there are no habitable planets in the Solar System. If you are looking for more living area, you should look to the sea. The problems are much less insuperable.
On that last point (which is essential for every single bit of any kind of planetary exploration project, never mind colonization), we are not even within a whiff of understanding what such a system requires.
Walker
@Brian S (formerly Incertus):
The issue is not space; we have plenty of space for much more population. The problem is resources. What do the other planets in the solar system have in the way of resources to support human life? If we have to expend massive Earth resources to colonize those planets, then there is no gain.
Brian S (formerly Incertus)
@cleek: I’m talking more about external threats we can’t do anything about, like a massive asteroid smashing into the planet, or some freak solar flare wiping out our atmosphere. The more planets we’re on, the more likely we are to survive catastrophes not of our own making. The ones we cause ourselves are hard enough to get past.
srv
If everyone has diabetes, what’s the life span?
Martin
The lifespan gain isn’t a serious problem. That curve, at best, will be asymptotic to 75 or so. At that point you’ve implemented all of the life-extending bits and are now in the same boat as the other first-world nations – we either just don’t know how to keep people alive longer, or we do, but we can’t manage to convince them to give up cheeseburgers to do it.
The large population growth problems are in a number of regional areas. Scandinavia isn’t going to hit 10B people because the scandinavians don’t even replace their own population. Almost nobody in Europe is growing due to birthrate – it’s all residual life expectancy gains and immigration, and many places like Italy are shrinking. The US is growing through birthrate, but barely.
The problems are in China, India, Indonesia – the places where there are still high birthrates. That stops as nations get more and more industrialized and egalitarian. China is getting there pretty steadily, plus they’ve forced it as a matter of policy. India hasn’t, and further, they have cultural issues that actively prevent them from becoming more egalitarian. If they can stop growing (and thankfully, they are stable and have relatively strong governments), then the only real problem area will be Africa.
Brachiator
@Brian S (formerly Incertus):
If technology is developed making colonization possible, there will inevitably also spawn some eco-group calling themselves Earth Onlies who will declare that human beings have no right to go polluting other planets.
There will also probably be some religious fundamentalists who will tell you that humans should not go spreading themselves all over the galaxy because it will make it harder for the baby Jesus to round us all up when the Rapture comes.
Brian S (formerly Incertus)
@Brachiator: Yeah, but that’s going to happen no matter what. Hell, if the announcement by NASA this afternoon really is that the bacteria they found in Mono Lake is extraterrestrial, you’re going to have some Bible-thumpers either A) denying it vehemently or B) start praying for its conversion.
Annelid Gustator
@Punchy: Qatar 2022 speaks much more to how the FIFA ExCom loves them some bribery.
Martin
Speaking of sustainability – good on GM. They just dumped $4B into their pension plans.
Meeting your obligations to workers over shareholders wasn’t so hard, was it?
eemom
Wow.
It’s apt to confuse me, cuz it’s such an unusual sight….
I didn’t know anyone else existed who remembered that song.
The album had 4 other songs that I really liked — I remember because they were the first and last cuts on each side: Kodachrome, One Man’s Ceiling, American Tune, and Loves Me Like A Rock.
Shawn in ShowMe
If we don’t stop killing the other lifeforms on this planet, we’re never going to figure out how to sustain life on another one. That’s like trying to learn how to read by burning all the books.
fasteddie9318
@Annelid Gustator:
This. And I’d add what an excellent display of social awareness it was for FIFA that its winning bid comes from a country that operates on what is effectively slave labor imported from South and Southeast Asia.
walt
@jayackroyd:
I agree that a Scandinavian kind of economy is an impossibility for current and projected populations worldwide. My statement was really about the idea that if civilization were to perpetuate itself, it would require something closer to Scandianavian seriousness about the actual issues of global warming/resource depletion. Even there, the Scandinavians leave much to be desired but given the wholesale denial elsewhere, it’s a starting point. And if we did get serious, it would mean a drastic reduction in fossil-oil use, consumerism and, in effect, crashing the catastrophe of industrial civilization. We have yet to wrap our heads around this idea, of course, and if we ever do, it will probably be too late to do anything meaningful. I’m conscious, too, of a Unabomber kind of nihilism that afflicts these conversations. We as progressives live in this twilight world between secular progress and an environmental nightmare.
Alex S.
@jayackroyd:
I’m also hoping for a scientific breakthrough there. And maybe a few more billion dollars of funding. As far as I can see, there are just two possibilities for mankind to survive, either radically change civilization under the paradigm of sustainability (a change from our current paradigm: growth) or expand into space. If capitalism wants to survive it has to take the latter choice. More and more indicators are showing that we are at a limit, climate change, deforestation, peak oil, or that giant garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean.
Brian S (formerly Incertus)
@Alex S.: I expect at some point we’re going to find a way to mine that garbage patch, along with all the landfills for that matter.
Judas Escargot
@Brian S (formerly Incertus):
Learning to live on Mars or the Moon would require a totally different mindset: One where every resource is precious, where every possible erg of energy is saved or reclaimed, and there’d be no room for the current idea that some of the population is ‘surplus’ and should be treated as such.
It’d be nice if some of our descendants learned those values, and then exported them back here. Maybe the next civilization will get it right, long after we’re gone, who knows.
{Full disclosure: I (sometimes) work on Space projects, so there is of course some professional self interest at work here.}
A Guest
@fasteddie9318: And won’t it be nice for any Jewish or Israeli fans! At SA, a number of women were arrested for wearing to a game some lovely, well-fitting, (to my eyes) orange dresses in a publicity stunt for a brewery. Imagine how well that’ll go over in Qatar.
In a country with fewer than 1M people, they’ll be able to handle as many as 2M visitors, simultaneously?
The whole thing is a fiasco.
JPL
OT… McCain is on Cspan 3 making an ass of himself..
PeakVT
I doubt the US will be awarded a major international sporting event until we get our airline security shit straight. That will probably happen around 2050. (There could be events in the pipe, but I don’t know of any.)
sven
@JPL: Is it Thursday already?
Alex S.
@Brian S (formerly Incertus):
I’ve seen technology that breaks down plastics into its components again, including oil. But it’s very inefficient.
Brian S (formerly Incertus)
@Alex S.: Yeah, I’ve read about it as well. I don’t think we’ll be mining garbage patches any time soon, but I can imagine a future in which hydrocarbons are so hard to pull out of the ground that it’s more efficient to get them from shit we’ve thrown away generations ago.
WereBear
My kitten says:
Don’t let the holidays overwhelm you.
You Don't Say
OT: Anyone see Jane Hamsher on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show last night? She said now is not the time for grandstanding, it’s the time for working to get unemployment extended, etc., and compromise over tax cuts. I think that’s what she said.
Judas Escargot
@Alex/Brian:
I have a chemical/petroleum engineer friend who once did the rough math to compute that it would cost about $400-600/barrel to reclaim petroleum from the kind of plastics you’d find in landfills with current technology (this was back in 1998 or so).
That’s a higher price than getting the dino-juice from the ground or the sea, but not an inconceivably high price in the face of peak oil. And the technology is likely to get cheaper over time.
If I thought I’d be alive in 80-100 years, I’d consider buying up some landfill property just in case.
WereBear
I have always assumed we will be going back through our trash. We have thrown out so damn much. And some of it is quite finite.
stuckinred
@You Don’t Say: Did she have that “I know everything there is to know about everything” smirk on her face? Come to think of it it’s permanent.
DBrown
Boy, is that guy and his idea’s full of shit – everyone in the world catch up!? Yeah, right. What a joke – first, all the advancement came from cheap energy (read oil, with great help from coal) and we know that the oil will be going very soon and coal will kill vast numbers of people due to both AGW and air pollution (as more is needed to replace lost oil); medical costs will kill any major improvement in lives since all the cheap stuff has been done for the poor (as a %) and only very costly stuff can really improve life IF (and this is a big one) both clean water and more/better food is delivered to the vast majority of people (yeah, right- those things take ENERGY!)
A total stupid video since the ass didn’t stop to look past the simple numbers – life span and wealth grew for three reasons: cheap energy, easy medical (ie low cost) improvements and easy food production increase (read cheap oil.) Come peak oil, all this goes to hell. Ass hole – without cheap energy (and that is not solar folks), we are screwed on so many levels.
chopper
interesting the way the china ball plummeted and bounced during the great leap forward.
DougJ
@eemom:
When something goes wrong, I’m the first to admit, the first to admit it, and the last one to know.
One of my favorite lines from any song.
HyperIon
Rosling is a great lecturer and pretty funny. Here is a link to a 30 minute talk he gave here in Seattle this summer.
I didn’t watch the TPM video but the link above is a very good discussion of how many nations have “catched up” (his locution). It also presents info about global distribution of income and disease. I have downloaded it and burned several DVDs which I have then encouraged friends and family to view.
Hmm. DougJ, I never pegged you as a fan of old Paul Simon songs.
frostys
@Brian S (formerly Incertus):
You run up against entropy when you try mining the Pacific Garbage Patch. It’s equivalent to mining the copper that’s in the dust from brake pads on the side of the roads. Once a resource is sufficiently diffuse, it becomes unobtainable.
And I’m afraid industrial civilization is all about speeding up entropy: taking concentrated, high quality materials and energy, and converting them to dust and heat.
frostys
@DBrown:
This. Thanks for saving me the effort of writing it.
You Don't Say
@stuckinred: Yes, and I-am-the-only-one-who-really-care-about-the-people earnestness.
But it made me think I finally get her: she’s a contrarian.
eemom
@HyperIon:
he’s full of surprises innee?
Kind of refreshing considering how many pre-programmed, totally predictable blogflies we got buzzing around here these days.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Well, it’s clear that the establishment of Israel is what set the world on the correct path.
Fine, as long as they are not mine.
eemom
@You Don’t Say:
oh good. Cuz ya know, the only thing that’s really been missing from the cosmic meltdown of political commentary this week was a teevee appearance by Jane Hamsher.
ETA: but naw, she’s no contrarian. It’s just that the reemergence of republican power threatens to drive her back into the pre-2006 obscurity where she belongs, so she’s gotta come up with a new schtick.
urizon
People who live to adulthood, on the whole, live as long as they did fifty, or even one hundred, years ago. The huge jump in life expectancy witnessed in recent decades is almost entirely related to decreases in infant mortality.
fasteddie9318
@A Guest:
Eh, I’m not sure it would be a problem. Qatar is not Dubai, but they tend not to harass westerners about issues of propriety when there’s money involved. You typically have to seek out places where that kind of thing would cause tensions (mosques, religious-minded schools, etc.). Nor, for that matter, do they take that dim a view of Israelis–they’re too dependent on American military protection, for one thing, and for another, there’s more money to be made playing nice.
You Don't Say
@eemom: This could be apocryphal, and if I were better person I’d look at her site to check, but I got the feeling she saw there was a lot of “stand your ground, call their bluff” in the air and she decided to take the opposite side. Cuz when it suits her, she is all stand-your-ground.
Martin
@fasteddie9318: Well, Qatar isn’t having the World Cup forced upon them – they sought it out along with everything they knew would come with it, so really that’s the best evidence that this won’t be a big issue. I’m sure FIFA has already secured in the contract what sponsorship, concessions, and rules will be tolerated and in effect.
FIFA doesn’t want this to blow up either, so they wouldn’t have awarded the venue if they were terribly worried that it would.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@jayackroyd:
Not really. It reflects that income growth is compounding – whether or not an extra hundred dollars a year is great or pathetic depends on whether you’re getting $1000 or $10,000 a year.
Scott de B.
The graph doesn’t have a gravitational field. Newton’s laws do not apply. In 10 years all balls will be higher and farther to the right.
“Almost entirely” still leaves a huge remainder.
A 30 year old white male in the U.S. in 1850 could expect to live 34 more years on average.
In 1900, he could expect to live 34.88 years.
In 1950, he could expect to live 40.29 years.
In 2004, he could expect to live 47.3 years.
13 extra years is not trivial.
shecky
Too many fucking doomers. That’s what makes BJ comment section so unbearable.